Get a few new details regarding the upcoming ‘Riverdale’ episode where the characters will tackle ‘Carrie: The Musical’…
‘Riverdale’ will soon tackle a production of ‘Carrie: The Musical’ with the new episode debuting on Wednesday night, April 18.
The entire cast and crew got on board for the production with Madelaine Petsch (Cheryl) playing the lead role as Carrie for the production with the rest of the ‘Riverdale’ kids participating in the musical — well sort of.
It turns out that Cole Sprouse, who plays Jughead, had no real interest in singing in the episode and thus he won’t be churning out any tunes alongside the rest of the cast members during the musical.
“Cole and I talked about it a while ago, and I said, ‘How do you feel about musicals?’ At that time, we were going to do Little Shop of Horrors. And he basically said, ‘Listen, I never sang for Disney. It would take a lot.’” executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told TVLine recently.
“When we really thought about the character of Jughead, he felt like the one character who probably wouldn’t be in the school musical. When you see the episode, he’s very much an integral part of it, and he’s doing something quintessentially Jughead during the musical. Except he doesn’t sing.”
By the sound of it, Sprouse had a similar objecting to singing as Alyson Hannigan did when “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” famously did their musical episode “Once More with Feeling” back in 2001.
Obviously, Sprouse will still be a major part of the episode but just won’t be belting out any songs alongside Archie, Betty or Veronica.
As far as the choice of shows, Aguirre-Sacasa explained why he chose ‘Carrie: The Musical’ considering the original production bombed on Broadway and was considered a commercial blunder at the time it debuted.
“I’m a huge fanatic of Carrie, the novel and then the movie,” Aguirre-Sacasa said. “I was obsessed with the Broadway flop of Carrie: The Musical. Five or six years ago, one of my good friends revived it off-Broadway, and he revealed it to be the gem that I always knew it was. So we thought, ‘This would thematically be a great musical for Riverdale to do. That show also has archetypes like the good girl next door, the nice boy who takes Carrie to the prom. It felt like we could play with these archetypes.”
Another benefit of doing a musical episode was to keep an entire hour focused on high school problems versus the larger stories that typically take place throughout a season such as the Black Hood killer or a crime family buying up property all over town that have dominated the majority of the plots for season two.
“On some level, Riverdale is a crime and a mystery and a pulp show, but there is an element of coming-of-age and of high school, obviously. And doing the school musical is such a rite of passage that we wanted to do that,” Aguirre-Sacasa added.
‘Riverdale’s musical episode will air on the CW on Wednesday, April 18 with the show returning from a brief hiatus with new episodes picking up on Wednesday, March 7 on the CW.
