"Hope Plus Cody Forever": Liza Soberano's old diary names Cole Sprouse as childhood crush
Liza Soberano has the receipts: an old diary proving her childhood crush ended up as her Lisa Frankenstein co-star—guess who.
It took a text from her aunt to jog the memory: a snapshot of a grade-school diary where she’d doodled her given name next to a Disney crush. By then, Lisa Frankenstein had already come and gone, and Liza Soberano had spent weeks on set with Cole Sprouse without clocking that childhood connection.
“My real name is Hope so I wrote Hope plus Cody forever because I love Cole from Suite Life of Zack and Cody.”
Soberano shared the discovery on Collider Ladies Night, saying the throwback arrived during the movie ’s promo run — after she’d wrapped an entire shoot opposite the actor she once knew best as Cody Martin.
The 1980s-set horror- comedy was Soberano’s U.S. feature debut. She played Taffy, Lisa’s relentlessly sunny stepsister, while Sprouse was the resurrected Victorian “Creature” sharing scenes with Kathryn Newton and Carla Gugino. Director Zelda Williams has praised Soberano for keeping Taffy’s sweetness front and center instead of tipping into mean-girl territory.
Next up: Goodbye Girl
Sprouse is back in rom-com mode with Goodbye Girl, an Amazon MGM Studios project starring Kiernan Shipka. She plays Jess, a pro heartbreaker hired by a nervous bride to end her engagement days before the wedding — only to fall for the unsuspecting groom, played by Sprouse. Oran Zegman (Honor Society) directs from a script by Danielle Hoover and David Monahan.
- Kiernan Shipka — Jess
- Cole Sprouse — the groom
- Natalia Dyer
- David Iacono
- Megan Mullally
- Alan Ruck
- Zosia Mamet
- Catherine Cohen
- Andrew Bachelor
- Anthony Keyvan
- Eli Brown
- Odeya Rush
- Luke Eisner
Filming took place in New Orleans and ran from February 2026 through March.