The 'Riverdale' star appears in 'Jane the Virgin' actor Justin Baldoni's feature directorial debut.
Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson are falling in love.
The stars of CBS Films' upcoming romantic drama, Five Feet Apart, play Will and Stella, two teens who meet in the hospital where they are both being treated for cystic fibrosis. Based on the 2018 novel by Rachel Lippincott, Will and Stella are required to stay six feet apart at all times to avoid cross-infection -- until Stella suggests they take a risk by stepping one foot closer.
ET debuts an exclusive first look from the movie, which marks Jane the Virgin star Justin Baldoni's feature directorial debut, and finds Sprouse and Richardson as they have a pseudo-meet cute in the hospital's NICU.
"What are you doing up here?" nurse Barb (Kimberly Herbert Gregory) asks Will (Sprouse) and Stella (Richardson), who aren't supposed to be commiserating outside of their rooms unsupervised. Barb calmly berates Will and Stella: "Six feet at all times. You both know the rules. Will, get back to your room."
"There you go. A little name for your psychological profile. I'm Will Newman. And you are?" Will snarks to Stella, who responds with a biting comment of her own, as she puts on her mask: "Deaf."
"Stella, thank you for putting your mask back on," Barb says, unknowingly giving Will a key piece of intel.
"Stella, you need to lighten up," Will says with a smirk. "It's just life. It'll be over before you know it."
Sprouse and Richardson stepped out together at the 2019 Critics' Choice Awards in January, where they presented the award for Best Acting Ensemble to The Favourite.
And earlier this month, Sprouse -- currently starring as Jughead on Riverdale -- and Richardson opened up about Five Feet Apart, a poignant romance between two young people who fall in love but aren't allowed to touch.
“A lot of the emotional weight of the movie, at least acting-wise, came from recognizing the logical gravity of cystic fibrosis," Sprouse, 26, told Wonderland magazine. "It is an incredible heavy, heavy illness, and it affects young people. It affects people who are going through, for the first time, feelings of lust and love and experimentation, and growth and coming into oneself and the solidifying of identity whilst simultaneously the encroaching mortality that is so frightening that terrifies all of us. I hope that the patients who watch this movie try to recognize that we have, within our finite set of rules, done the absolute best we could to represent exactly what it’s like.”
Richardson, 23, spoke about how playing a vulnerable character like Stella informed her perspective as a human being.
“You have to be vulnerable, and feel comfortable being vulnerable, no matter what it is -- whether you feel like you’re going to be eating with a man with 27 personalities, or stepping into the shoes of someone who has an extreme life-threatening disease," the Recovery Road and Ravenswood alum told Wonderland. "It makes you connect you to yourself and your emotions in a way that nothing else really forces from you in life. So I do enjoy it, in a weird way, it’s therapeutic, it’s cathartic, it makes me more empathetic as a person, and it’s fun sometimes even.”
Five Feet Apart hits theaters Friday, March 15.
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