KJ Apa Says Those Shirtless ‘Riverdale’ Scenes Messed With His Head

The teen soap Riverdale, which began as a live-action adaptation of Archie Comics and rapidly morphed into a genre-hopping, timeline-tangling experiment in narrative television, is coming to an end. Despite cribbing from wholesome source material, Riverdale was replete with sex, violence, a self-referential sense of humor—and a whole lot of shirtless scenes from series lead KJ Apa.

In a recent in-depth interview with Vulture, the cast reflected on their seven years together, and Apa revealed that getting the role of Archie at the age of 19 inadvertently led to him struggling with body image due to filming numerous shirtless scenes—although at first he was excited to show off his lean, ripped physique.

"I've been through a lot of shit with that," he said. "It can mess with your head a little bit. At first, as a young child, which is what I was, I thought it was cool — you almost want the opportunity to be shirtless. I was like, 'Yeah, let me take my shirt off. Boom!'"

The "Archie is hot now" angle was a key component in defining the tone of Riverdale compared to the comics, and as the show upped its steamy storylines and winking homoeroticism, the actor found himself shedding his shirt more and more, necessitating him to stay ripped year-round with a "brutal" workout routine.

"And then you gotta consistently stay in incredible shape," he says. "It takes a toll. Even saying that I didn’t feel comfortable I had a hard time with. I thought people would be like, 'Why not? Just fucking do it, bro.'"

Apa's co-star Camila Mendes, who played Veronica, added that series creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa was "always very understanding" of the cast's personal boundaries, and none of the performers ever felt forced or pressured to do those scenes. "It's just the nature of being on a teen show," she said.

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