A NEW YORK FAIRY TALE
City is well scrubbed and affordable in ‘Katy Keene’
The New York shown in the upcoming “Katy Keene” series doesn’t look like the real thing — and it’s not meant to. It’s clean, affordable and glamorous.
“Katy Keene,” a musical comedy-drama spinoff of The CW’s wild “Riverdale” series, based on the Archie comics, has barely anything to do with its predecessor.
“We want the show to look like the nostalgic New York that we have in our heads,” Lucy Hale, who plays Katy in The CW show premiering Thursday at 8 p.m., told the Daily News. “It’s a heightened, fairytale version.”
One of the few connections is Josie McCoy (of Josie and the Pussycats fame), played by Ashleigh Murray, who appeared in almost 40 episodes of “Riverdale” and now finds herself in the Big Apple, searching for her big musical break.
Other than that, it’s all new. In a small apartment — but still way bigger than it should be based on Manhattan real estate prices — Katy, Josie and Jorge (Jonny Beauchamp), a drag queen who goes by Ginger on stage, are figuring out their lives. For Katy, it’s deciding whether she wants a promotion at work, which would cut her off from her dream of designing clothes. For Josie, it’s trying to make it in the big city with her big voice. For Jorge, it’s balancing Broadway dreams with an industry that doesn’t seem to want him.
“He’s a little too short, a little too femme, a little too gay. So he turns them into one giant glamorous positive and calls her Ginger,” Beauchamp, 30, told The News. “It takes me back to Shakespeare. The masquerade and the mask that we put on can really free us.”
Beauchamp, who grew up in the Bronx collecting the mini comic strips that come with pieces of Bazooka bubble gum, called the new show an origin story.
“Jorge’s a baby drag queen and Ginger is just being born,” he said.
“Katy Keene,” with its fashion and friendships, sounds like “Sex and the City,” but looks more like “The Carrie Diaries,” the short-lived prequel series that starred AnnaSophia Robb as 1980s-era Carrie Bradshaw. No one is fully formed yet. They’re still just trying to figure it out.
“For me, being able to play this character at her age, at this point in her career, is very similar to myself moving to New York at 19 to go to college,” Murray, 32, said. “All of the jobs I had to take, all of the love that I found and lost, all of the friends that I made. I’m letting [Josie] take it as it comes, just like I had to.”
Hale, 30, best known for her long-running role on “Pretty Little Liars,” said she relishes playing a female lead with “ups and downs.”
“(Katy) really doesn’t have it all figured out,” she said. “She’s faking it until she makes it. She’s a little insecure, but she’s going to figure it out. You see her and she seems really put together, but it’s been nice to humanize her, see her flaws.”
And there’s a boy in Katy’s life, K.O. (Zane Holtz), a sweet, harmless boxer who dreams of training in Philadelphia and then settling down with a wife and kids.
“K.O.’s definitely the kind of guy who has a five-year plan,” Holtz joked of his character. “He has a set way that he sees his life and he’s determined to make it happen.”