Riverdale's Marisol Nichols' secret career as an undercover sex trafficking vigilante to become TV show
According to Deadline, Sony Pictures Television is developing a TV show about Marisol Nichols, who plays Hermione Lodge on The CW’s Riverdale, but it’s not really going to be about her acting career. Instead, it’s going to be about her secret life as an undercover agent busting sex trafficking rings, as chronicled in a Marie Claire story by Erika Hayasaki. Nichols is going to executive produce the series and will “likely” star in it as well, but this all sounds like it’s pretty early at this point so it might be a while before it gets made—assuming it goes past this stage.
As for Nichols’ secret side-gig, the aforementioned Marie Claire story has all of the details, obviously, recounting one particular sting operation with local law enforcement in an unnamed midwestern town. One interesting detail from the story is that, despite working with officials and helping them make arrests, Nichols is decidedly a vigilante in this pursuit. She volunteers her services to cops and federal agents and uses her own connections and talents to aid their investigations, all for no money or credit, just in hopes of exposing sex traffickers. Generally and unsurprisingly, her involvement is usually acting-based: She’ll get on the phone with suspects and pretend to be a child, or she’ll dress up like a haggard woman selling a kid for drug money, even if it means being in the same room with some pretty awful people.
Nichols has also started a non-profit called Foundation For A Slavery Free World, which she uses to raise awareness for sex trafficking. Also, while the Deadline story doesn’t mention it, the original Marie Claire piece goes into the fact that Nichols is a dedicated Scientologist who credits the organization with saving her life and getting her off drugs in the ‘90s. She says the many allegations against the organization—Marie Claire mentions a lawsuit about “child abuse, human trafficking, and forced labor”—are “completely fabricated.” That stuff probably wouldn’t come up if/when this becomes a TV show, but it seems worth acknowledging.