It’s hard to imagine anyone else other than Lili Reinhart, KJ Apa, Cole Sprouse and Camila Mendes playing Betty Cooper, Archie Andrews, Jughead Jones and Veronica Lodge, right? Well guys, the casting directer of Riverdale just spilled all the tea on how they chose the stars of the CW series, and it turns out, one of them almost didn’t get the part!

David Rapaport opened up to Entertainment Weekly about the long and hard casting process, where he revealed that it was KJ who almost missed his big break.

“I passed on him the first time he came in,” David explained. “He didn’t seem prepared.”

OMG. But luckily, when they couldn’t find the perfect guy for Archie, they decided to give the actor another chance.

“He came back in and his read blew me away,” the casting director continued. “Sometimes people have bad days and you miss something.”

Archie and Jughead
The CW

Wow, we are so relieved KJ got that second chance! As for Cole, David admitted that the second he saw him, he knew he was right for the role.

“Initially I was bringing in all these lanky, charactery-type guys for Jughead, and Cole brought such a dark, brooding, intense essence to the character,” he said.

Lili, on the other hand, already had a relationship with the casting director. She had auditioned for another CW series, Arrow, so he had her in mind even before she auditioned.

“I’ve been reading her since she was 14 years old,” David continued. “This was a reinvention of the comics, so we knew it was going to be a bit of a darker tone, and from what I’d known from Lili, she was a person with a lot going on underneath. [Lili and Cole] defined, for me, what the tone of the show might be, which was teen noir.”

We are so glad all four of them were chosen for the show.

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