KJ APA

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A lot can change in forty-eight hours. For KJ Apa, those transformative two days came in late January, when the twenty-year-old New Zealander made his US début in two major projects, as the younger version of Dennis Quaid’s lead character in the studio tearjerker A Dog’s Purpose, and, more notably, playing the all-American redhead Archie Andrews in Riverdale, the CW’s revisionist take on the Archie comics which quickly became one of the buzziest new shows of the season. It’s over six thousand miles from Auckland to Los Angeles, which might help explain the relative paucity of New Zealanders in Hollywood, but that short list—which, to be fair, entails Oscar-winners Russell Crowe and Anna Paquin—now also includes Apa, who, with the second season of Riverdale premiering tonight, seems set to stay.

Born and raised in Auckland, Apa originally had a slightly less exciting life plan for himself. “I wanted to be an accountant for a long time,” he laughs. “I wanted to play rugby and music was also a massive part of my life, but thinking realistically, I thought I’d go to university and study business and be an accountant.”

Things changed when Apa signed to a modeling and acting agency at the age of thirteen with the encouragement of his mother, who was also with the agency. It wasn’t until he was sixteen, however, when he went on his first audition, which landed him a part on the hospital soap opera Shortland Street. He spent the next year-and-a-half working on the series, getting a quick immersion course in the television industry that has stuck with him to this day. “I pretty much learned everything that I know on that show,” he explains. “I had no idea about the industry, I had no idea how things worked on set, I had no idea how to act, so it was a massive learning curve for me. It forced me to grow up pretty fast.”

It was while filming Shortland Street that Apa booked A Dog’s Purpose during a whirlwind week of auditions in Los Angeles. “Working on that film was probably one of the best experiences I’ve had in my life,” he says. “I realized after shooting that movie that I wanted to make movies for the rest of my life.”

A few months after wrapping, Apa found himself back in Los Angeles again for pilot season. He says it was a stroke of luck that helped him land the role of Archie in Riverdale, the last core character to be cast and one that took a few tries. “I went in the first time to David Rapaport, the casting director, and he didn’t even really give me a second look,” Apa recalls. “Then I went in two weeks later and I read and he looked at me and was like, ‘What the…have you come in before?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I came in two weeks ago,’ and he was like, ‘Ok, just stay right there.’ Then before I knew it, I was reading in front of the show runner, the producer, the writers, and then it happened pretty fast from there. In the next few days I was cast as Archie.”

For Apa, the only non-American among his castmates Lili Reinhart (Betty), Camila Mendes (Veronica), and Cole Sprouse (Jughead), there was a lot of catch-up to do. “I had never heard of the comics before,” he explains, “so I familiarized myself with the Archie universe, but I didn’t dive in too much because I wanted to keep it authentic to the scripts.”

Riverdale has been praised for its darkly contemporary update of the old-fashioned, vanilla world of the Archie comics—the first season opens with a dead body and ends with Archie’s father shot—a change that Apa says reflects a more mature and authentic mentality. “It’s a lot more riveting and lot more interesting and weird,” he says of the series. “We’re dealing with real-life issues, not like those silly storylines that are in the comics. They’re funny, but we’re dealing with things that are actually relatable.”

The show has a tense, film noir style that many have likened to Twin Peaks, and its distortion of the veneer of small-town American wholesomeness speaks to the country’s current cultural divide. Throughout the first season, Jughead deals with homelessness and an alcoholic father, Betty tries to rescue her sister whose baby is about to be put up for adoption by their parents, and Veronica’s father is in prison for embezzlement. That all of this takes place while they are in high school should be no surprise on a series spearheaded by Greg Berlanti (Dawson’s Creek) and Robero Aguirre-Sacasa (Glee), and the show sits comfortably in a long tradition of American television stretching back through innumerable teen dramas. For Apa, who never experienced high school in the United States, getting acquainted with even the little things took time. “High school culture in America is a lot different than it is in New Zealand—a lot different,” he says. “I didn’t do any preparation or research, I just asked my castmates and they filled me in on everything. Even the words freshman and sophomore, those are so different. I tell people our schools in New Zealand are most similar to Hogwarts. You’re assigned to a house, which has a color”—Averill and brown, for the record—”and you’re set in that house pretty much your whole time at high school and it’s very competitive.”

For a longtime guitarist who ended his audition with a rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on electric guitar, the show also offers Apa the opportunity to continue with another of his passions, although he jokes that portraying Archie’s budding musicianship—a major plot line through the first season involving an affair with his music teacher and his evolving collaboration writing and performing gentle acoustic tunes with Josie and the Pussycats—requires taking a few steps back. “I don’t know how to say it, but we’re not at the same level, you know what I mean?” he laughs. “Somehow I have to say that in not a cocky way, but he’s a beginner. Also, the songs that he writes, I don’t think I would listen to them. I do not have the same taste in music as him.” He lists Van Halen and Third Eye Blind among his favorite bands before continuing, “I listen to a bit of everything, but mostly classic rock and punk rock. I’m into harder stuff than Archie is.”

Since its premiere, Riverdale has become a cultural phenomenon with a rabid fanbase, something Apa says he never expected. “I didn’t think it would blow up as big as it has in the amount of time that it has. It all happened pretty fast,” he admits. “I was more hesitant than anything. I thought it was definitely risky to bring these characters from a comic book to life. It was either going to go really well or it could be a complete flop and it would all depend on how we did it.”

More proof of the show’s success can be seen in the rampant speculation leading up to the new season, especially surrounding the infamous love triangle. Archie is happily coupled up with Veronica at the moment, but it does not take much expertise in high school dramas (or high school, for that matter) to know that relationships can shift course quickly and often. But Apa insists that Riverdale will delve in deeper than the comics ever did. “It’s a fundamental part of the Archie universe and I don’t think that’s ever going to be lost on our show,” he explains. “I think we’ll definitely revisit it a few times. I think it’s more interesting how we portray that love triangle than how the comics do because we get the details of everything. We know why one person isn’t with another person because of what happened in this episode. There’s a lot of history behind it and it’s going to become more interesting in the following seasons because the longer we go, the more history there is and the more important that love triangle is going to become.”

As for Archie himself, Apa promises that the second season will take him in an even more intense direction as he searches for his father’s attacker. “The end of that last episode is a massive moment for Archie,” Apa explains. “Fred being shot is like his Bruce Wayne-Peter Parker moment when he wants to find revenge, whether his dad lives or dies. He’s in beast mode and it flips that switch in his brain and he becomes obsessed with it. I loved playing it and it’s cool to see that side of the character, which we never really got to see in the first season. I’m really enjoying taking Archie down the darker road. It’s so interesting when you get to see a character going through a hard time and going through a dark patch and then coming out of it a better person.”

Riverdale returns tonight on the CW.