But like any father, Mark finds ways to keep his costars in their place. He and KJ regularly roast each other on social media, and he happily tells me about a table read in which New Zealander KJ was tasked with saying the word pozole in a scene where Veronica's family has Archie over for dinner. (It might very well be the first time our local redhead has tried the traditional dish; Pop's traffics in burgers, not corn stews.) "The first time he said it, he goes, 'Po-zoll,'" Mark says. "I start laughing. He's like, 'What?' And I go, 'Just, just... Marisol, teach him how to say it,'" he says, giving a hat tip to Marisol Nichols, who plays Hermione. Don't worry, KJ: Mark, who was born and raised in Italy, doesn't speak Spanish, either. Camila, he notes, "corrects me all the time."

The Lodges' reinvention as a Latinx power family isn't lost on Mark, whose soap opera background lent itself well to the family's telenovela vibes. Yet for all their scheming and mafia ways, the family still feels familiar in an uncanny sort of way: the constant (if controversial) use of mija, the abuela who won't let a language barrier keep her from interrogating the boyfriend, the Confirmation! Hollywood has rarely been kind to its Latinx storylines, often resorting to tired tropes and white-washed casting. Seeing a Latinx family in power, even in a world as fantastical as Riverdale, is, in many ways, new — even if the general idea of the Latinx gangster isn't. (Hiram is still "the criminal of all criminals," Mark concedes.)

"I'm half Mexican, half Italian. So, I was always in this neverland of... I wasn't really 'Mexican enough'; I wasn't really 'Italian enough.' It wasn't till I got a little bit older that it really dug in," Mark explains when I ask if he ever felt represented by pop culture as a teenager. But he is hopeful for the way Hollywood is finally righting its wrongs, and for how it's reflecting his own children's worldview. "I love the trend that's been moving in a positive way," he says, though he emphasizes, "I think that people would argue that it could probably move a little faster. And there could be a little more representation."

He's grateful to the next generation to keep him up to speed, too; his kids — Michael, Lola, and Joaquin — introduced him to the concept of "Latinx." "When I heard that, I went, 'What is Latinx?' 'Dude. Get with it. You have to understand,'" he remembers them saying. "Lola Consuelos is savage."

The Consuelos family is also a Riverdale family. Mark notes the show is something "my kids can get into, or it's in their wheelhouse." Joaquin, he says, is "a little behind on it, so when Lola and I are talking about it, he's like, 'Spoiler! I haven't seen it!'" But spoilers are a hazard of the job, especially with a show filled with as many twists and turns as this one is. The actor even laid a plotline out in the open in October 2017; I call him out on the fact that Jimmy Kimmel asked him point-blank, "Does Hiram kill Jughead?" At the time, Mark's reaction was laughter. "Probably nervous laughter, I know nothing," he deadpans now.

But he says that the plot twists are "part of the fun of the show. From episode to episode, [the cast] will say, 'What do you think? Do you think?' Or we'll hear mumblings that something that's gonna happen, and then it gets changed last second. I think there's a lot of intrigue on set."

The plot is only set to thicken after the season 2 finale, which comes after a roller-coaster mystery of not one but two Black Hoods. Yet while Mark wants it known that he "called the whole FBI thing" about Agent Adams supposedly recruiting Archie for the bureau, he's not giving up secrets about season 3 so easily — that is, if he even knows what they are yet.

"I do have theories," he says. But he adds, laughing, "I would say 99 percent of them are wrong."

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