There's a new bromance brewing on Riverdale, both on the show and in real life.
If you follow either KJ Apa or Charles Melton on Instagram, you've already seen the love between these two "boyos" as New Zealander Apa often refers to them. They're sometimes having coffee, sometimes just messing around, and most often, they're working out.
Melton replaced Ross Butler as Riverdale's new Reggie (because Butler is a regular on Netflix's 13 Reasons Why) over the summer, and Apa says he and Melton connected "almost immediately," even teaching each other new languages.
"He teaches me Korean and I teach him Samoan," Apa says, and Melton tells us that Apa calls him "hyeong," "which is like 'big brother' in Korean."
"We're very similar," Apa tells E! News. "We're very competitive as well, and you can tell a lot about a person by how hard they work in the gym. I think it's awesome to be able to play with someone who works out as hard as you do."
We've already seen a bit more of Archie and Reggie's relationship this season, and we'll see more starting tonight. Apa told us it's the thing he's most excited for people to see.
"We didn't really get to dive into that in the first season, and you know, Charles is a legend," he says. "We're really really good mates. He completely emulates everything about Reggie. He is the perfect Reggie. So the fans are going to love that dynamic. I think we have great chemistry."
Melton classifies Archie and Reggie's on-screen dynamic as "frenemies."
"I don't think he'd ever do anything malicious to Archie, but there's just always that competitive streak between the two, which is natural on screen I think, because KJ and I are actually pretty competitive as well," he says.
Apa seems to agree.
"They are friends. I'm gonna say friends before they are rivals," he tell us. "It's pretty much the same relationship that me and him have in real life, where we're really really good friends and we'll always be there for each other if we need each other, but at the same time, anything physically challenging or any competition in any way—doesn't even need to be physical—is gonna get pretty rough, because they're both so competitive with each other."
While so far, Archie and Reggie's relationship seems to revolve around the hilarious (but very dangerous) new drug Jingle Jangle, it will be interesting to see exactly what these two end up competing for.
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on the CW.