Dylan Sprouse is recounting a harrowing moment at home.
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody alum detailed the attempted burglary at his and wife Barbara Palvin‘s home in April that ended with him holding the suspect at gunpoint for the first time.
“Barbara and I were ripping Pokémon packs,” Sprouse told cohost Brendan Columbus on the July 14 episode of their Wildmen podcast. “She pulls huge. Flash forward, it’s 12:30 at night, and I’m lying on the couch playing video games…I never lock my front door until I go to bed. I really shouldn’t be saying this, but I’ve started to now, so nice try.”
“So, I’m lying on the couch,” he continued, “and I don’t hear him come through the gate. All of a sudden, I’m hearing a rattle on my front door, and the first thought that goes through my head is my dad who comes by anytime he wants, [but] he would never show up at 12:30, because he’s in bed by 8. And the second thought that went through my head is someone’s trying to steal our Pokémon cards.”
read
Dylan Sprouse and Barbara Palvin Break Silence on “Trauma” of Home Invasion
The 33-year-old noted that the couple’s collection of Pokémon cards “is far and away not the most valuable thing in the house—that’s obviously the life of my wife” before explaining that he immediately ran upstairs to grab a gun.
“I calculated this, because I looked at the front door cam,” he shared. “From the moment he’s trying to get from the door and turns away—twenty seconds outside with a gun. Upstairs, grab the 1911 Kimber, downstairs, out the door in 20 seconds.”
“I look at Barbara and she’s like, ‘Is someone trying to break in?'” Sprouse added. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, stay up here. Chill out.’ She goes, ‘I’m going to get the police on the phone.'”
The Big Daddy actor noted that his wife “f–king killed it” in the moment, mimicking her holding a gun and said, “She wasn’t crow’s nest out the upper floor window.”
He then recounted his face-to-face encounter with the attempted intruder.
“I’m standing by the side, and I go, ‘Who’s there?’ again,” Sprouse said. “He goes, ‘Nobody!’ And I know he’s over there, so I have my gun raised and he walks out and the first thing I notice [as] he comes into the light, he’s walking really slow and he has a cigarette in one hand and a longboard skateboard in the other. That was my immediate lock, I went, ‘He must be kind of tweaking.'”
“I go, ‘Hey, follow me. We’re going to go out my property,'” he continued. “‘Walk slow, keep your hands out, like, I don’t want any funny business.’ So, he complies. He’s really mellow about it. He’s not crazy.”
The Disney Channel alum noted that he sensed the suspect was “on something” and told him, “‘Dude, I don’t even know where I am,’” before Sprouse noticed that he had “a bunch of wires hanging out of his pockets” and a “bulge on his chest.”
After instructing him to pull up his sweatshirt, Sprouse saw that the bulge was a fanny pack, so he had him sit until the police showed up.
“Case closed,” he explained. “Didn’t press charges, he got in the slammer because of his previous arrest warrants and I want to have him on the pod.”
The Suite Life on Deck alum also dispelled a rumor that had been going around about the whole ordeal.
“I never tackled the guy,” he said, “but everybody thinks I did and I’m not correcting them. I want people to think I did, because it’s cool.”
Keep reading for more celebs who’ve faced similar experiences…
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
“I feel like my privacy has been violated in more ways than one,” the athlete said in a December 2024 press conference. “Way more is already out there than I would want out there and that I care to share, so that’s all I got to say about that.”
“I go, ‘What the f–k are you doing?’ This man stands up, runs out the door,” she continued. “He had a ski mask on, full black arms, black pants, the full thing, right? And I went, ‘Oh, f–k.’”
Cavallari said she later learned the suspect was an HVAC technician who had come to the home for a repair earlier in the day.
While Thames Valley Police confirmed to NBC News that the burglar did not make it to Adelaide Cottage, but the person entered a farm building on the palace grounds then “made off with a black Isuzu pickup and a red quad bike.”
Having just gotten back from Australia, she left for a party without unpacking. However, when she returned, “I was like, ‘Am I losing my mind? My suitcase is gone, my laptop. Everything is off my bed. What is going on?'” she told Rachel Bilson on her podcast in February 2024. “Then I went in my closet and I called my sister and I was like, ‘OK, if I open my jewelry box and stuff is gone, someone is in my house or stole stuff. ‘I opened it, and everything is gone.”
The Bling Ring, which consisted of members Alexis Haines, Rachel Lee, Nick Prugo, Courtney Ames, Diana Tamayo, Johnny Ajar and Roy Lopez, were all arrested in 2009.
Many of the members went on to serve time in prison or probation and community service. Lee, the alleged ringleader, served a year and a half in state prison out of her four year sentence. Prugo served a year in prison, while Haines served 30 days in prison. Ames was sentenced to three years of probation and two months of community service. Tamayo was sentenced to probation and two months of community service. Similarly, Lopez Jr. was sentenced to three years of supervised probation. Ajar was sentenced to three years in prison, but ended up serving one.
“This is a scary and upsetting situation for anyone to go through,” Duff’s rep told E! News at the time, “but Hilary is thankful that her family, her staff, her home and her pets are all safe.”
