Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa reveals to EW which story had Lili Reinhart and Cole Sprouse calling him.
I never thought, ‘We’re going to make a hit show.’
There was a lot of anxiety about that.
KJ Apa, Camila Mendes, Cole Sprouse, and Lili Reinhart on ‘Riverdale’.Katie Yu/The CW
There’s an epic-ness to that that opened up the show."
“And then on a totally different note, ourmusical episodes.
You either love them or you hate them, and I love them!
Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart on ‘Riverdale’.Dean Buscher/The CW
And the cast loves making them.”
On which characters surprised him
“There’s no predicting what will or won’t connect.
They were both against them getting together so quickly.
Lili Reinhart on ‘Riverdale’.Diyah Pera/The CW
They said, ‘The audience isn’t going to like this, they want Archie and Betty.’
I was like, ‘I hear you.
I think we should see.’
We had a sense in the writers' room that Jughead and Betty might be a good pairing.
The writers were shipping them very early on.”
“I think we’ve done really well with adding subsequent characters that people have embraced.
I’m not surprised Cheryl popped as much as she did.
Madelaine came in and was incredible.
When we introduced Toni [Vanessa Morgan], she was immediately embraced.
That was a big moment for us, to get an actor like Skeet.
I even remember when we were going to introduce the Southside Serpents, no one wanted the Southside Serpents.
The executives would say, ‘But this isn’t a show about gangs.’
And I remember thinking, ‘Well, it’s sort of likeWest Side StoryandThe Outsiders.’
But when someone like Skeet came on board, it was like, ‘Wow, this is great.’
They really legitimized the show.”
What’s this show?'
We even had to test the episode with an audience because people were so unsure of it.
That was one very big debate we had around the show early on."
“We talked about, early on, how much of high school life do we want to depict.
At the time, high school shows had fallen out of favor a little bit.
The response was like, ‘We’re not really telling a story about Archie being grounded are we?’
We were like, ‘Yeah, that’s what happens to teens.’
There was stuff like that.
There were a lot of discussions but nothing that divided the room or anything like that.
In season 1, everything’s under a microscope.
That’s part of the journey.”
Riverdale’s 100th episode airs Tuesday, Dec. 14 at 9 p.m.
ET on The CW.
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