Mark Consuelos Reunites With Riverdale Creators For The Girls on the Bus

Another The CW alum has joined HBO Max's original series The Girls on the Bus. Earlier this week, reports revealed that Mark Consuelos will be joining The Girls on the Bus in a recurring role. Consuelos is best known for portraying Hiram Lodge on The CW's Archie Comics-inspired series Riverdale, as well as performances on All My Children and Only Murders in the Building. Consuelos will portray a major Hollywood action star-turned-politician who joined the presidential race after a Twitter poll said 46 percent of Americans would vote for him — regardless of party affiliation.

Consuelos joins an ensemble cast that includes Melissa Benoist, Carla Gugino, Natasha Benham, Christina Elmore, Brandon Scott, Griffin Dunne, Leslie Fray, PJ Sosko, Becky Ann Baker, Kyle Vincent Terry, Tala Ashe, and Richard Bekins.

What is The Girls on the Bus about?

The Girls on the Bus is adapted from a chapter in Amy Chozick's best-selling 2018 book Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling. The series centers on Sadie McCarthy (Benoist), a journalist who romanticizes Tim Crouse's Boys on the Bus book and who scrapped her whole life for her own shot at covering a presidential campaign for the paper of record. Sadie hits the trail and eventually bonds with three female competitors, Grace (Gugino), Lola (Behnam), and Kimberlyn (Elmore). Despite their differences, the women become a found family with a front-row seat to the greatest soap opera in town: the battle for the White House.

The series is developed and written by Amy Chozick and Julie Plec, and showrun by Rina Mimoun. It iss executive produced by Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter, who also worked on Riverdale.

Is Riverdale ending?

Earlier this year, it was confirmed that Riverdale will be ending with its upcoming seventh season, which will be jumping back in time to the 1950s.

"At various points in the season, we had talked about what our last season could be, and various people had been very nostalgic about when the kids were in high school," showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa previously said of the 1950s twist. "KJ Apa said to me at some point, 'Man, remember when we were in high school, and I was on the football team?' And Mark Pedowitz at the CW had a conversation with Jon Goldwater and said something like, "Oh remember when the kids were in high school?" We talked about it in the room, and we were sort of like, gosh, could we go back and put everyone back in high school? But we've done that. They were in high school for four-plus years. It would feel like a repeat. So, we were in a conundrum."

He continued, "It felt like all we're going to do for season 7 is sort of a lesser version of the high school years. But in thinking about nostalgia and then coming off of our big supernatural, mythic, Steven King-like season, we knew we needed to make our last season really, really special. One thing everyone can agree on is that whenever we have our characters in their iconic comic book outfits from the 1950s, people are delighted. Cole [Sprouse] was so happy when he didn't have to wear the beanie again, but he said to me, 'But, man, I'll wear that crown till the day I die.' So, we thought: What if we go back to high school, but instead of high school in the present, we make it high school in the 1950s which is how a lot of people think of the Archie characters."

What do you think of Mark Consuelos joining the cast of The Girls on the Bus? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

h/t: Deadline