Sparks flying on the set of Outer Banks.
Shortly after the Netflix drama started streaming in April 2020, fans began rooting for Chase Stokes and Madelyn Cline, who play John B. and Sarah Cameron, respectively, on and offscreen.
“I think there is such thing as a love that just absolutely takes over and it flips your world upside down,” Cline told Seventeen magazine in May 2020 about John B. and Sarah’s love story. “I remember when I was a teenager, I was into young adult books and there was always a pinnacle love story of star-crossed lovers. So to be able to be a part of creating that for this next generation was really a dream come true as a storyteller.”
She added that the chemistry between her and Stokes came naturally.
“Chase, [our creator] Jonas [Pate] and I all sat down from the get-go and spoke about the relationship. We wanted to make sure it was real and it had depth to it,” Cline explained. “There were things that Chase and I specifically added to the script that felt personal. You have to sell it. It’s got to be compelling. Thankfully the cast all clicked and we had such great chemistry, so we all had this friendship from the very beginning. So building on that and then projecting it on the screen felt very, very real.”
Stokes, for his part, told Nylon magazine that he and Cline “wanted to do justice to shows of the past and create a really authentic love experience,” citing Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, The O.C. and 90210 as examples.
“You watch these shows and you genuinely think these people are in love with each other,” he said in May 2020. “We did a lot of research, did a deep dive into those shows, and made sure we followed the structure of how those worked. We decided to strip away the layers of the physicality of it and focus more on the intellectual connection between the two of them. John B. and Sarah obviously don’t have the same upbringing. They fall in love not because of what their worlds bring, it’s about what their emotional connection is. We just really wanted to make sure that Maddie and I became good enough friends to where we knew each other and find little ticks and nuances that would make each other laugh, and make sure we translated that into the performance.”
After months of fan speculation, the duo confirmed in June 2020 that they are dating.
However, after over a year of gushing about each other, Stokes and Cline called it quits in November 2021. While it initially seemed like the pair weren’t over for good — Stokes told Us Weekly a month later that his ex was “one of my favorite people on planet Earth” — reconciliation speculation appeared to be squashed in summer 2022 when they were each photographed with different people. In May, Cline sparked romance rumors with Jackson Guthy, while Stokes was spotted getting “really flirty” with model Izzy Metz in New York City, a source exclusively told Us at the time.
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