Why Lili Reinhart Says Returning to Film Riverdale "Feels F--ked"
Lili Reinhart is speaking her mind.
The Riverdale actress opened up about her career, mental health and year of self-reflection in a refreshingly honest interview with Nylon. She also kept it real when discussing her return to the CW set in Vancouver.
Once in Canada to film Riverdale, as the publication pointed out, Lili will have to quarantine for two weeks and stay there until production has wrapped.
"I genuinely feel like a prisoner, going back to work, because I cannot leave Canada," she expressed. "That doesn't feel good. You can't go home for Thanksgiving, can't visit your family. No one can come visit you unless they quarantine for two weeks. It just feels f--ked."
According to Lili, she will need to finish filming the last three episodes of the fourth season and will continue to work throughout the taping of the fifth season, which will start a seven-year time jump.
Since everyone has been stuck at home due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the actress couldn't help but point out how much things have changed since production shut down in March.
"We stopped during the prom episode, so I have to fit back in that prom dress," she explained, adding, "Five months later, we're all going to be tan, maybe a little bit thicker. I certainly am."
For Lili, she viewed this time in quarantine as a sign to slow down and take a much-needed break from work—which feels like the opposite of what she's going to do once in Vancouver.
"When everything's out of control, out of your hands, that's when it feels like it's very much doom and gloom," she described. "It's also like, 'But what a perfect opportunity to take control of what's going on inside.' I feel very grateful because, without this time, I would have just kept trucking along."
As she put it, "This gave me a time to, for the first time in four years, step back and process what has happened in the past couple years, process my emotions and just process my s--t."
As a matter of fact, the 23-year-old actress explained that she's been able to really reflect on things that matter to her most during her time off. Given that's she's "been through some s--t" in the last year, she wanted to prioritize herself.
"I needed to learn self-love, basically. It's a very hard thing to do. How the f--k do you love yourself," she asked, later admitting that she felt "very lost" at the beginning of the pandemic.
"I felt very sad and hopeless, because of personal things that were happening in my life," she revealed. "Instead of distracting myself, f--king random people and doing drugs and drinking my problems away, I chose the harder route, which was to not distract myself."
"I was like, 'I'm not doing that. I'm going to go through the next however many months of s--t, pure s--t, awful, crying every day, but the necessary work,'" she explained, noting that she's witnessed many stars opt for the easy route.
"I've seen too many people, especially in Hollywood, choose self-destruction," she said. "I understand it because no one wants to feel pain. No one wants to feel grief, or heartache, or sadness. 'Do I want to grieve, or do I want to sleep with someone?' Hmm. You can very clearly see why people choose destruction. But your s--t's still waiting for you at the end of it."
That's why the actress has focused on her mental health and has even been doing therapy virtually via WhatsApp.
The way she sees it, "If you think about your brain as an attic, there's a corner with a box. It's dusty. You haven't gone in there for a long time. The box is kind of mysterious. You're not sure what's in there. So, when you open it, you let some shit out that you're not going to want to see or deal with. But in the end, that corner that was dark and gloomy is clean."
Read her full interview on Nylon's website.