Viewers may wonder if the melodious song stylings of The CW’s Riverdale’s Josie and The Pussycats are their real voices. Ashleigh Murray, who plays the leader of the band, Josie, assures us that they are. “Every song that is put out for the show for the soundtrack, we all sing on it. We’re a very talented group of people.” She affirms that producers were specifically looking for actresses who could sing. “We all sing. It was required as part of my audition. I had to prepare a song so I don’t think there was ever an option for dubbing. They were looking for someone who could do both sing and act and move well.”
Named for the fictional town in the long-running Archie comics series, this version of Riverdale is decidedly noirish. It is a savage, sexy, shadowy young adult soap opera rife with political battles and seething underpinnings of class warfare.
Ironically Murray, as beautiful as her voice is, came to singing reluctantly. Influenced by her mother, she started to learn singing at a young age but she explains, “It was never really something that I wanted to do.” Fortunately, the ability to combine singing with acting has opened up new possibilities for her and enabled her to appreciate her singing more. “It is the way of the universe that I have a job where I’m singing all the time now. It’s nice and it’s helping me build my confidence in my voice. I didn’t think it was interesting enough or cool enough to be on the radio so I didn’t get why people kept asking me to do it.” This begs the question of which singers voices Murray does are great. “I have a much more eclectic taste in music but I love the way that Demi [Lovato] sings.” Unable to keep the unadulterated adoration out of her voice she enthuses, “I looooove SZA she is so cool. She is on another planet that woman! I love Beyonce, I love Alicia Keys, I even love Norah Jones. I love the soothing sound of her voice.”
The cusp of adolescence came with an enormous change in Murray’s life. She left Kansas City at about age eleven to go live with her aunt in Oakland, California. The relocation led to a fateful discovery; her love for acting. Her recollections are of, at least initially, being a quite unhappy transplant at her new school where her classmates were already in the throes of putting together a show. “I was given the smallest part in the show and I was so upset about it. It was my job to silently narrate what was going on on the show in between scenes.” The experience was transformational though and her resentment turned to joy. “It ended up being the most fun that I ever did. I got a lot of applause and positive feedback. I was absolutely surprised by it. I wasn’t the lead in the show. I thought that was how it worked that you had to have the best role, the best line. I did another show my last year in that school and I got my first standing ovation.” Murray not only discovered a love for acting, but she reached a sort of epiphany. “It really helped me understand,” she says, “That it was more about the work and the performance and not so much the role or even the title of the role. It also let me know okay, I think I might be good at this so let me keep trying.”
In addition to Riverdale, Murray, who lives in the New York City area when not filming Riverdale in Vancouver, has also gotten a lot of recognition for her recent film Deidra and Laney Rob a Train, in which she stars alongside Rachel Crow. It is an amusing and quirky sister and sister crime caper with a lot of heart. Murray plays Deidra, the whip smart oldest sister who schemes to get the whole family out of a rocky situation. “I got the script and I fell in love with it immediately,” she says, “I thought it was so funny and so refreshing. There wasn’t anything like that.” Indeed, the film portrays a black teenager being the hero for her own family as well as for herself. This was part of the appeal of the role for Murray. She points out, “There were so many dimensions and levels to being in that project that were really important to me as well as being able to showcase that not every person of color needs to be uneducated or put upon or is never gonna make it or needs someone from the outside to come and help them. There were so many stories with this project that I think went over really well.”
Murray indicates that we can look forward to learning more about Josie this season on Riverdale. Though she is a regular on the series, much of her character was revealed only in the most superficial terms during last season. This season, we will see more of Josie’s relationships not just with her fellow band members, but also with her family and friends. Robin Givens, who audiences came to know in the Reginald Hudlin-directed classic romantic comedy Boomerang, plays Josie’s mother on the show. She is also Riverdale’s powerful and well-connected mayor Sierra McCoy. It is one of the great things about working on the series for Murray. Of Givens, she remarks, “She herself is such a breath of fresh air. She is so good. There’s nothing like being on set where you know you can play and they’re gonna play with you and it’s gonna turn out great. I can always lean on her when we work and it’s really great.”
The other important relationship in Josie’s life is with good friend Cheryl Blossom, the rich bitch head cheerleader at Riverdale High. Viewers will see more of what friendship looks like between these two super-ambitious divas this season. “You know the common thing between the two of them is more based on status that they each hold, not just in school but in Riverdale so there’s a mutual respect between the two of them and you’ll get to see a bit more how that plays out.”
The new season of Riverdale premiere’s October 11th on the CW network and CW app.
