She bursts into Cosmo’s
Brooklyn photo studio 45
minutes off schedule, offer-
ing a thousand apologies:
“Being late is my least favor-
ite thing on the planet. I hate
being late more than I hate
mismatched socks, which is
saying a lot,” she says, while
not-so-subtly clocking if
everyone is, indeed, wearing
matching socks (we are).
To be fair, it wasn’t entirely
her fault. Her driver for the
day confused Vandervoort
Avenue for Vanderbilt Ave-
nue, and honestly, Saturday
traffic is a bitch.
You could almost mistake
this version of Madelaine for
the bombshell she plays on
The CW’s Riverdale (season 4,
more bizarre than ever, starts
October 9)—except that Cheryl
Blossom’s lateness would be
completely intentional. That, and
Madelaine isn’t wearing a hint of
Cheryl’s signature red.
She doesn’t even really like red,
and until her big break, she never
thought she could pull off crimson
anything, believing it would clash
with her famous strawberry mane.
“But the costumers were like, ‘Do
you know that red is a huge character
point for Cheryl?’” Madelaine
cringes. “So I was like, ‘Uh, I love red!
It’s my favorite color!’”
As it turns out, Cheryl has
inspired a lot of change in
Madelaine’s real-life closet. “She’s
taught me so much about fashion,”
she says. “It’s all about having fun
and taking risks.” A few years ago,
she wouldn’t have been caught dead
in the neon-yellow trench coat she
wore to this photo shoot (or, TBH,
many of the ~spooky~ looks on
these pages). Now though: “I’m like,
that’s a challenge. I fucking accept.
Ye s, I’m going to wear that yellow
jacket, fuck yeah.”
Cheryl might be rubbing off on
25-year-old Madelaine in other
ways too. Whereas the fictional
badass—who, reminder, is a bisex-
ual archer who happens to be hiding
her dead brother’s body in her base-
ment—crashes birthday parties andthrives on attention,
Madelaine is usually con-
tent to observe from the
background. That’s slowly
changing. “I’ve never gone
to an event alone before, so I
thought a good time to try
that would be the Met Gala,”
she says matter-of-factly.
Ballsy, yes, but also in baby
steps: She stayed close to
her table and costars who
we r e a l s o i n a t t e nd a nc e a nd
then stayed at the after-
parties for, like, 20 minutes.
What she’s figuring out is
that—even though she’s
insisted many times that
she shouldn’t be confused
with her character—the
parts of Cheryl Blossom that
viewers love most are the same ones
that are deeply rooted in Madelaine
herself. Most important, they’re
both fighters. For Cheryl, that
means overcoming insane family
drama and (yikes) high school. For
Ma de l a i ne , it ’s ove r c omi n g he r
offscreen shyness and stepping up
to whatever life and her career
throw at her.
For now, Madelaine still gets
nervous before shooting scenes—
but she actually likes it that way.
“You can feel it when you watch me,
the excitement, the passion. I don’t
want to ever lose that.” Basically,
bring on all the red fashion and
everything else. She’s ready.By EMILY TANNENBAUMA little bit of drama
never hurt
Madelaine Petsch
127
Cosmopolitan November 2019