This isn't your parents Archie.
The CW's Riverdale is a moody, murder mystery-meets-soap opera based on the old comics.
Let's take a look behind the scenes at some facts that even the biggest Riverdale fans
might not know.
Acting can be a difficult balance for a performer.
They have to use their memories and experiences to inform a character's behavior while also
suppressing their own traits and cutting off their personal impulses.
In her very first on-screen appearance on Riverdale, Madelaine Petsch had to quell her
growing inner panic.
The series begins with Cheryl Blossom and her doomed brother, Jason, in a rowboat on
the Sweetwater River.
As it turns out, that was a hard sequence for Petsch to film.
She told Glamour:
Instead, the crew expected Petsch to get in the rowboat for the scene.
Luckily, Petsch was able to conquer her fear long enough to shoot the scene and everything
went swimmingly.
She even remarked afterwards that it was kind of like therapy.
On Riverdale, Archie is a singer-songwriter in the Ed Sheeran vein, because he's both
redheaded and very emotional.
Actor K.J.
Apa is reportedly up for the musical challenge, considering the young actor really does play
the guitar.
However, Apa doesn't write those original-to-the-show songs he's been shown performing at Riverdale
High events.
Those tunes are composed by staff songwriters.
As it turns out, he doesn't really enjoy his character's songs.
He told The Last Magazine:
As Cheryl Blossom, actress Madelaine Petsch steals most every Riverdale scene in which
she appears.
"Listen up, ragamuffins.
I will not allow Riverdale High's above-average GPA to suffer because of classrooms that are
overcrowded with underachievers."
Clearly, the Riverdale casting team nailed it with Petsch, but in some alternate universe,
the actress actually won the role of Betty Cooper.
Petsch auditioned for a part on the CW's Legends of Tomorrow in 2015, but casting director
David Rapaport had other plans.
Petsch told Glamour:
That role was obviously Cheryl, and Petsch was cast soon after the meeting.
Although she wasn't the only actress to audition for Betty: According to Entertainment Weekly,
13 Reasons Why star Katherine Langford also auditioned, although she didn't get the part.
While Riverdale gets a bit more bonkers with every passing season, the show may never top
the moment in Season 1 when viewers get an intimate look inside Thornhill, the Blossom
family's stately mansion.
Therein sits patriarch Cliff Blossom's wig room, an enclosure full of various red-dyed
toupees atop mannequin heads.
At a 2018 PaleyFest panel, creator and executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa shared that
the whole thing was an elaborate joke.
Actor Barclay Hope, who plays Cliff Blossom, didn't want to dye his hair that signature
Blossom hue, so the production had to rely on wigs.
Then some executives at The CW told Aguirre-Sacasa how fake and bad those toupees looked on Barclay.
The crew decided to film the actor rocking his naturally gray hair, and then write a
scene explaining that he wore wigs.
That gave the crew the perfect opportunity to construct and film a ridiculous room full
of terrible wigs.
"How many wigs does your father have?"
"One for every mood.
Legend has it that Clifford's hair turned white overnight."
Speaking of odd things people on Riverdale wear on their heads, it just wouldn't be an
Archie adaptation without Jughead's crown-meets-beanie hat.
It's technically a "whoopee cap," a style of chapeau popular with the teens back when
Jughead and his pals first appeared in print in the 1940s.
Times changed, fashions adapted, but Jughead kept his hat through 70 years of comics.
"I'm a weirdo.
I don't fit in, and I don't want to fit in.
Have you ever seen me without this stupid hat on?
That's weird."
In what was probably one of the most difficult things about the Archie mythos to modernize,
Riverdale costumers fashioned a chic-looking cap for Cole Sprouse to sport as Jughead,
and that thing is precious.
So precious, in fact, that there's only one copy of it.
Sprouse told Teen Vogue that they only have one beanie for a reason:
"Girl craziness" is a hallmark of Archie stories.
Archie perpetually pursues Betty, Veronica, and almost every other girl in Riverdale on
occasion and so does Reggie.
The only major character who isn't hopelessly burdened by his teenage hormones is Jughead.
In a 2016 issue of Jughead, writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Erica Henderson made the character's
fundamental lack of sexual interest canon by making Jughead Jones officially asexual.
The comic earned praise for offering representation to a community seldom depicted in popular
culture, but Riverdale didn't keep up that mantle.
In the show, Jughead is definitely interested in physical love, specifically with Betty.
Sprouse reportedly pushed hard to keep Jughead true to the comics.
He told Glamour:
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