Screengrab via YouTube

Jughead will not be asexual on the CW’s upcoming Riverdale, a gritty reboot of Archie Comics. Cole Sprouse, who portrays the legendary Archie character, said he fought for the character to be asexual as he is in the Jughead comic series, but to no avail. Chip Zdarsky, the author of Jughead, spoke to the character’s sexuality at New York Comic Con in 2015:

My view of Jughead is, over the 75 years [of his existence] there have been sporadic moments where he has dabbled in the ladies, but historically he has been portrayed as asexual. They just didn’t have a label for it, so they just called him a woman-hater. But he’s not a misogynist — he just watches his cohorts lose their minds with hormones. People have asked me if there is going to be a romance if I’m writing Jughead, because I’m very romantic, and the answer is no, because there is enough of that in Archie. I think something like asexuality is underrepresented, and since we have a character who was asexual before people had the word for it, I’m continuing to write him that way.


Sprouse told Hollywood Life, “I come from an educational environment that really praises, as do I, the forms of representation that are otherwise lacking in our public media. But at the end of the day, I still had to do my job.” The actor confirmed, “Jughead will have romances with women . . . and burgers.”

So Jughead will try to fuck—it’s a CW show after all. I understand that sex sells, but using Riverhead to explore asexuality is a far more interesting choice to me. Oh well.


[Bleeding Cool via Hollywood Life]