The struggles of dating both on and off the page. Outer Banks fans speculated that Chase Stokes broke character for a moment while filming an emotional scene with girlfriend Madelyn Cline.
The costars portray onscreen couple John B Routledge and Sarah Cameron on the hit Netflix series, the second season of which dropped on July 30. In the episode “Prayers,” Cline’s character fights to survive after being shot by her brother, Rafe (Drew Starkey). She even briefly dies as her boyfriend tries to save her with CPR.
John B breaks down when he thinks he cannot help Sarah anymore, laying his head against hers and seemingly mouthing, “Mads.” There is no sound to prove what he said, but Stokes, 28, often uses the nickname to refer to Cline, 23.
Fans caught the apparent slipup, pointing it out on TikTok. “Did anyone else noticed [sic] that Chase Stokes said ‘Mads’ during Sarah’s death scene?” one social media user asked.
The video then transitioned into a meme of the moment with the caption, “Chase saying ‘Mads’ instead of ‘Sarah’ is a very strong topic for me.”
Stokes and Cline confirmed in June 2020 that they are dating after meeting on the set of the drama. However, they did not have an immediate spark.
“At that point in time, we were so anxious about the show and so nervous about constantly screwing up. I think we were all under this sort of strange umbrella of, like, ‘Dear God, we got an opportunity. Let’s not screw it up!’ So, it was just always work-oriented — really until the day we wrapped,” the actor exclusively told Us Weekly in February. “It wasn’t until after that, until we started to kind of get into the [pandemic] lockdown where we were like, ‘Is there something here or am I crazy?’ That’s sort of where it bloomed from there. I think we were just so invested in the work.”
When Stokes and Cline returned to film season 2 as a couple, they vowed to keep things professional.
“The biggest thing for me is being even more proud of her work now as her partner and watching her grow as an actress and watching her grow as a person through this,” the Beach House star gushed. “I think there’s always this element of [asking], ‘How can we make it not about Maddie and Chase? How do we make it about Sarah Cameron and John B?’ So that’s been fun to sort of find the ebbs and flows of the characters and give it that birth, versus it being everybody looking at us for who we are as a couple outside of work. We’ve put in a lot of work.”
