In 2017, the CW debuted Riverdale, a stylish, modern take on the classic comic book characters
Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead.
This isn't your parents' or your grandparents' Archie, though.
In Riverdale, Archie isn't just deciding between Betty and Veronica — he's having an affair
with his teacher, and the gang tries to find out who offed one of their classmates.
About the only thing that's stayed the same is that Jughead is still the coolest dude
around, but even he's gotten a makeover.
So how did it all happen?
Here's a spoiler-filled look at the untold truth of Riverdale.
Rejected pitches
At its core, Riverdale is about life and loss in a small town, more Twin Peaks than Saved
by the Bell.
But it took awhile for Riverdale creator and Archie Comics chief creative officer Roberto
Aguirre-Sacasa to get there.
Aguirre-Sacasa is also the writer of the hit comic Afterlife with Archie, and the show
was initially envisioned as an adaptation of that series, which reimagines the gang
contending with the zombie apocalypse.
That wasn't the only development roadblock, however.
Aguirre-Sacasa revealed that, at one point, a TV executive suggested they do a high concept
series involving time travel with comedian Louis C.K playing an adult Archie alongside
his teenage counterpart.
"That's appropriate."
[Laughter]
And even when Aguirre-Sacasa finally hit on the winning Riverdale formula, he originally
pitched it as a movie rather than a TV series, resulting in rejections across Hollywood.
He told Collider, "Big studios make big movies, and what we were pitching was a small character
movie about first love and first kisses."
Casting trouble
Finding the right stars to play characters as iconic as Archie, Jughead, Betty, and Veronica,
turned out to be a pretty tall task.
One of the biggest gets for the production team was landing The Suite Life with Zack
and Cody star Cole Sprouse to play Jughead, since Sprouse had actually been retired from
acting while he earned a degree in geographic information systems from NYU.
Sprouse was already out of school and working in archaeology before he agreed to read — for
the role of Archie.
He ended up asking to play Jughead instead, as the character spoke to him on a deep level.
He told People, "He just wants to be loved really bad, like honest real care and tenderness.
I think that part of Jughead exists within all of us and it's nice to channel that."
With Sprouse out of the running for the lead role of Archie, though, the producers had
a massive challenge.
In fact, Archie was the last role cast, six months after the rest of the cast was lined
up, with star KJ Apa auditioning only three days before a scheduled test run for studio
executives.
The arduous process did produce one positive side effect, however, as the producers discovered
Casey Cott, who they gave the breakout role of Kevin Keller.
But the show's casting woes didn't stop when filming began.
While Ross Butler was great as Reggie, he didn't get much screen time because he was
busy with other projects.
As a result, the role has been recast, with Glee actor Charles Melton set to take over
as Reggie for season 2.
Riverdale is not the first Archie TV series
Since the late '60s, the Archie gang has appeared in no less than eight cartoon series, including
The Archie Show, Archie's Funhouse, and Archie's Weird Mysteries.
There was even a live-action attempt.
In 1990, NBC ran a movie-of-the-week called Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again.
The film, intended as a pilot for a weekly Archie TV series, depicted Archie and his
friends as adults with adult problems.
The series wasn't picked up, but it's survived online, in large part thanks to this amazing
video of adult Jughead showing his son how to be, uh, "cool" by doing a rap version of
the Archies hit "Sugar, Sugar."
"Sugar, aw honey honey, you are my candy girl, and you got me uh uh uh uh uh…"
KJ Apa broke his hand while filming
One of the most dramatic moments in the first season of Riverdale saw the heroic Archie
punching through a frozen river to save Cheryl Blossom.
Unfortunately, actor KJ Apa got a little too into character and actually broke his hand
filming the scene.
He told TV Line, "it was cold, so I didn't really feel it.
It wasn't until about 20 minutes after that I realized I broke my hand.
I didn't tell anyone."
Cole Sprouse is a Jughead 'purist'
Jughead may seem a little different on the show than in the comics — you know, instead
of being an unattached hamburger enthusiast, he's totally into Betty.
But Aguirre-Sacasa told MTV News that Sprouse is actually a Jughead "purist."
When the Southside Serpents appear with a dog, Aguirre-Sacasa thought the gang should
have "a junkyard dog," but Sprouse reportedly said, "you're not reinventing Hot Dog," referring
to Jughead's dog from the comics.
And so, the production tracked down a sheepdog near its Vancouver shooting locations who
"could deliver all of the nuance that Hot Dog required."
"That was probably the single greatest creative issue that Roberto and I ever butt heads about."
Sprouse is reportedly such a Jughead advocate and defender that he's even been in talks
to write some Riverdale offshoot comic books.
It's a ginger world
Apa plays redheaded, all-American Archie on Riverdale.
But the actor is actually neither of those things.
Apa is from New Zealand and pulls off a convincing American accent.
His hair, however, requires some cosmetic creativity.
The actor has naturally dark brown locks, so he has to dye his hair red every two weeks
for the show, a process that takes two and a half hours and a fair amount of caustic
hair bleach.
He told People, "I'm probably going to be bald by the end of the series."
Surprise ending
Riverdale capped its first season with a shocking cliffhanger ending that saw Archie's dad Fred,
played by Luke Perry, get shot by an unknown gunman.
It was quite a twist, and producers wanted to make sure it remained a secret, so most
of the Riverdale team didn't know about the final scene until after the fact.
Sprouse told E!News, "They kept it so top secret, even from the cast and crew, that
we were given the final form [of the script] the day of shooting.
The people who were not in that scene didn't even get to read it."
Ratings are terrible
According to Nielsen statistics, Riverdale ranked no.
154 in total viewers among network TV shows for the 2016-2017 season, tying Jane the Virgin
for last place in the coveted 18 to 49 demographic.
Those are the kind of numbers that would get most shows canceled, but not this one.
That's because Riverdale enjoys a huge amount of buzz, with many fans watching it through
non-traditional channels such as online, or on Netflix.
CW president Mark Pedowitz said the network ultimately doesn't care about the Nielsen
ratings, because "as long as people are watching it and if they can find it, we're happy."
We'll drink a milkshake to that!
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