(Warning: This post contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of “Outer Banks.”)
Netflix’s new teen drama “Outer Banks” dropped last Wednesday and is already sitting at No. 3 on Netflix’s daily list of its Top 10 titles in the U.S. Part of the reason behind its popularity with subscribers might be the level of relatability the show strived to achieve with the romance that buds between two of very, very different characters growing up in the Outer Banks of North Carolina: working-class boy John B. (Chase Stokes) and his rich boss’ daughter, Sarah (Madelyn Cline).
“I think it’s a beautiful, honest take on how love should be,” Stokes told TheWrap in an interview last week, which you can view above. “And [showrunner Jonas Pate], myself and Maddy spent a lot of time going back into the archives and watching shows that had those authentic experiences of love. We’ve gotten a lot of comparisons to ‘The O.C.’ and ‘90210’ and ‘Dawson’s Creek’ and ‘One Tree Hill’ and all that. But you watch those shows and you feel like these people actually love each other.”
“You feel like you’re watching this take place in a way that, although it’s fictional, some times you’re like, ‘Wait a minute — OK, yeah, no I’m definitely watching a TV series,’” he continued. “So we really did our homework on that and got to know each other and sat down between us and tried to figure out what makes each other tick, or tried to figure out what is something I know that’s gonna make her laugh or vice versa.”
“Outer Banks” follows a tight-knit group of local teens (the “Pogues”) in the beach vacation destination of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The end up searching for John B’s missing father, which leads them on a treasure hunt and leads John B to fall for Sarah — something he never thought could happen.
Stokes says he and Cline and Pate also “wanted to break down that class barrier” with John B and Sarah’s relationship.
“So often we see in society, ‘Wow, she’s beautiful, but I don’t think I’d ever have a shot with her.’ And that’s kind of John B’s perspective on this whole thing, ‘It’s the boss’ daughter, she’s unattainable. She’s pretty and kind of a brat at some times, but I’m not even gonna explore it because it’s a different world,’” he told us. “So I think it was a really cool thing to show not just a small group of people, but to show the world that it doesn’t matter where you come from, or what you have to offer — again, going back to what I was saying before — it’s that emotional connection and allowing that to be the sole driver in a relationship. Because in relationships, physicality is such a singular component. The physical intimacy and the physical component only lasts for so long, but at the end of the day ,if you want to be somebody you really go tot understand their soul and understand your heart.”
We also asked Stokes to tell us what it was like to shoot the scene from the finale where Sarah and John B find themselves trying to escape the police in a tiny little boat while heading into a storm after that whole treasure hunt thing goes really, really south.
“I cannot say it enough, it was so difficult to shoot because we were in, essential it’s a boat dock,” he told us. “And it’s where they bring in the barges from wherever on the planet Earth they’re coming from and they’re huge, huge boats. So we had that boat tied up on both sides. We had a giant black screen put up on another side of the dock. We had five or six fans blowing 50 mile-an-hour wind gusts at us. We had multiple water cannons shooting water at us. We had crazy light sequences to make it look like lightening was going on.”
“It was madness,” he continued. “There was days through that three day period where I was like, ‘I don’t even know what’s going on. I’m trying to act, but at the same time I’m getting shot in the face with water cannons.’ That was one time a rock got picked up by a fan and hit me in the head. So it was crazy.”
Watch the full interview above.
“Outer Banks” Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.