Rivervale is taking over Tuesdays on the CW for the next few weeks. This temporary name change is due to a five-episode crossover event. Kiernan Shipka will step back into the role of Sabrina Spellman (from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and visit Riverdale. Most people would refresh their memories with a Chilling Adventures of Sabrina rewatch to prepare for this crossover event. However, I used this as a reason to bother Joshua Conkel about his time writing for our favorite Netflix witch.
Joshua Conkel: It’s sweet. I mourned the show ending back in 2020, so I’ve moved, but I’m proud of the show, and I adore Kiernan. So, I’m glad she gets to continue.
JC: I’m biased, but aesthetically I’m more interested in Greendale. So, I guess I’d prefer to see the crossover there, but that’s not the way the cookie crumbled.
JC: Crossovers were really difficult before, basically to the point of being impossible, just because of the different networks and logistics. I remember we wanted to use a syrup bottle from Riverdale and we couldn’t even do that. So I think Sabrina being canceled opened the door for the crossover on Riverdale, unfortunately.
JC: I read them to prepare for my interview, and I was aware that Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa had sort of taken over the Archie-verse. I really loved the comics, so I was excited to get the opportunity.
JC: The source material rarely came up, to be honest. I think Roberto wanted the freedom to do something new and, being the creative director of Archie, felt comfortable working that way. We did have a kind of a bank of ideas and characters from Sabrina comics that we would go to, but it wasn’t used that often.
JC: It did. Also, adapting A Series of Unfortunate Events for Netflix was more of a traditional adaptation, too. Sabrina is technically an adaptation, but not really functionally an adaptation since we were free to pivot from the source material. It didn’t really feel like an adaptation. The comics rarely came up, and the 90s show never came up.
JC: Oh God, Salem. I speak only for myself here: I hate Salem the talking cat so much. It would have been tonally jarring on our show, and the people who wanted it would have hated it if they got it. I was squarely anti-talking Salem, but there was a constant debate about it in the room because of external pressure from fans. We were always on the verge of making him talk, and I just really didn’t want him to.
JC: It’s not set any time. By which, I mean it’s timeless. I love that choice because you get to pull aesthetics that you like from the past but aren’t tied to certain decades. But I know it confuses people, too. I understood this choice intuitively, so it was surprising to me that it was so confounding to people.
JC: It was an interesting experience because there were various types of practicing pagans and witches in the writers’ room and onset. It was both acknowledged and not acknowledged in that our occult knowledge was put to use, but also it’s a horror story, and you can’t be too precious about things. People are sensitive, but witchcraft is different from other spiritual practices because it’s tied up in pop culture in art that Catholicism, for example, isn’t. Witches have always been fact and fiction at the same time, and both sides influence the other.
JC: I loved Apophis in my first episode, An Exorcism in Greendale, because he was made of two dildos and the guts of a Tickle Me Elmo doll. We had a lot of laughs with him on set.
JC: I have a love of writing extremely severe women, so I always loved writing for Zelda and Madam Satan.
JC: She is the absolute best. She curses like a sailor and is so weird. She’ll be like, “can I try this lying on the floor?” and you have to be like, “sure!” She’s very experimental and funny and just really, really kind. Everyone on the crew just loved her.
JC: I would have loved a spinoff of Ambrose and Prudence traveling the world taking our bad witches. We were always trying to get more of Tati generally because we realized very quickly into season one that she was a star.
JC: Probably my first one. I got to work with the director Rachel Talalay who’s a cult and horror movie icon. She produced all the 80s Nightmare on Elm Street films and all of John Waters 80s movies. John Waters officiated her wedding! That was the episode where we put Harvey in a crop top, which is still my crowning achievement. I got to ask Rachel if they knew Nightmare 2 was super gay. Her answer: “No! We just thought it was metal!”
JC: Whenever you work on a tv show, it’s really all about the showrunner. Every single person is there to serve that person’s vision, so it’s really just not about you. That said, you do your best work when you care about the show, and I cared a lot about Sabrina. I was just uniquely suitable for that room as a queer person with a campy sensibility, a deep love of classic horror films, and an expert knowledge of the occult.
JC: I wish we could have had a final run of eight episodes, which we likely would have gotten if it weren’t for COVID-19. I don’t know for sure what would have happened, but it feels like we were gearing up for a battle between heaven and hell, and it would have been nice to finish that way.
JC: I’ve written two horror films that are in various stages of development, and I co-created a Disney+ show that’s in process. It’s a sci-fi show about a group of juvenile delinquents, but they’re all from different alien races, and they become unlikely heroes saving the galaxy.
You can follow Joshua on Twitter at @JoshuaConkel and you also check out his analog photography on Instagram at @joshua_conkel.
The Rivervale event started Tuesday, November 16th and ends after the season’s fifth episode this December.