Despite decades of public health campaigns about the dangers of smoking, there’s no denying that some people make cigarettes look temptingly cool. Riverdale hearthrobe Cole Sprouse, however, is not one of those people.
Right now, Sprouse is being roundly dunked thanks to a viral clip of him smoking on the podcast Call Her Daddy. Talking about his breakup with Riverdale co-star Lili Reinhart, he says, “I know we both did quite a bit of damage to each other.” When podcast host Alex Cooper asks why they broke up, Sprouse takes a drag of his cigarette.
Spreading with the caption “he gives me the ick,” the main reaction to this clip is people expressing disgust about his smoking habits. Not just that he’s smoking in the first place, but the fact that he doesn’t look good while doing so.
A lot of people also remarked on the potential rudeness of smoking indoors, which at least proves that indoor smoking bans—a largely 21st-century concept—have had a real social impact.
Earlier in the podcast, Sprouse asks Cooper’s permission to smoke during their conversation, pointing out that no one has a problem with people smoking weed during podcasts. “But not a fucking cigarette,” Cooper agrees, finishing his statement. Which: Fair enough! It’s not like weed is morally superior to nicotine.
Overall, the dunks here are hilariously brutal—and they say a lot about the idea of smoking as an aesthetic affectation. “You will never be a french new wave icon,” reads one of the many, many QRTs, overlapping with other derisive comments like, “Him smoking indoors like he’s French or something,” and “he smokes like he wants people to make edits of him.”
There are also a lot of comparisons to other, supposedly cooler celebrity smokers like Mads Mikkelsen (undeniable!) and James Spader—specifically a fancam of this fantastic Cannes press conference in the 1990s, where Spader stylishly smokes through a conversation about sex scenes and full-frontal male nudity.
On the one hand, it’s kind of mean to scrutinize someone’s mannerisms to this extent during a casual podcast interview. Celebrities shouldn’t have to be polished 24/7. However, it’s still funny to see such an explicit distinction between “smoking makes you look cool” and “smoking only looks cool if you are cool.” In this clip, Cole Sprouse is smoking because he needs a cigarette. He isn’t doing it for aesthetic purposes. 40 years ago that wouldn’t be notable, but among Sprouse’s Gen-Z/younger millennial audience, it’s apparently a major turnoff.
