Riverdale: Drew Ray Tanner Breaks Down Tonight’s Graduation and the Upcoming Time Jump

Tonight marked the end of an era for The CW‘s Riverdale, with the airing of the hit series’ long-awaited episode “Chapter Seventy-Nine: Graduation”. The installment — which was initially supposed to serve as the Season 4 finale, before the COVID-19 pandemic delayed production on the series for several months in 2020 — undoubtedly has a lot of emotion behind it. Not only does the episode see the high school cast members graduate from Riverdale High, but it wraps up a number of storylines that the series had in the works, before the series jumps seven years forward into the future in future episodes.

As fans saw in tonight’s episode, that turning point — and the time jump that will follow it — impacts basically every character in the world of Riverdale. Among those is Fangs Fogarty (Drew Ray Tanner), the Riverdale High student and Southside Serpent member who has become a fan-favorite since debuting in Season 2. With Tanner being promoted to series regular status in October of last year, Riverdale viewers definitely haven’t seen the last of Fangs, as well as his ship-worthy relationship with Kevin Keller (Casey Cott).

In celebration of the debut of “Graduation”, ComicBook.com got to chat with Tanner about the monumental moment in the show, as well as what fans can expect for Fangs once the time jump gets into full effect. We also spoke about filming this season amid the ongoing pandemic, how Fangs has evolved over the show’s run, and more!

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ComicBook.com: What was your reaction to reading the script for this episode?

Drew Ray Tanner: First of all, the writers did a great job of really hitting the nail on the head of summing up the last four years for the characters, what that means to them, and also what it means to be a teenager. I think they did a great job.

It was fairly gripping, and it was also slightly a departure from what you’re used to. There are a lot of moments in the script where you are forced to reflect on your time. And I think that goes for anyone reading something like that, it doesn’t matter really the demographic, there’s something to really glean from that. That was the way I felt while reading it. It was something that I really couldn’t put down.

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What was it like to film this episode, after so much time had passed due to the production shutdowns? There’s definitely an extra emotional core to the episode, given everything that has happened in the past year.

Definitely. I think that’s interesting to bring that up, because it’s true, right? Nothing says “you’ve changed” like a global pandemic and a year away from your job. That really puts it in perspective. It was interesting though because although we weren’t working and the world was shut down, we all had a great moment in our lives to look at the silver lining. A lot of the cast has been working on the show pretty steadily for the last five years now, almost. We were all sort of given this free pass to have a summer and to feel like kids again.

I think, when we got back to filming, it was like, “Oh right. We have actually grown as adults,” and then you’re dropped right away into the world of Riverdale. And with the COVID restrictions and things like that, it made it very obvious that things are different, and this isn’t like life before. Speaking for myself, I was a little curious as to how we were going to approach [intimacy]. As an actor, being intimate is the number one thing, and so I was worried “How are we going to play this off?” But they did a very good job of making it very seamless, and it comes across in the episodes. I think they’re better than ever, which is great. I think if we had just sort of rolled right into it, it would have been a bit different. Everything happens for a reason, you know?

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What has it been like for you to have Fangs evolve so much since he debuted on the show?

If I had to read the book of his life and all of the chapters leading up until now, there’s been this really quite nice beginning and middle. The way I look at him is that he came in one way looking for something — whether that be the gang, whether that be family, whether that be just being accepted, I think that’s what he was looking for. I really resonated with that, because I felt the same way when I was his age, just wanting to be accepted for who you are and wherever that is. It started with this gang and ended up being this huge family in Riverdale for him. And so that’s been the through-line for me when I approach this character, that acceptance is a huge part of him.

I think he really wanted to find his place. It really started to sort of form around the musical episode, because he’s in this new school and he’s feeling more comfortable, and it’s okay to be in a musical and it’s okay to be gay. You get to sort of see this flower sort of blossom over this time. So now, when we get to the graduation episode, we just start to see the full optimization of that, where he’s surrounded by friends and people that he will be with for a long time. I think that’s quite beautiful, the way that all worked out for him. It could have gone a lot different for a kid like him and it didn’t, it worked out great. It felt very close to me personally because I had a similar experience as a kid.

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Going into the time jump, [Riverdale showrunner] Roberto [Aguirre-Sacasa] teased when you were promoted to series regular that Fangs is going to be roommates with Kevin and Toni. I’m really curious what you can tease about that dynamic because it does seem like the next extension of the found family that you were talking about.

Yeah, definitely. What can I tease about that? If you’ve ever lived with two other roommates, it’s similar to that. If you’ve ever lived with a couple, it’s similar to that. It’s very interesting. The way that they go about their day is cool. There’s a lot of movie nights, there’s a little bit of drama, and nothing’s perfect. if you’ve ever lived with a couple, if you’ve ever lived with two other people, when there is drama within that, it can be hard to sort of navigate that space. Fangs wants something different out of his relationship with Kevin, and so that creates an interesting lift in the house.

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For you, from a creative standpoint, how has the time jump impacted how you play Fangs? Not a lot of actors really get an opportunity to play a character at two completely different stages of their lives.

Especially when it wasn’t something that was relatively known from the beginning — it wouldn’t surprise me if Roberto had had this plan this entire time, but I never knew that. It wasn’t something that I was getting ready to do. You have seven years to sort of fill in the gaps, so as the actor, it was extremely exciting, because there’s so much that you can do creatively within that time to sort of help bridge that.

I think I’d known about the time jump pre-pandemic. So when the pandemic happened, we knew that we would go back to filming and it would sort of pick up on this time jump. So I was given nine months to grow out my hair, and to grow as an individual. I just kind of kept it in the back of my mind each day, as I was going through this life-changing thing. It was such a colossal thing — I don’t think anything has happened that big in my life, since graduation or something like that.

As [an] actor, the best thing you can do is to learn from everything that’s in everyday life. The best characters to learn from are people on the street and everyday interactions. You’re constantly learning. You’re constantly adding things to your tool belt. That’s the job of the actor, to take life and to hopefully imitate it in art. So I was extremely blessed that I had [so much time]. As a TV actor, you don’t get that much time to do something like this, but we really were given nine months to flesh it out and be aware of “Okay, this is where we’re going with this. How do I build this up? And how do I make this character real? And how do I make it sort of a seamless transition?” It was extremely exciting. It was challenging, but I was given more than enough time to prepare.

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What has it been like to see the response from the fandom thus far this season? It feels like the pandemic and the long hiatus has made audiences resonate with it in a different way.

Yeah. I think that’s an extension of… The main plot of everyone’s lives has been that we’re going through this pandemic and that we really desperately want to get back to our way of life. There are so many things that we sort of take for granted. I think the subplot of that is the shows that we watch, the content that we consume, and going to the movies and going on dates and that kind of stuff. Riverdale has always been an escapism type show. It’s always been a type of show that could exist in any era. I think that people really need a show like Riverdale, especially at a time like this. I think that’s why the fan response has been so good because people realized “Wow, this show really did [provide] a lot of escapism, and especially during a time like now, when people need it more than ever.”

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Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.