Outer Banks actors Chase Stokes and Madelyn Cline are hardly the first teen drama stars to work together after a breakup, but they may be the most drama-free.
Stokes and Cline got together in 2020 after playing hometown enemies-to-lovers John B and Sarah on the popular Netflix series before quietly splitting about a year and a half later in November 2021. While some behind-the-scenes breakups are more dramatic than others—Olivia Rodrigo practically dedicated an entire breakup album to her High School Musical: The Musical: The Series costar Joshua Bassett—Stokes and Cline say they were able to keep things completely professional while filming season three.
“Mads and I have been working together now for 30 episodes, and we made a promise to each other before we even started dating that the work was always going to come first,” Stokes told Entertainment Weekly in a new interview. “And that no matter what happens in our personal lives, and the ways that life sometimes takes you in different directions, that we’re always going to honor the work. That stayed 100 percent truthful this season.”
Chase Stokes and Madelyn Cline on the set of Outer Banks season two.Netflix
He continued to praise his ex-girlfriend, who recently starred in Glass Onion: a Knives Out Story, saying, “She’s an incredible person, a rockstar of an actress, and she’s having an incredible moment. Regardless of now not being together in a personal relationship, I’m still always going to be one of her biggest fans, and I’m super, super proud of all of her accomplishments inside the show and outside the show.”
Cline shared a similar sentiment, telling the publication that they’ve “always shown up for each other when it comes to work and this show.”
“We had a working relationship before we had a personal relationship, and our job from day one has always been to leave the show better than we found it,” she said. “I’m really, really happy and I’m very proud of the work this season, and I’m incredibly grateful for my costars and their professionalism and just how talented each and every one of them are.”
Luckily for Stokes and Cline, Outerbanks’ creators Jonas Pate and Shannon Burke told EW they did not use the actors’ breakup as inspiration for storylines in season three. That was not the case on One Tree Hill, according to Sophia Bush, who ended her five-month marriage to Chad Michael Murray in 2006. Murray eventually left the series in 2009, while Bush remained until the season finale in 2012.
“[The producers] made practice of taking advantage of people’s personal lives and not just for me and for my ex — for other actors on the show who would share, like as you do when you get close to people, deeply personal things that were happening in their lives and they would wind up in storylines,” Bush said on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in 2018, per People. “It wasn’t okay.”
She continued, “It was opportunistic and ugly and when you run a show, you’re like a parent. You’re supposed to protect your flock and it was the opposite of that. And I imagine that was hard for him as well. It was a very ugly situation on their part. I think they kind of lived for the drama.”
Good to know Outer Banks is keeping its drama fictional.
