Lili Reinhart drank real blood on camera for 'Forbidden Fruits'

Brendan Morrow, USA TODAYWed, March 25, 2026 at 2:30 PM UTC

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If a bloodsucking scene in Lili Reinhart's new horror comedy looks a little too real, there's a good reason for that.

During a sequence in "Forbidden Fruits" (in theaters March 27) where Victoria Pedretti slices her finger with a box cutter, Reinhart suggested that her witch character taste the blood. What she didn't realize was Pedretti had cut herself for real.

"I was like, 'That tasted weirdly iron-y. That tasted like blood. Weird,' " Reinhart, 29, remembers. "And then the fake blood goes away, and slowly, the real blood starts to rise to the surface. I'm like, 'Oh. I just drank your blood.' "

Reinhart was quickly assured by a medic that there was nothing to be concerned about, and she now jokes there is "a blood bond between us that can't be broken."

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Lili Reinhart stars as Apple, the leader of a coven of witches who meet inside a mall, in the new horror comedy "Forbidden Fruits."

A campy mix between "The Craft" and "Mean Girls," "Forbidden Fruits" centers on four women − played by Reinhart, Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp and Lola Tung − who work together in a Free People-style store at the mall, where they covertly practice witchcraft after hours. When a new employee, Pumpkin (Tung), is welcomed into the coven, jealousies emerge, secrets come to the surface, and the toxicity of the clique has deadly consequences.

Reinhart, best known as Betty Cooper on The CW's "Riverdale," stars as Apple, the manipulative head of the coven and the Regina George of the film. She signed on when "Riverdale" was nearing the end of its run, and while plotting the next chapter of her career, she looked for ways to "do a 180." This has led to some sharp genre pivots, from the dramedy series "Hal & Harper" to "Forbidden Fruits" and the upcoming romantic comedy "The Love Hypothesis."

Alexandra Shipp (left) and Victoria Pedretti (right) play witches in the same coven as Lili Reinhart's Apple in "Forbidden Fruits."

"I want to have a very vast and unexpected career, because I want to do this until I die," Reinhart says. "I always wanted to keep flipping back and forth between the types of women that I play, and the style of acting that I'm leaning into, just to keep it interesting. Worst case scenario would be doing the same thing for my entire career."

But while Apple does plenty of horrible things throughout "Forbidden Fruits," Reinhart is reluctant to call her a villain. She feels the pain of all the women in the movie, who are driven to dark places by their need to belong.

"I never was in, growing up or in high school, one solid friend group, where everyone always consistently hung out," she says. "...I often felt left behind, or on the outside. It's a bad feeling. You don't really quite feel like you belong anywhere. No one in my high school or around me was pursuing acting the way that I was, so that also felt quite isolating. It's the same as Apple, who longs for a solid group that feels impenetrable."

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The retail environment was a bit of a throwback to Reinhart's life before "Riverdale," as the actress worked at Pier 1 when she was 18. "Apple's a great saleswoman. I probably wasn't a very good saleswoman," she says, recalling she never had it in her to "press someone to buy something. If they weren't interested, I'd be like, 'OK, bye!' "

Arriving at the end of Women's History Month, "Forbidden Fruits" is a film from a female director, written by a pair of female writers, with a cast of all women in every principal role − not to mention, a female editor, composer, costume designer and camera operator. Reinhart is "proud and happy to be championing women" in a "space where jobs are usually given to men. They're just kind of the default."

Lili Reinhart's Apple (right) inducts Pumpkin (Lola Tung) into her coven in "Forbidden Fruits."

Tung, coming off her role in the Prime Video phenomenon "The Summer I Turned Pretty," plays the coven's newest addition. Apple sees herself in Pumpkin and mentors her, a dynamic not unlike the stars' off-camera relationship. The two had a lot in common to discuss, given they both rose to fame on wildly popular teen dramas featuring a prominent love triangle, which Reinhart describes as their "trauma bond."

"We had a lot of natural, organic conversations about fame and about feeling like no one really prepares you adequately to step into that role and in that light, and in a love triangle, which has its own possible toxicity to it," she says.

That's not to say Tung required mentoring, given she is already "so humble and down to earth." But Reinhart had "a sisterly feeling" with her 23-year-old costar, who is the same age as her actual younger sister. "She's not asking me to protect her, but I do feel protective over her. She does feel like a little sister to me."

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The cast also had something else to bond over: their shared misery during a brutal shooting schedule. Filming largely occurred overnight, a necessity at a real mall. So for the length of shooting, Reinhart would sleep all day and work all night, and she says it was "anxiety-inducing to wake up at 6 p.m. and look at your phone, and everyone else in your life, their whole day has gone by and yours hasn't started yet."

"It was horrible for my body," she says. "I had insomnia for like a month-and-a-half after shooting the movie."

Trying to look your best under those conditions is also a tall order, Reinhart notes.

"I wanted to look incredibly attractive and put together and hot as Apple, and trying to achieve that when it's 3 a.m. and your body is shutting down and begging you to go to sleep, it was a challenge. ... If I had the choice, I would not do that again."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Forbidden Fruits' stars Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung bonded by blood

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