Tonight’s episode of Riverdale titled “The Lost Weekend” was a big one for Cole Sprouse‘s Jughead Jones, and it’s only the beginning.
Sprouse was one of several actors as well as Executive Producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa who spoke with the press earlier this week following a screening of the April 13 episode. First, of course, he talked about what Jughead might not be comfortable with having such a big deal made about his birthday.
“I think [it’s] just because the attention is all on him,” Cole explained. “There are probably some deeper underlying psychologies behind it, but I think he’s one of those characters that is a little bit vain, and considers himself, honestly, to be a little better than the people he surrounds himself with. When he’s thrust into this supernormal, kind of conformist idea of an American party, that complicates a lot of that. I also think he’s an introvert, so he’s nervous around large groups of people. I think the attention being all on him is something he would legitimately have a distaste for,” he continued.
“The Lost Weekend” also afforded the opportunity to show that Jughead and Betty, arguably the show’s most popular couple, really do have some differences. “When Roberto, Lili and I were talking about the purity of Bughead, we had said ‘well, it is a bit unrealistic, there has to be this tension between just how fundamentally dissimilar the two are as well’,” Sprouse recalled. “That was actually what we ended up playing a little bit with in 9 and then 10. The fight scene in the garage is really sort of like, ‘hHey, I’m telling you you’re kind of being all about yourself right now, let me explain to you how I am.’ But I think it’s one of those things where the argument led to a much more open form of communication and inherently strengthened the bond between the two characters, and I think we’ll end up seeing what happens with that,” the actor promised.
Tonight’s episode concluded with the arrival of Molly Ringwald as Archie’s mother Mary, who joins some familiar faces like Skeet Ulrich, Luke Perry, Marisol Nichols, Robin Givens, and Madchen Amick among the Riverdale parental crowd.
“I think the casting and the setting and the feel of the show rides a fine line between the old and the new,” Sprouse said of these familiar faces. “One of the primary themes is nostalgia and, being that it’s an Archie Comics property, nostalgia seems to be the thing that people enjoy a bit of. So, I mean, for the actors and the settings and the feelings and the cars and the atmospheric fog, I think that if people find nostalgia in interesting ways and see nostalgia filtered through every scene, every location, I think it’s something beautiful and can really play to something nice.”
Riverdale airs Thursdays at 9PM on The CW. Browse KSiteTV for more content related to the show and be sure to listen to Archie Digest: A Riverdale Podcast!
