Dylan Sprouse called Cole with a family-history discovery. “Not looking at that,” his twin replied before hanging up, Dylan recalled, according to TMZ.
The 34-year-old actor recounted the exchange on the Oct. 20 episode of Wildmen, the comedy podcast he hosts with Brendan Columbus. He had been researching his ancestry and speaking with relatives.
Dylan jokingly called himself and Cole “children of incest,” according to Entertainment Weekly. His account describes connections between their parents’ families without establishing how closely the parents might be related.
Cole later shared a screenshot of the coverage on Instagram Stories. “No media training on earth can prep you to read this clickbait headline at 10am,” he wrote, as Us Weekly reported.
Dylan Traced the Family Connection to California in the 1800s
Using Ancestry brought Dylan into contact with people he had never met, particularly on his father’s side. He described that part of the family as fractured and said comparing accounts with newly discovered relatives changed his understanding of its history, according to PEOPLE.
In his telling, both sides had settled in California during the Gold Rush. One branch struck gold and brought more relatives west from North Carolina. Marriages connected the families in the late 1800s before their paths separated, he said.
He described his mother and father’s marriage as a later reunion of those branches and said his parents had not known about the earlier connections. The show’s episode listing promotes conversation with a description promising “very strange tangents, fabricated anecdotes” and friends making fun of one another.
He Counted Seven Sets of Twins Across Four Generations
Dylan had assumed the family’s history of twins came from his mother’s relatives. Conversations with his father’s family revealed that his father’s uncles were identical twins, too. “We had seven sets of twins in four generations,” he said, linking that pattern to his ancestry findings.
Identical twins develop when a single fertilized egg divides into two embryos. Most cases are not thought to result from inherited genetic factors, according to the National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus. Some families have more identical twins than expected, but the reason remains uncertain.
Fraternal twins, who develop from two separately fertilized eggs, are much more likely to run in families. That tendency can involve releasing more than one egg during a cycle. Age and fertility treatment can also affect the likelihood of fraternal twins.
Dylan Has Explained Why Cole Isn’t His Podcast Co-Host
Before launching the show in July, Dylan told Vanity Fair that he wanted a conversational format rather than a Disney rewatch series. Columbus, a writer and friend from their NYU days, offered a different perspective from the brother who had shared so much of his childhood and career.
Dylan said their busy schedules also played a part. At the time, the brothers lived 15 minutes apart, spoke daily and played video games together almost every other day. He called gaming their “love language.”
Dylan Recently Shared an Update About Daughter Sylvie
Dylan and his wife, model Barbara Palvin, announced their daughter’s arrival on Sept. 28. He spoke about Sylvie at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on Oct. 18, where Palvin returned to the runway approximately six weeks after giving birth.
In an E! News interview covered by PEOPLE, Dylan said the baby was beginning to recognize familiar faces. “She’s smiling and laughing at my jokes,” he said. “Which is all a dad can really dream of.”
In a separate Oct. 20 Instagram Story, Cole also said he was being tagged in Victoria’s Secret posts because people still confused him with the brother married to Barbara.