KJ Apa reveals Cole Sprouse punched him for unexpected reason

Cole Sprouse once gave his Riverdale costar KJ Apa a much-needed wake-up call using his fists.

While appearing on Cole’s twin brother Dylan Sprouse’s Wildmen podcast on Tuesday, July 21, the New Zealand actor recalled a time when Cole punched him in the face, acknowledging that he deserved it.

The conversation began with Dylan, 33, noting that his brother “likes to get into fistcuffs.”

KJ, 29, immediately agreed, having once been on the receiving end of it. “Oh, I’ve been around– he punched me in the face!” he reminded Dylan.

“I remember, you ran like an Ostrich, dude. I was there!” Dylan exclaimed, as KJ admitted that he cried.

He then revealed the surprisingly sweet reason behind the punch. “He hit me because we were in a strip club, and at this time, I was doing a lot of drugs. And a lot of my close friends were worried about me. And he had learnt that I was doing drugs again. It was a love punch,” he explained.

“It was kind of a ‘wake-up punch,’” Dylan added before mocking his brother for the way he throws a punch. “I mean, he should have definitely used his shoulder.”

Dylan then shared his point-of-view of the incident. “I looked at my brother after that and I was like, ‘Dude, you could have just died.’ I made the mistake of trying to chase after you,” he told KJ. “I was like, ‘Oh I’m gonna get him.’ You were three blocks away by the time I was, like, just getting my bearings!’”

KJ has been open about his past drug use, revealing on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy that fatherhood “forced [him] to get sober.”

“A lot of things that I realised I had to button up, I buttoned up. Yes, and I realised that there’s no other way for me to do it,” he said.

KJ welcomed his son Sasha Vai Keneti Apa in 2021 with his then-girlfriend Clara Berry.