Cole Sprouse Addresses Lili Reinhart Split for the First Time, Wishes Her 'Love and Happiness'
Matt Winkelmeyer/MG18/Getty Cole Sprouse and Lili Reinhart
Cole Sprouse issued a rare public statement about his relationship with ex Lili Reinhart.
Alongside a photo of her on Instagram Wednesday, he addressed his split from his Riverdale costar earlier this year.
"Lili and I initially separated in January of this year, deciding to more permanently split in March," he wrote. "What an incredible experience I had, I'll always feel lucky and cherish that I had the chance to fall in love."
"I wish her nothing but the utmost love and happiness moving forward," he continued. "All I'll say about it, anything else you hear doesn't matter."
"Also her movie comes out soon!" he added, referring to the upcoming Amazon Prime Video movie Chemical Hearts. "I'm sure she's just as incredible in it as everything else she does. Thanks guys."
A post shared by Cole Sprouse (@colesprouse) on Aug 19, 2020 at 12:01pm PDT
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Sprouse, 28, and Reinhart, 23, play love interests Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones on the CW's soapy twist on the Archie comics. PEOPLE confirmed in May that the stars, who were first linked in 2017, were broken up.
Sprouse's Instagram post comes one day after Reinhart opened up about her experience with depression in an interview with Refinery29, reflecting on how the coronavirus pandemic "has been the first time in four years where I've been able to like, stop and process the immense life changes that I've gone through."
"The last couple of months have probably [been] the most emotional few months of my entire life and my therapist [told] me, 'Your body's going through withdrawal from love,' " she said. "You're used to having this exchange of happy chemicals between you and the person that you're with. In moments of my life, I have dropped every ounce of pride that I had just to be like, 'Love me. Please take the pain away for a day, a second, an hour,' just so I can feel that fix again."
The actress, who came out as bisexual in June, clarified on Twitter that her remarks were not referencing her split from Sprouse.
"Quotes taken from my most recent interview are not about a 'breakup,' " she wrote. "They are about the depression I've felt over these last few months. Tired of people taking my words out of context and piecing together their own story for clickbait."
"I would never speak so candidly about something as personal as a breakup," she added. "That's incredibly private. I was addressing my depression."
I would never speak so candidly about something as personal as a breakup. That’s incredibly private. I was addressing my depression.
— Lili Reinhart (@lilireinhart) August 18, 2020
Over the years, Reinhart and Sprouse remained notoriously private about their relationship.
"It's not like I'm trying to dangle my relationship in front of people's faces like, 'You don't know anything about us,' " Reinhart told Teen Vogue in October 2018. "It's just, you don't need to know. People feel like they're owed that, and you're absolutely not owed anything by me."
The couple previously split last summer. An insider told PEOPLE at the time that "their personalities are very different and their lifestyles often clashed," adding that the two were "trying to be as amicable and friendly as possible."
Days later, however, they appeared together on a joint cover of W magazine, each posting the image on Instagram alongside captions that seemed to insist they were still together.