Like the hosts of other “hang podcasts”—think Jake Shane’s Therapuss or Good Hang with Amy Poehler—Sprouse is under no illusions that he is a journal
Like the hosts of other “hang podcasts”—think Jake Shane’s Therapuss or Good Hang with Amy Poehler—Sprouse is under no illusions that he is a journalist. He’s also not trying to interrogate his guests. “I don’t listen to the kind of devastating, hard-hitting podcasts,” he says. He and Palvin are, however, fans of Lore, the critically acclaimed podcast created by Aaron Mahnke. “I really like cryptid stuff and xenobiology, or whatever it’s called.” He waits a beat. “Cryptozoology.”
With Wildmen, Sprouse wants to create a comfortable, laid-back environment and meet his guests wherever they are. Listeners can look forward to hearing from Hollywood guests including but not circumscribed to KJ Apa, Camila Mendes, Bazzi, Harry Jowsey, and JoJo Siwa.
“What I do want to emphasize is that though we can tend to seem, like, bro-y, we are genuine friends with everybody,” says Sprouse, sounding true. “We get told so often how divided we all are as people and really when boots are on the ground, I don’t think that’s the case. I think everybody’s really friendly and open-minded with each other. As Americans, we’re told a lot about how much we should dislike the other. I think if you get down to brass tacks and you share a beer or you sit down for a Coca-Cola with people and just start joking around, you find that everyone’s kind of the same in a way. What they really hunger for is to break bread with people that they like.”
Brendan Columbus and Dylan SprouseRommel Alcantara
When a former television star announces they are starting a podcast, nine times out of ten, it’s going to be a “rewatch” podcast of some kind. There’s Office Ladies, hosted by The Office’s Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey; Pod Meets World, hosted by Boy Meets World’s Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong, and Will Friedle; and Fake Doctors, Real Friends hosted by Scrubs’ Zach Braff and Donald Faison. Rewatch podcasts are a reliable way to cash in on nostalgia from a built-in audience; as such, they often do gigantic numbers in the podcasting space. When I ask why Sprouse chose not to go down this tried-and-true road, he visibly winces. “I think that if I was to stick with what we already knew, there’s only so much content that you can get,” he says. But while Wildmen is decidedly not a Suite Life of Zack and Cody rewatch podcast, Sprouse and his cohost do wade into the past. “We’re talking about everything from the industry to casting mistakes to past work, like working on the Suite Life, to interviewing guests about what they’re doing, to qualms that they’re having,” he says. “And I knew that if we were to give ourselves a really rigid structure, we just wouldn’t have as much fun.”
