The Untold Truth Of KJ Apa

April 2024 ยท 2 minute read

If it wasn't for this minor detail, KJ Apa might not have been hired on Riverdale. Apa "auditioned for Riverdale twice before landing the gig," according to GQ. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Riverdale creator and showrunner, recalled that Apa was "jetlagged" during their first meeting since he had just flown in from his native country of New Zealand. Unfortunately, the first audition didn't go well, so they brought him in a second time. 

"And then he played his guitar," Aguirre-Sacasa told the outlet about their next rendezvous. "And it was like, 'That's him, that's Archie.'" 

Apa sang Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and knocked the audition out of the park. "There were a couple Southern people in the theater so I brang my guitar," he recalled to Vulture. "I felt really confident after I played that song, because music comes really naturally to me and it's always something I've been really passionate about."

But before Aguirre-Sacasa could hire Apa, they had to die his hair red to make sure he represented Archie Andrews in the best way possible. "We were all literally waiting for pictures to be texted to us from the salon, and now it's hard for me to even think of KJ as anything other than a redhead," the creator said. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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