Betty Cooper. Betty is into Archie Andrews. When we first meet her, she’s hanging out with her friend Kevin, who is encouraging her to confess her feelings to Archie, her life-long friend and the boy next door. Betty is a bit skeptical that that plan is a good one. After all, Archie hasn’t expressed much romantic interest in her. And when Veronica shows up in town and catches Archie’s eye, Betty is even less sure about her chances.
But Betty is a nice girl, so she befriends Veronica, who helps her get on the cheerleading squad, led by Cheryl Blossom. It’s clear, however, that Cheryl and Betty are not friends, primarily because something happened between Betty’s sister Polly and Cheryl’s brother Jason — something that changed Polly forever. And Polly isn’t Betty’s only family issue because it’s obvious that Betty’s mother is hard on Betty as well. While Betty continues to “do everything for everyone” as she says in the pilot, it’s inevitable that she’ll one day reach her breaking point.
During our visit to the RIVERDALE set, Lili Reinhart explained that “we wanted to make sure she wasn’t a damsel in distress. That was important to us. And she wasn’t a pushover. She wasn’t fawning over Archie. That wasn’t her goal in life, which is kind of was in the comics. She lives her life for Archie. On our show she has so much more going for her than just him. She has her own problems and she’s dealing with mental health issues and her family. At the end of the day we just wanted her to be a real person dealing with real world problems and shining a light on the darkness that comes with being a woman in this age and time and having the pressures on young women these days with appearances and being perfect.”
But all of the pressure on Betty will one day build up to a boiling point. “Oh my God, she lets loose, let me tell you. She lets loose pretty early in the season, which is going to be amazing. Betty definitely has mental health problems that she’s working on and has a lot of built up anger, which kind of goes to say the pressure that Betty feels to be perfect. She can’t show any cracks. She can’t be weak around her parents, so it builds up and takes over her. It comes out and you see her have a … something. She acts out a little bit.”