Riverdale star Casey Cott is headed to Broadway. The actor, who plays Kevin Keller on The CW series, will be taking over the role of Christian in Moulin Rouge! The Musical on Broadway starting on August 1st according to Entertainment Weekly. Cott will join Courtney Reed who was recently announced to be taking on the role of Satine in the production. The news comes as Riverdale stages its final musical episode, “Archie: The Musical” with the fan favorite series in its seventh and final season.
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“Playing Christian is more than a dream come true,” Cott told the outlet. “Growing up as a theater kid, you just dream that one day you have the privilege of being on Broadway. It’s astounding. The talent within the cast is crazy. I can’t wait to learn from them all and share the stage each night. The character itself is filled with such an array of dynamics/twists/turns which, again, is all thanks to the superb creative team!”
Moulin Rough! The Musical is based on Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film of the same name and follows Satine, the sparking diamond of Paris’ Moulin Rouge nightclub and her doomed love affair with poet and hopeless romantic Christian. The musical features remixes of classic pop songs to tell their tragic love story on a backdrop of 19th century Paris. The production is directed by Alex Timbers and premiered on Broadway in 2019 where it has since won 10 Tony Awards, including one for Aaron Tveit, who previously played the role of Christian. Tveit also recently starred in Apple TV+’s Schmigadoon!
“I haven’t had the opportunity to talk with Aaron but would absolutely love too. I am, along with everyone, a huge Aaron fan. From Next to Normal to Les Misérables to Catch Me If You Can to Moulin Rouge — I just think he’s such a talent with a résumé that speaks for itself,” Cott said. “I know they shot Schmigadoon in Vancouver, where we shot Riverdale, and I was always hoping we’d bump into each other, but we’ll hope it happens in NYC! I hear he enjoys golf as do I so maybe I can pick his brain over a quick round.”
Will There be a Season 8 of Riverdale?
While Riverdale has been a fan favorite series on The CW since its debut, Season 7 of the series will be its last. It was announced last year that the series would end after Season 7 and thus far, it’s been a wild ride. The season has seen its core characters stuck in an alternative timeline in the 1950s, a setting that series showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa previously told ComicBook.com was a perfect place to go because of how closely tied that era is to the Archie comics characters.
“It is true, though the Archie started publishing much earlier than the 1950s, the decade that most people associate with Archie comics is the 1950s for whatever reason. The Archie comics, they’re so nostalgic, and I think when people think of time periods, they think of the 1950. Through the lens of nostalgia. So that was one big thing,” Aguirre-Sacasa said. “Absolutely. And even when we’ve done their iconic comic book costumes from the past, even though they were technically the 1940s, whenever anyone would write about it, they’d say, ‘Oh my God, they’re wearing their 1950s outfits.’ So, it was sort of like, ‘Okay, well, that is … ‘And even when we were pitching Riverdale, and this is true, when we were pitching Riverdale to try to do a TV show, the executives would say, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. Is this a show set in the ’50s?’ And it’s like, ‘No, no, no, it’s set in present day.’ So, there was that.”
He continued, “The other big thing that felt really resonant is the 1950s were when the modern idea of the teenager was born. Teenagers really didn’t … Teenagers as we know them, and as consumers of popular culture, as consumers of movies and television and comic books and things like that, that really … The birth of the American of the modern American teenager was the 1950s as well. So, it felt like, “Oh, well that’s Archie.” I mean, that is Archie. So, it felt like this is the time period, this is actually the time period. So those were also things that kind of resonated with us and why we landed on this time period. Also later … and the world is roiling later in the ’60s with counterculture, with the civil rights movement, with the sort of a gay liberation movement and things like that. And it felt like in terms of our thematic, which is the wholesome sweet innocent facade, and then the darker, more dangerous, more fraught themes and issues bubbling underneath, it felt like the ’50s sort of suited that to a T.”
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on The CW. “Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Two: Miss Teen Riverdale” airs July 19th.
