Today Lili Reinhart is one of the most recognizable and appreciated actresses of her generation, and much of her reputation stems from Riverdale, the TV series adapted from Archie Comics that ran for seven seasons from 2017 to 2023. Chosen to portray Betty Cooper, Reinhart stood by the teen drama’s side for years, but to this day she has admitted that she has very few memories of that experience. Why so?
Lili Reinhart and the Riverdale era: “I remember nothing”
In recent years, Reinhart has continued to build her career. After Riverdale, she appeared in films such as Chemical Hearts, Parallel Lines, Forbidden Fruits, and more recently The Love Hypothesis, streaming on Prime Video. Yet a large part of her fame is linked to the character of Betty Cooper; however, the actress says that many memories from that period fade with time.
Appearing on the In Your Dreams podcast, the actress admitted: “I remember nothing, because it was a rather traumatic experience.” Reflecting on that period of her life, she drew a parallel with Lola Tung, who led a beloved teen drama (The Summer I Turned Pretty) and with whom she acted in Forbidden Fruits: “Something happens that develops very quickly if you participate in a TV series of that kind. It becomes part of pop culture and many things happen simultaneously. It’s really strange. I’m very grateful that TikTok didn’t exist when all this happened to me.”
Although she acknowledges being on TikTok and using it daily, she stressed that if Riverdale had also tapped into the platform’s popularity it would have exploded: “I think that if Riverdale had achieved even greater success, it would have been too much for all of us. That’s why I feel a lot of empathy and compassion for young twenty-somethings who act in shows that are now booming on TikTok, because the phenomenon has been amplified like never before. Nobody deserves so many people commenting on their own existence. It’s really too much.”
For example, in her case, she admitted that one thing she would like to try is “not being called Betty all the time,” even though she knows that it’s usually “done out of affection.” She explained: “It’s simply the nickname by which most people know me, but I have a whole career ahead to keep doing things and this doesn’t limit me in any way.” She does not deny everything: she said she feels “privileged” to have done something that “has had such a strong impact on people or on pop culture to remain etched in memory for the rest of her career.”
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