The cast of Riverdale has pushed the boundaries on screen for years — but the actors continue to be surprised at how invested fans are in their real lives.
“I get a lot of stuff sent to my house or my loved ones’ houses,” Cole Sprouse, who plays Jughead Jones on the CW series, told Vulture in an interview published on Tuesday, August 15. “Death threats, really nasty, honestly criminal stuff.”
Sprouse, 31, explained that the intensity of some viewers might be pegged to the cast’s off screen love stories. “I do think it’s because at least four of us at this table have dated our coworkers,” he said.
“Is that just a consequence of an incredible love? Or is that what fanaticism looks like?” Sprouse added. “Perhaps because those lines were blurred to our audience, it’s hard to break those things up when life moves on.”
Sprouse’s character romanced Lili Reinhart’s Betty Cooper on screen from season 1 to season 5. Off camera, Sprouse and Reinhart, 26, began dating in 2017.
The pair were together on and off for three years before calling it quits for good in 2020, but continued to work together until the series finale of Riverdale, which filmed in June. Fans will see the conclusion of the teen drama later this month.
In addition to Sprouse and Reinhart’s relationship, costars Camila Mendes (Veronica Lodge) and Charles Melton (Reggie Mantle) dated from 2018 to 2019. (Their characters got together during season 3 and later rekindled their romance during season 7.)
While Casey Cott, who plays Kevin Keller, is married to Nichola Basara, he revealed that over the years fans have crossed the line with him as well.
“There’s sometimes a failure to differentiate the characters from the humans. You can go down an extreme hole if you’re looking at that,” Cott, 31, told the outlet. “Someone got my mom’s phone number and started leaving voicemails saying that they were going to come get her.”
Distancing characters from their human counterpart isn’t just tough for viewers. Both Reinhart and Sprouse struggled to move forward after their breakup.
Reinhart described the split in August 2020 as a “black tunnel” that she thought “was never going to end.” She told Refinery29 at the time, “I couldn’t see the light. I was like, ‘I feel like I’m dying.’ It was f—king rough, and there’s no other way through it than just through it.”
In March, Sprouse shared a similar feeling of heartbreak while explaining how difficult it was to see Reinhart daily on set while processing their split.
“It was hard to suspend all the way we felt about each other and it didn’t afford us the luxury of distance to really overcome that,” Sprouse said during an episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “I know we both did quite a bit of damage to each other.”
Reinhart and Sprouse have since learned to work side by side and are in new relationships. Reinhart was spotted in April kissing TikTok star Jack Martin, whom she went Instagram official with three months later. While Reinhart and Sprouse seem to get along, Martin did previously poke fun at Sprouse in a series of TikTok videos.
Sprouse, meanwhile, was first linked to girlfriend Ari Fournier in February 2021.
