‘Riverdale’ Showrunner Previews The CW’s ‘Twin Peaks’ Take on the ‘Archie’ Comics
For 75 years now, Archie Andrews has been the quintessential American teenager — a comic book version of a Norman Rockwell painting. But the new TV show Riverdale — the first ongoing live action network series to feature Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead — puts a different spin on this everyteen. “It’s Archie by way of David Lynch,” showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa explains to Yahoo TV. “We took these classic characters and put them in a darker story with a big murder mystery.”
Related: Ken Tucker Reviews ‘Riverdale’
The victim in said mystery is Jason Blossom, one-half of the popular Blossom twins, and his violent, still unsolved end has major ramifications for everyone in this once-idyllic small town. That includes new arrival Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes), who becomes fast friends — and maybe something more — with Archie (K.J. Apa), to the consternation of his longtime pals Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Jughead (Cole Sprouse). Aguirre-Sacasa spoke with us about mixing the ingredients of a murder mystery into the Archie-verse, and why Riverdale isn’t for kids.
One of the big questions you probably have to ask yourself when making a new Archie show is how much you play to the fans versus those who have never picked up an Archie comic before.
We’ve done test screenings of Riverdale, and I think three quarters of the audience always knew Archie, Betty, and Veronica and that there’s a love triangle. They maybe know about Moose or Reggie, but “Are you a Betty or a Veronica?” or “Do you like a Betty or do you like a Veronica?” are questions they can answer. And, at a certain point, these characters [are recognizable] because they are archetypes: the girl next door, the ice queen, and the sardonic best friend. We’ve come to those types through other coming of age stories, like John Hughes, but Archie provided the original archetypes. This show both celebrates those archetypes and deconstructs them: like, what does the girl next door look like in 2017?
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Did you have other takes on Riverdale besides the noir angle or was that always the conceit of the show?
When I started working with Greg [Berlanti] on it, it was much more of a straightforward coming of age show — kind of like The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Greg is the king of comic book television, but he’s also the king of coming of age shows, having cut his teeth on Dawson’s Creek and Everwood. While we were working on developing it, Greg said, “I kind of wish there was a genre element to this.” As we talked about it, we realized that a lot of coming of age stories are a loss of innocence story.
Two of our biggest influences are the films Stand By Me and River’s Edge, both of which have a dead body in them. And Twin Peaks was about the death of the homecoming queen. So we realized there was a way to tell a coming of age story with a mystery element. I did always say that we have to be true to the core of the character. The essence of Archie Andrews is that he’s basically a good kid who is learning a lot about the world and often messes up. We wanted to stay true to the character, while putting him in a more complex story and seeing the resulting tension between the characters and the situation.
By going in a darker direction, you do close Riverdale off to Archie’s audience of young readers. Was that a concern on your part?
We definitely knew we were going for a more adult version. Archie has young readers for sure, but a lot of the fans are people who grew up with the characters. And on the publishing side of things, I write Afterlife with Archie [which takes place in a post-zombie apocalypse version of Riverdale] and people have really responded to those kinds of darker takes on the characters. I do wonder about young kids watching this; we’re a 9 p.m. show, so that may send the message that it’s not a lighthearted comedic romp.
Speaking to the Dawson’s Creek connection, Archie and Miss Grundy — who is much younger in this incarnation — share a relationship in Riverdale that’s not unlike Pacey and Miss Jacobs.
That was an early idea as well. What’s interesting is that the forbidden tryst between a student and a teacher is a convention in many coming of age shows. What sold me on the idea was that, because of their tryst, Archie and Miss Grundy would have a connection to the central mystery that would make it very hard for them to come forward with what they knew about the crime. Also, in the comics he’s such an earnest character, and this was a way to show that there was more going on with him here than, “I want to start a band.”
Josie and the Pussycats already attend high school with the gang. Are there plans to bring other Archie-affiliated characters like Sabrina or Katy Keene to Riverdale?
There are thousands of characters in the Archie library, and we’ll keep expanding the world. The Pussycats play a huge part in the season, and have big stories in upcoming episodes. We also get to know Reggie and Moose a little bit more, as well as Chuck Clayton, the coach’s son. And then there’s Big Ethel, who is played by Shannon Purser from Stranger Things, which is really fun.
Will the mystery of Jason Blossom’s murder be solved by the end of the season? And, if so, what’s the next mystery going to be?
Jason Blossom is going to take us to the end of Season 1 and then we’ll solve it. In subsequent seasons, there will hopefully be one big story that carries us through, but each episode will have its own self-contained story, which will be coming of age stories, secrets of a small town stories, family stories, or music stories. The throughline is noir, because I’m a huge fan of noir and Jughead, who is our narrator on the show, is such a great noir character. That said, this year we’ll also have a Gothic episode that’s really creepy centered around Jason’s funeral. We have an episode that’s heavy on music, so it almost becomes a Moulin Rouge tribute. And we have one episode about fathers and sons that’s like an Arthur Miller play. These characters are such strong archetypes, they can support different takes on them.
Riverdale premieres Jan. 26 at 9 p.m. on The CW.
