At 23, Cole Sprouse is ready to make his comeback.
The former Disney star, who recently opened up about his decision to take a five-year break from acting, is set to star in Riverdale, the CW's highly anticipated new series based on the Archer comics. And on the red carpet at the network's Upfront presentation in New York City on Thursday, he admitted to E! News he was a little nervous about his return to acting.
"I had a surprising amount of fun," he said of filming the pilot. "I took a break from acting for a little bit, came back, and didn't know how it was going to be, but I had so much fun. I really had, like, a reinvention, a renewal."
Sprouse, who has been working since he was eight months old and starred on the Disney Channel's extremely successful series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and The Suite Life on Deck with his twin brother, Dylan Sprouse, decided to take a break in 2011 to go to New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, explaining that "a break is fundamental" for child stars.
"It allows them to step outside themselves, it allows them to see themselves more objectively, but most importantly, it allows them to get real-life experiences, real-life stories, and as an artist, that's what you pull of off for emotional depth, for emotional range, for all of that," he said. "So if you have no stories to tell and led no life in any realistic sense, then you can't go anywhere. And that's why it was important for me to step away, and why it was important for my brother to step away."
And though he did admit sometimes being a child entertainer "can bite you," he wouldn't change a thing about his past, telling us, "I don't come from a lot, so Disney gave me the opportunity to go to college, which is great. My brother and I are some of the first in our family to ever do that."
To hear more from Sprouse, who is playing Jughead in Riverdale, about his decision to take a break from acting and connecting with other child stars about their experiences, watch our interview with him above. (Warning: You might feel weird about having a crush on the kid from Big Daddy.)
Riverdale will premiere midseason on the CW.