Lili Reinhart’s got bite

Lili Reinhart and I are connected by gloomy weather and a Zoom call. “It’s gonna rain for four days here, which is not common,” the actor shares all the way across the Atlantic, from Los Angeles. “But I like it when it rains in LA. It’s very cosy.” Donning an oversized beige hoodie and hair in a thrown-together updo, she looks perfectly snug as she sits on her couch, the yellow light on her walls framing the room’s comfortable atmosphere. Conversation with Reinhart flows easily, her tone at once gentle and animated. From the very beginning, the softness she emanates doesn’t strike me as something to be confused with passiveness. She’s a burning scented candle — familiar and serene, but with a smouldering intensity.

“I’ve been told I’m scary a few times,” Reinhart says. “And I think it’s not just a resting bitch face — I have sharp Scorpio energy.” She laughs, before making sure to clarify that she is, in fact, a Virgo. Her rising sign, however — the astrological placement responsible for how others perceive you — is in Scorpio. “I’ve been told my energy can be very blunt,” she explains. “And I think that’s what makes me feel a bit cutting. Sometimes my honesty takes people by surprise and they’re like, ‘Oh, she’s got a little bite in her!’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah. That’s how I came to be where I am today’.” What the Forbidden Fruits star doesn’t mention, however, is that Scorpio risings are also said to seldom go through life unnoticed. And, whether those who encounter her believe in astrology or not, it’s undeniable that Reinhart leaves a lasting impression.

Indeed, the 29-year-old stole the public’s attention for the seven years she spent portraying the iconic girl-next-door, Betty Cooper, in Riverdale. Though Reinhart was worried she’d spend the rest of her career being typecast as the sweet, soft blonde girl, she is thankful that life took her down a different path after the show concluded in 2023. “I mean, one of the first things I did while I was shooting Riverdale was Hustlers, and that was me playing a stripper,” she says. “I’m happy that I’ve not been put into a box.”

Apple is admittedly unlike any character Reinhart has ever taken on. While some actors feel intimidated by change, with a variety of genres under her belt (and a romantic period piece in her dream-role wishlist), Reinhart seems to thrive in it. She admits that roles can feel daunting when they feel different from previous ones, but that was never the case when it came to Apple. “She never scared me,” Reinhart reiterates. Although, there was one single matter of concern. “I just didn’t want to play a very stereotypical bitch.” It’s true that in a world with Rachel McAdams’ Regina George (Mean Girls), Megan Fox’s Jennifer Check (Jennifer’s Body) and Kim Walker, Shannen Doherty and Lisanne Falk’s unholy trinity of Heathers (Heathers), the pool of iconic mean girl roles runs several feet deep with incredible performances — and yet, Reinhart’s Apple is unlike any of them.

Reinhart acknowledges that, despite their obvious faults, there’s something about narcissists that makes others crave their approval. Ultimately, that’s how she wanted audiences to feel about Apple, too. “There’s nothing that feels more magical than when a narcissist is happy, because every other time you’re walking on eggshells around them,” she explains. “If you were around [Apple], you’d be like, ‘God, she’s a bitch, but I want her to love me’.” But Apple, Reinhart tells me, isn’t happy very often, which meant there were moments it was a struggle to play her — some harder than others. “There’s always one — if you’re lucky, it’s only one — scene that haunts you during a whole shoot,” Reinhart says. “For me, it was the fountain scene.”

The fountain scene could also be referred to as ‘Apple’s monologue scene’. “Every villain has one,” Reinhart remarks. This one in particular, as one of the last scenes to be shot, hung over her for the entire production run. Filmed over the course of two nights (filming for Forbidden Fruits regularly took place between 10pm and 8am), the scene was so daunting it had Reinhart doing regulating exercises in her trailer. She’d cross her arms and tap her hands back and forth across her chest. Though the actor could almost prepare herself for the emotional intensity of the scene, shivering in a cold fountain in the middle of the night, less so. “Unless you can cry on command — which I can’t — you have to rely on your body to get to that place,” Reinhart explains. “It has to be emotional. It has to be real. You have to be hyperventilating. You have to be having a panic attack. You have to let your body do that, and allowing space for that is hard.”

Luckily for Reinhart, she always had a supportive team around her in moments like these. “Everyone was very quiet, attentive, and they gave me my time,” she recalls. “When I needed two minutes to get back into it, I had those minutes. And I had a director who I deeply trusted and loved.” After a
few takes, the actor says Meredith Alloway came over to her with tears in her eyes, and Reinhart just gave her a thumbs up in return, knowing they just got the take they needed. “To have that space and trust to do the intimidating scene,” the actor says, “that’s just the best case scenario.”

While Forbidden Fruits gets intense, it is also full of humour. A rare moment of joy shared amongst the friend group happens during the winter solstice, where the coven is seen dancing together in Paradise. “People better put this scene in those women-dancing edits on TikTok,” Reinhart jokes. “It’s just women having fun, losing themselves in the moment, which is exactly what the whole point of Paradise is to Apple — a release of femininity between all of them.” That desire for sorority is one aspect of Apple that Reinhart can relate to. Having never been a part of large friend groups growing up, that type of sisterhood is something that she’s found herself craving as an adult. “There’s nothing that feels better than when you are around a group of women who accept you and you’re having fun together,” she says. “It’s really the essence of girlhood.”

It’s with these groups of friends that Reinhart hopes people will watch Forbidden Fruits. “You feel more permission to laugh when there’s other people around you,” she says, hoping viewers won’t take Apple and her fellow fruits too seriously. “I just hope that they really love these girls — each individual girl — for their own very different reasons.” Reinhart sure did. While on set, the actor found the sense of sisterhood expected of a group of people who spend 10 hours a day together for a period of five weeks. Add to that the ungodly shooting hours, and you’ve got a foolproof recipe. “You really are hunkering down with people around you, and going through states of being delusionally tired and eating lunch at 4am,” Reinhart says. There’s not a hint of uncertainty in her voice when she adds: “There’s nobody I would have rather done it with than those girls.”