By Monique
If there are a couple of characters I’m super intrigued about (aside from my fav Jughead), it’s Reggie, Josie and her band The Pussycats. I feel there’s a lot of potential with these characters; the only question is if that potential will be mined to its fullest extent.
You might be asking, in the words of 1970s-era Violet Beauregarde, “What’s so fab about it?” What’s so great about Reggie and the Pussycats? A lot of stuff is great about them! Let’s look at the characters separately.
Reggie
Reggie, played by Ross Butler, is one of the game-changing characters on the show, or, potentially game-changing characters on the show if Reggie ever gets fleshed out.
What makes him so game-changing is that he’s been cast as an actor with Asian heritage. In one of the few times in television, there’s been an active instance of going against the Asian male stereotype.
Butler talked a lot about his groundbreaking role in Riverdale and several other roles on his resume that have defied stereotypes in an interview with Refinery 29. Some key points of the interview:
There’s a lack of Asian representation on TV, which is slowly changing. As an Asian-American actor, have you faced any particular challenges?
“This is something that has been a core [part] of me as an actor, ever since I [became one]. We’re a very underrepresented population in Hollywood, but we are the majority population of the world. It’s a weird dichotomy that we have here. It’s starting to get better and we are starting to see more Asians in roles, but we’re not seeing a lot of Asians playing roles [that are] not specifically written for Asians. So when I first started out, I was being sent on auditions for “the geek,” “the techie.” Let’s be honest guys, I don’t look like a techie [laughs].
“I told my agents, ‘Don’t send me out for [roles written for Asian actors].’ For a while, I didn’t get any auditions, or I’d get very few… But then I started to pick up momentum and started booking roles that weren’t [necessarily written for] Asian actors. For K.C. Undercover, my role wasn’t written for an Asian actor, and I was the only Asian in the audition room. That’s a trend I see today, when I go out for non-Asian roles: I’ll be one of the only Asian people in the room, if not the only one.”
Now you play a football player!
“When I was a kid, there wasn’t an Asian-American Ryan Gosling, or an Asian-American Robert Downey Jr. that you would look up to… Now, [on Riverdale] I play kind of a jerky football player, and on Thirteen Reasons Why I play a nice basketball player who does a bad thing, and on Teen Wolf I played a lacrosse player. Asians can be athletic, we don’t have to fit into this image that [the media] has for [us]. Booking these roles that aren’t necessarily [for Asian actors] is something I’m proud of and, hopefully, will keep doing.”Can you tease a little bit about your character in Netflix’s Thirteen Reasons Why?
“I play Zach Dempsey, who is a basketball player, one of the jocks… He’s a guy’s guy, he fits in with all the guys, he’s one of the bros. What I’ll say about him is that he isn’t what you expect him to be. He is a jock, but he has a depth to him that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with a jock that hangs out in the popular group. He isn’t as smart as the other kids, but he has a sensitive side to him. How that ties in… you guys will have to see.”
In short, Reggie is very much needed on TV. However, when will Reggie be fleshed out from just being what he is now, which is a cardboard cutout of a jock? Coming back to this later.
Josie and The Pussycats
Again, Josie and the Pussycats represent a conscious effort to diversify the world of Riverdale. In the show, Josie and the Pussycats are a group made up of three black girls instead of the original version, which only features Valerie as the only person of color in the group.
The decision to make Josie and the Pussycats all black wasn’t just to give the cast more diversity for diversity’s sake; racial privilege (or lack thereof) is addressed in the third episode of Riverdale, when Josie schools Archie on how her and her Pussycats have to “claw their way” to the top of the charts while Archie could waltz into any recording studio and get catered to (being forced to work twice as hard and “claw” their own path to the top is why they’ve called themselves “Pussycats,” after all).
Actress Ashleigh Murray has complete faith in the show’s creative team when it comes to Josie’s storyline as she told ComicBook.com:
“I’m a huge admirer of them,” Murray said of the current creative team on the comics. “I read their interviews about the launch of the comic and it really put me at ease. Everything that they believe and see Josie to be is exactly what I’ve been saying about her myself. It gives me peace of mind that how I view her and how I believe her to be and the role model that I think she is and can continue to be for a lot of young people is represented right on the money.”
And she sees a lot of herself in Josie, as she told Yahoo.com:
I have a lot of similarities to Josie, which is why I enjoy playing her. She’s who I wish I was in high school. I was perseverant and headstrong, but I didn’t think I was quite as brave as Josie is. I have this image of her in my mind, and it’s adjectives about who she is rather than who she sounds like. It’s about who she wants to be and how she wants people to see her.
Also, even though she told Yahoo.com that a “duet” is in the future for Archie and Josie, she’s not keen on Josie becoming romantically interested in Archie. Instead, she’s got another person in mind.
[On if she’d want the writers to hook Josie and Archie up] Oh my god, no! [Laughs] I would be so shocked. People ask me if it’s going to be Archie and Josie together, and I go, “Ewww.” But just watch, by the fifth episode of Season 2, Archie’s going to be flirting with Josie, she’s going to be about it, and I’m going to be like, “What the hell is going on?”
Could she be talking about Reggie? Murray’s tweet seems to suggest that she’d like for her character and Butler’s character to hook up.
I don’t condone violence, but like — manhandle me, #Reggie ??????????????????????????????????too much?????
nah. ?? #Riverdale
— Ashleigh Murray (@iamamurray) February 3, 2017
If so, that would be killer. It’d be yet another great moment for diversity; we rarely see black women/Asian men pairings on television, and if Josie and Reggie get together, then it’ll be something fantastic to see.
Worries
Now for my worries. All of which can be condensed to one sentence:
Will Reggie and Josie and her girls be fleshed out???
Look, I know we’re just in the beginning stages of this season, but I’d like to know if these characters are going to become actual characters instead of background. For instance, will Josie and the Pussycats become less of a Greek Chorus-type situation and become more integrated characters? In the Yahoo interview above, Murray revealed that Josie won’t be involved in the mystery surrounding Jason, but she’s still got to be involved in some of the other storylines, right? And by “involved,” I mean in a much more well-rounded way than just in relation to her music. And as I said in my Chuck Clayton article, there are more black girls in Riverdale, right?
Also, I’m well aware that Butler s currently filming another show, Netflix’s Thirteen Reasons Why, so he probably didn’t have a lot of time to be on set, much less become fully integrated as a character until filming Thirteen Reasons Why is over. However, if he was promised to have a bigger role towards the end of Season 1 and/or Season 2 (if we get a second season, that is), then will he finally become part of the mystery? I’m just anxious to see more of Reggie since Reggie actually is part of the main cast.
What do you think about Reggie and Josie and the Pussycats? Give your opinions in the comments section below!
Julian 