Emma Stone Had A Goofy Cameo In The Suite Life Of Zack & Cody

Long before she was a two-time Academy Award-winning actor able to tackle some of the toughest, weirdest roles in cinema and television, Emma Stone was just a young actor trying to make it in a cutthroat industry. After a number of TV guest spots in small roles, including a hilarious bit on “Malcolm in the Middle” where she played a bully beefing with the Wilkerson family matriarch, Lois (Jane Kaczmarek), Stone would eventually garner attention with the 2006 hit comedy “Superbad,” which was responsible for both her trademark red hair and her career taking off. Before that, however, she played an integral but tiny role on the Disney Channel hit kids show “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody,” although it’s absolutely impossible to spot her. 

“The Suite Life of Zack & Cody” followed twins Zack and Cody Martin (Dylan and Cole Sprouse), who live in the suite of the Tipton Hotel in Boston. One of the people they regularly encounter is the Tipton hotel heiress London Tipton (Brenda Song), a clear riff on real-life heiress Paris Hilton, and like Paris, she has a little dog that she carries around. The biggest difference (besides the fact that Paris traditionally has Chihuahuas and London has a Pomeranian) is that we, the home audience, can sometimes understand London’s pup, Ivana. Most of the time, she barks and yaps and we are given subtitles, but when Ivana talks to other dogs, we can hear her.

And when Ivana decided to chat with her fellow canines? Her voice belonged to none other than Emma Stone. 

Ivana Priscilla Veronica Tipton-Fitzpatrick is the adorable Pomeranian voiced by Emma Stone, who appeared under her legal name, Emily Stone, in the show’s credits. London treats her like a person and can understand her barking, which is a fun little plot element throughout the show, but Ivana gets a chance to really shine when she’s put into her own “Lady and the Tramp” kind of situation. Ivana ends up falling in love with Zack and Cody’s friend Maddie’s (Ashley Tisdale) dog Scamp in the season 1 episode “Crushed” and they have a whole litter of puppies together, showing she’s less stuck-up than previously imagined, and Stone’s voice acting is a lot of fun. Ivana is sassy and smart, providing a sharp contrast from her rather dim-witted owner. In fact, Ivana even comments on London being a bit of an airhead, though she also clearly loves her owner. 

It might seem like an unexpected early stop on the career of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars whose favorite films include the works of John Cassavetes and Miloš Forman, but Stone has never shied away from unusual roles and has made a career out of her ability to do just about every kind of comedic acting possible. 

Adorable and snarky little Ivana is only one of Stone’s odd roles, though it’s definitely among the earliest. Despite getting noticed because of teen comedies like “Superbad” and “Easy A,” Stone soon jumped into horror-comedy with “Zombieland” and even traversed the world of musicals with her Oscar-winning turn in “La La Land.” She’s had one or two casting stumbles along the way (“Aloha,” anyone?), but has mostly managed to make a name for herself as an actor willing to go to extreme lengths to tell a story or get a laugh. She won her second Academy Award for Best Leading Actress for Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Poor Things,” a dark comedy Frankenstein story that contained some controversial (and occasionally hilarious) sex scenes, which showed Stone was comfortable going to truly uncomfortable places. 

Whether she’s voicing a Pomeranian, portraying the horrors of “reality” home improvement television on Nathan Fielder’s surreal “The Curse,” or going wild playing a bunch of different roles in Lanthimos’s follow-up to “Poor Things,” “Kinds of Kindness,” Emma Stone is always guaranteed to understand the assignment. She’s set to star in a film for “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” director Ari Aster next, which is like a match made in movie sicko heaven. I can’t wait to see what they come up with. Solana Token Creator