Camila Mendes Says Working With Ex Charles Melton in 'Riverdale' Was "Hard"
"Anytime we started to hook up off set and knew that something was brewing, our characters would start dating."
Dating a coworker can be tricky, especially if you end up going separate ways, relationship-wise. But when your ex is your coworker, and you both happen to be famous? It can be a recipe for disaster. Fortunately, that wasn't the case for Camila Mendes and Charles Melton, who dated twice while filming Riverdale.
Mendes opened up about the on-again, off-again experience on the Feb. 19 episode of Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast (via Us Weekly).
"We dated for a year and then broke up for about a year and then got back together for about a year," Mendes told Shepard and his co-host, Monica Padman. She explained that they rekindled their relationship while filming the show's sixth season during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of lockdown restrictions, the cast had to stay in Vancouver, where the show was filming, and they gave their relationship another chance.
Fans of the show know that the exes' characters, Veronica and Reggie, also dated during the show's run. And that included on-screen makeouts from the former couple. "Obviously, right when it happened, it’s hard and it’s emotional. It’s the worst," Mendes said on the podcast. "But it’s hard because the timing of the show...Anytime we started to hook up off set and knew that something was brewing, our characters would start dating. But they didn't know. No one knew. The writers would just naturally make it happen."
And while making out with an ex in front of cameras is never fun (just ask Penn Badgley and Blake Lively), Mendes and Melton had reached a mutual understanding by the time they were filming Riverdale's seventh and final season.
"When we came back for the last season, there was a definite air of zen, we're past it, and we worked together a lot as well but not in a romantic capacity,” Mendes said to Shepard. "It went super smoothly last season. I think the whole last season felt different."
These days, Melton and Mendes' relationship is firmly in the past. Mendes also shared on the podcast that she's planning to move in with her boyfriend, Rudy Mancuso, in Los Angeles (via Cover Media). All's well that ends well—onscreen or off.
