Kelly Ripa has officially arrived on Riverdale.
The alleged mistress known as Mrs. Mulwray makes her debut in this week's episode, and E! News has your exclusive first look at Ripa's grand gun-wielding entrance. Turns out she's not so thrilled that Jughead (Cole Sprouse) has been trying to find her, and extremely not thrilled that he might break her fancy decorative egg.
Ripa is playing the mistress of her own real-life husband Mark Consuelos, who plays Hiram Lodge. Hiram is, of course, not doing so well after being shot by a mysterious unseen gunman in last week's episode, and that just adds to the list of mysteries the kids of Riverdale are desperately trying to solve.
Ripa's character was originally described by The CW as "confident and tough, she's a beautiful, icy, femme fatale who gets caught up in a conspiracy that's much bigger than she initially realized."
Ripa told E! News that she was a little surprised when she read the script.
"I've been preparing myself for this for 25 years, so I feel like I'm pretty good at playing a mistress. It's an unexpected twist though," she said when we visited the set of the holiday edition of Live with Kelly and Ryan. "It's not what you expect. It's not what I expected. I didn't get my script until the day before—it's all carefully guarded—and my role is not what I expected at all."
When we took a trip to the Vancouver set of Riverdale, Consuelos seemed naturally thrilled to work with his wife once again, since they first met when they worked together on All My Children in 1995.
"I'm very excited about that," he told a group of reporters. "She said, 'Are you sure? You should have a really young…' I'm like 'No, You are perfect.' But she was joking. No, I'm really excited about her coming on the show and I don't know, she's great. She's always great to work with. It's been quite a while since we've had a chance to work together but I'm looking forward to it."
Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.