Lili Reinhart goes beyond ‘Riverdale’
This morning, Lili Reinhart woke up and read a headline about herself. It said that she’d broken up with her boyfriend, “Riverdale” costar Cole Sprouse, and was so heartbroken that she felt like she was dying.
Then she got mad. She and Sprouse had, in fact, split in March; the actor would confirm as much on Instagram a few days later. But she had yet to utter a word about the separation to the press.
So, sleep still in her eyes, she logged on to Twitter and said that her words had been used for “clickbait” — that she’d “never speak so candidly” about a private relationship. Even if she used to pose with Sprouse on magazine covers and walk the red carpet with him at the Met Gala.
But it can be difficult to draw those boundaries when you’ve established yourself as one of the most open young Hollywood stars. At 23, Reinhart speaks freely about her bisexuality, body image and mental health. She has weighed in when her colleagues have been accused of sexual harassment and racism. And she’s unveiling two intensely personal new projects: “Chemical Hearts,” a film for which she channeled her own battle with depression, and “Swimming Lessons,” her debut book of poetry.
With nearly 25 million Instagram followers — a product of her role as Betty Cooper on the CW’s “Riverdale” — she finds herself weighing her natural inclination towards transparency against the judgment of the public.
“This pandemic has been incredibly hard, and it’s hard to stay positive,” she admits. “I want to post sad songs on my Instagram just like everyone else does. But I hold myself back, because I know I have millions of people watching me who want to dig through every little thing I post and try to figure out the meaning behind it.”
Amid the pandemic, Reinhart moved into her first house. Since “Riverdale” shut down production in Vancouver in March, Reinhart has mostly spent her time alone here. She’s tried to look at quarantine as an opportunity — writing in her journal, learning how to meditate, meeting weekly with a therapist, reading self-help books.
“Obviously, I’m dealing with a lot of depression. So how do I find a light at the end of the tunnel?” she says. “I really wanted to go out of my way to find the root of it. Now, when I feel something come up, I let it come out. Because otherwise, it’s literally harming my body and my brain. Allow your body to feel what it feels. That is literally how you heal.”
Almost as soon as “Riverdale” thrust her into the spotlight in 2017, Reinhart revealed that she’d had depression since she was 13. Since then, it’s become something she feels fans identify her by — a responsibility she has mixed feelings about.
Which is partly why “Chemical Hearts” appealed to her so much. In the film — which is now streaming on Amazon, and on which she also serves as executive producer — she plays Grace, a high schooler grappling with the grief of surviving a car accident that killed her boyfriend. When she starts falling for a new boy (Austin Abrams), her sadness begins to overtake the fledgling relationship.
“I used a lot of my own inner turmoil,” Reinhart says of the role. “I don’t really describe myself as bubbly or joyful. I’m making myself out to be, like, the Grinch over here. But I’ve lived with depression for a long time now, so playing a girl who is clearly feeling somber and going through heartache and grief wasn’t so foreign to me. It wasn’t that hard for me to access.”
When she began work on the film in 2019, Reinhart had just wrapped a supporting turn in the female-empowerment stripper drama “Hustlers.” Though she’d had small parts in a few independent films before, “Hustlers” marked the first time people really saw Reinhart act outside of the soapy teen TV series. Opposite the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu and Keke Palmer, she was memorable as a wide-eyed dancer who vomits any time she’s anxious. It was a comedic part, and director Lorene Scafaria says she liked Reinhart for it because, like the actress, the character “is seen as a pretty face, and if you’re not looking closely enough, you don’t see she’s really deep and soulful.”
Reinhart would love to model a career after Tilda Swinton, a “chameleon” who she admires for always showing a different side of herself on screen.
“I would like people to start seeing me as a film actress,” Reinhart acknowledges. “I want people to see me and know, ‘Hey, I’m in this for the long haul.’ This is a career for me. I’m not just gonna be on ‘Riverdale’ for five years and then disappear.”
For now, she is still on “Riverdale.” She flew back recently to Canada, where the cast will stay until Christmas due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.