‘Sabrina,’ ‘Riverdale’ put a wicked spin on Archie
Faced with the Gargoyle King and the devil, Archie Andrews and friends are a long way from milkshakes and sock hops.
CW’s fan-favorite “Riverdale” (Wednesdays, 8 ET/PT) is in its third season putting a crime-noir spin on the high school lives of longtime goodytwo-shoes Archie Comics characters Archie (KJ Apa), Jughead (Cole Sprouse), Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Veronica (Camila Mendes). And a weirder, darker corner of that world – namely, Greendale – comes alive in Netflix’s “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” (streaming Friday) starring Kiernan Shipka (“Mad Men”) as teen witch Sabrina Spellman.
“Horror and teenagers go hand in hand, and a lot of horror is set around a coming of age,” says Roberto AguirreSacasa, the creator of both shows who points out “Sabrina” mines similar territory as “Carrie” and “The Exorcist.” “We’ve seen this before, so it felt strangely natural and organic.”
Influenced by “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Suspiria” and Nathaniel Hawthorne short stories, “Sabrina” introduces its half-human, half-witch character on the eve of her 16th birthday, when she’s required to sign her soul to the dark lord (aka Satan) and become a true witch. But she’s not ready to leave her mortal pals behind, including boyfriend Harvey (Ross Lynch), and tries to navigate her way through both the normal and magical worlds.
“Her fearlessness and her passion to defend her friends and fight for what’s right, that was something that was really inspiring to me,” says 18-year-old Shipka. “I was just really in awe of her because she was so young, but still so sure of herself. That’s reflective of a lot of teenagers these days.”
Horror elements abound, although there’s a definite “Harry Potter” vibe to the Academy of Unseen Arts, headed by Sabrina’s main foe, Father Blackwood (Richard Coyle). “We kind of feel like we’re at Hogwarts a lot of the time,” Shipka says.
The situation’s spooky in Greendale, but downright kooky in Riverdale. The first season of the genre mashup was a straight-up murder mystery; the second was both a serial-killer thriller and Mafia drama; and 2018 brings a storyline inspired by HBO’s “True Detective,” which “sort of brushed up against the supernatural but never went there, Aguirre-Sacasa says.
“The thesis of the show has always been that Riverdale is this quaint, wholesome, all-American town that has an undercurrent of darkness on the fringes and it’s sort of been bubbling through. In this season we sort of say, ‘OK, the forces of darkness won.’”
Teen lovebird sleuths Betty and Jughead are investigating students’ involvement with the role-playing game “Griffins and Gargoyles,” and the arcane cult known as The Farm, a group that counts Betty’s sister and mom as members and is headed up by the charismatic but shadowy Edgar Evernever. (And might these two mysteries somehow be tied to each other?)
“Riverdale is a very crazy town where these otherworldly, intense, extreme circumstances happen daily,” Reinhart says, and the characters are “aware that the things that happen on the show are crazy, that they’re out of the norm. It’s not supposed to be an entirely realistic show. That’s what makes it so fun.”
Reinhart is a fan of scenes in which Betty goes through the horror-movie wringer, and an upcoming episode is “quite intense,” the actress says. “It’s a lot more vulnerable and scared side of Betty that you haven’t necessarily seen yet. It was kind of physically exhausting and emotionally exhausting, but that’s what makes it fun to me.”
For Shipka, being creeped out amid warmth is fine. Yet shooting Sabrina’s dark baptism scene in a Vancouver forest, in the freezing cold and clad in a not-very-practical dress, “you’re thinking, ‘ Why do I do this job?’ ” she says, laughing.
That “super crazy” sequence took an entire night to film, Shipka adds. “Some (angles) from so far away that we couldn’t even see the camera. That was pretty terrifying when you have someone anointing your face with blood. Some of those moments are truly a bit chilling, no pun intended.”
For Shipka, it’s worth the onscreen terror just knowing young girls will look up to Sabrina.
“As someone who was very recently 16 years old, I find that I’m really happy that teenagers are being portrayed on television as individuals, as smart,” she says.
“They deserve to see representations of themselves that are accurate, that are inspirational. All these characters are being portrayed with which such depth and they’re multidimensional and they’re feminist and they’re forward thinking and all of that is really wonderful. It’s going to be entertaining above all else, which is awesome, but the deeper messages are also there, which makes it double the fun.”