KJ Apa Poses for Paper Magazine

KJ Apa posed for Paper Magazine. During the shoot, the Riverdale star talked about his hit show, social media, how your follower count can help you get an acting job, getting the role of Archie, getting recognized in public, and so much more. Highlights can be found below.

On getting his role in Riverdale: “It’s moved so fast. I kind of spontaneously came out to the States and everything kind of happened from there. All I’d done before that was A Dog’s Purpose and I came back to LA for pilot season, hoping to get a movie, but I ended up auditioning for Riverdale. I hadn’t heard anything and then suddenly it was callback after callback after callback. There were a lot of hoops to get through.”

On getting recognized in public: “Oh there’s definitely areas where you get recognized more. It’s definitely worse here with my orange hair, but it’s gnarly in New Zealand. I got into fights when I was on [New Zealand soap opera] Shortland Street in public. I need to learn to just chill.”

On how social media has influenced if he got a job or not: “It plays such a big part. I’ve been into auditions where you have to fill out how many followers you have on Instagram and when I saw that, honestly, I just walked out. The cool people are like under 500 [followers] and then there’s this awkward stage of 2000, 3000 [followers].”

You can read the full article here. I understand why casting departments want to know how many follwers a person has, but shouldn’t it be more about if the person is talented?

Source: Paper Magazine