KJ Apa Almost Didn't Get the Role of Archie on 'Riverdale'

KJ Apa Almost Didn't Get the Role of Archie on 'Riverdale'

Did you know that KJ Apa almost didn’t land the role of Archie Andrews on Riverdale?

The Hate U Give actor apparently didn’t seem like the right fit the first time around.

“I passed on him the first time he came in,” casting director David Rapaport said in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. “He didn’t seem prepared.”

When they still couldn’t find the right actor to play Archie, though, KJ got another chance.

“He came back in, and his read blew me away,” David shared. “Sometimes people have bad days and you miss something.”

Lili Reinhart (Betty Cooper) had previously read for Arrow. She and Cole Sprouse (Jughead Jones) read at the same time.

“I’ve been reading [Lili] since she was 14 years old,” David said. “This was a reinvention of the comics, so we knew it was going to be a bit of a darker tone, and from what I’d known from Lili, she was a person with a lot going on underneath.”

David added, “Initially I was bringing in all these lanky, charactery-type guys for Jughead, and Cole brought such a dark, brooding, intense essence to the character. [Cole and Lili] defined, for me, what the tone of the show might be, which was teen noir.”

Like KJ, Camila Mendes (Veronica Lodge) was also brand-new to David. He cast her out of college.

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Credit: Rich Fury; Photos: Getty
Posted to: Cole Sprouse, KJ Apa, Lili Reinhart, Riverdale