It makes sense that Lili Reinhart’s Riverdale COVID-19 schedule has the actress feeling a little worried. The 23-year-old star opened up to Nylon about the CW series’ plans to start production again, which involve her feeling a little bit like a “prisoner” while quarantined for work.
When Riverdale Season 4 was cut short due to the coronavirus pandemic, the entire cast and crew had to stop filming rather abruptly. Reinhart revealed to the outlet that the show was still in the middle of filming the “prom episode” in March. Months later, the actress jokes that she will “have to fit back in the prom dress,” but “we’re all going to be tan, maybe a little bit thicker. I certainly am.” Yet these aren’t the only changes that Reinhart is thinking about as she heads back to wrap up season 4.
“I genuinely feel like a prisoner, going back to work, because I cannot leave Canada. That doesn’t feel good,” Reinhart tells Nylon. “You can’t go home for Thanksgiving, can’t visit your family. No one can come visit you unless they quarantine for two weeks. It just feels f*ked.”
From quarantine, Reinhart and her Riverdale castmates will continue filming episodes for Riverdale Season 5 after completing the last three episodes of Season 4. The next season will pick up after a seven-year time jump. The Chemical Hearts star admits she feels “very lucky” to still have her role on the show, yet it will be difficult not to have a break from the series to pursue other projects. “It’s like, ‘I need to keep going. I need to keep going,’” she explains.
But Reinhart has other things she’s focusing on to keep herself grounded. The Swimming Lessons star has also been vocal recently about her dedication to preserving her mental health amid the pandemic. Things weren’t so easy at the beginning. “I felt very sad and hopeless, because of personal things that were happening in my life. Instead of distracting myself, f**king random people and doing drugs and drinking my problems away, I chose the harder route, which was to not distract myself,” Reinhart says. “I was like, ‘I’m not doing that. I’m going to go through the next however many months of shit, pure shit, awful, crying every day, but the necessary work.’”
The Hustlers actress revealed these struggles in an interview with Refinery29 earlier this month. ““It was f—ing rough, and there’s no other way through it than just through it,” she told the outlet. “I’ve seen a lot of people when it comes to heartache and grief and breakups, and they try to get that void filled with sex, with coke, with food, with drinking, [but] the void is still there. I took the road less traveled and just dealt with my shit. I had to face my own pain head-on.” While some interpreted her comments as being about her breakup with Cole Sprouse, her Riverdale co-star, the actress later clarified on Twitter that she was speaking directly about her experience with depression.