Katy Keene might be calling itself a Riverdale spinoff, but it's really a show in a class all its own.
The new series stars Lucy Hale as the titular Katy, an aspiring fashion designer who's doing her best to live her dreams in New York with her friends. The pilot brings Riverdale's Josie McCoy (Ashleigh Murray) into that little circle of dreamers, freeing poor Josie from "the murder capital of the world."
In fact, Katy Keene is light and happy in all the ways Riverdale rarely ever is, and these friends aren't running from serial killers or cults or secret boarding school societies.
"The biggest difference is everybody lives...People don't have like, those kinda problems," Ashleigh Murray tells E! News. "They have like real, regular world problems, not 'don't drink that juice' kinda problems."
And she's thrilled about it.
"It's incredibly nice. It's just gonna be fun to get dressed up really pretty and be running around New York City, and maybe do some karaoke," she says. "I just wanna live life freely and full of fun and without fear."
Lucy Hale didn't come from Riverdale, but she did come from her own very murdery teen show with Pretty Little Liars. Now, life is much easier.
"Someone's not dying, someone's not stalking me, it's great," she tells us, explaining that she really wanted a TV world she felt like she could live in for a while. "It's nice to really switch it up."
She describes the world of Katy Keene as "like candy."
You can get a taste of the Katy Keene vibe in last night's Riverdale, in which Veronica took a trip to New York and caught up with her old friend Katy, and you can see the pilot tonight at 8 p.m. on The CW.
Watch the video above for more from Hale and Murray.