KJ Apa says one of his closest Riverdale co-stars once punched him in the face at a strip club, but he insists it helped save him from a darker path.
Speaking on Tuesday’s Wildmen podcast with Dylan Sprouse and Brendan Columbus, the 29-year-old actor revealed that Dylan’s twin brother, Cole Sprouse, hit him after learning he had relapsed into using drugs again while filming the CW show.
“He punched me in the face!” Apa recalled. “At this time, I was doing a lot of drugs and a lot of my close friends were worried about me.”
Instead of holding a grudge, he described it as “a love punch,” while Dylan joked it was more of a “wake-up punch.”
Dylan, who witnessed the confrontation, said Apa bolted from the club immediately afterward. “I looked at my brother after that, and I was like, ‘Dude, you could have just died,’” he said, recalling that Apa had run several blocks away before anyone could catch him.
The conversation quickly turned more serious as Apa detailed his struggles with addiction and an eating disorder during his time on Riverdale, which ran from 2017 to 2023.
The I Still Believe actor said the pressure of constantly maintaining a shirtless physique, combined with sudden fame, fueled unhealthy habits.
Apa detailed the extreme behaviors that accompanied what he described as a “gnarly” eating disorder while filming Riverdale. “I used to eat donuts all day long. Go back to my trailer, throw up,” he said.
He also recalled ordering “three Big Macs, 20 McNuggets, two large fries and a large milkshake” at 2 a.m. during the pandemic before taking the leftovers outside and urinating on them so he wouldn’t eat any more. He said he became hungry again and “ate around the p--s.”
Reflecting on that period, Apa said, “I had so many things that I was doing that were so unhealthy,” blaming the pressure of “having my shirt off all the time” and “experiencing fame.”
The New Zealand native said he has since turned his life around. Apa shares four-year-old son Sasha with ex-girlfriend Clara Berry and credited becoming a father as the catalyst that pushed him to get sober.
Cole Sprouse has not publicly commented on Apa’s remarks.
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