Madelyn Cline made a rare comment about what it was like working with ex Chase Stokes on Outer Banks following their 2022 break-up.
“There were moments when it was difficult, absolutely,” the actress, 28, said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Thursday, August 20. “But once the dust kind of settled, we were able to just revert to the friendship that we always had.”
Cline and Stokes, 33, met on the set of Outer Banks, where she played Sarah Cameron while Stokes portrayed her boyfriend, John Booker “John B.” Routledge. After filming the inaugural season, which aired in 2020, the pair pursued a romantic connection outside the show. They dated from 2020 to 2021.
Following their split, Stokes and Cline returned to film the hit Netflix action-adventure series. While the exes were no longer together in real life, their characters were still a couple.
“At some point, you look at each other and you’re like, ‘Are you ready to stop being miserable? Because I’m ready,’” she said on Thursday.
Last year, Cline opened up about how she was once unaware of how a public relationship with a costar could take a toll.
“I think at the time I didn’t realize what the repercussions of inviting so many people into — let’s be honest — something that’s intimate,” she said during a March 2025 appearance on the “Therapuss” podcast. “I didn’t understand it. I was so in love.”
Cline explained it was also really difficult especially when fans loved her and Stokes’ characters together on screen.
“It was really, really hard to separate,” she said. “But, also like any breakup, you grow out of it, which is great. But there was a period of time there where I truly did not know which way was up, which way was down because Outer Banks and that public relationship was kind of my identity. And I was like, ‘Who the f*** am I?’”
Cline confessed that she is still working on herself.
“I have such respect for anyone in the public space who has found and created their identity and is so comfortably seated in that. I know it might seem that they are, and it may not be,” she shared. “But I have so much respect for anyone, anyone that is in any way, shape or form, in the public space.”
Since calling it quits, both Cline and Stokes have dated other people. Cline was previously romantically linked to Jackson Guthy, Pete Davidson and Henry Smith. Us previously reported that Cline has been seeing real estate agent Michael Reyes since this summer.
Stokes, for his part, was in an on-and-off relationship with Kelsea Ballerini from 2023 to 2026.
