With a hit Netflix show and a slew of campaigns under her belt, the Outer Banks star has the world at her feet
Photography by BJORN IOOSS
Styling by FABIO IMMEDIATO
Words by ROB HASKELL
Some actors seem to arrive fully formed on-screen, whereas others grow up before our very eyes, often inviting us along with them. Madelyn Cline was 21 when she was plucked from obscurity to star in Outer Banks, the Netflix show about a patchwork group of teenagers in search of a long-lost treasure. As the series readies for its fourth and perhaps final season, the actor can’t help but wax nostalgic.
“One thing I love about the boot camp that is Outer Banks is that there’s so much of me that informed my character as I grew up, but there’s also so much of my character that has shaped me,” she says of the role of Sarah Cameron, a girl from the town’s grandest family who falls in with a group from the other side of the tracks and has to reckon with her family’s values and its past. “I’ve spent the better part of six years with this cast and crew. I feel like I had my unofficial college years with them. They’ve seen me through so much,” Cline says. “But wrapping up this season, there was a sense of looming finality. The timing is right. I feel ready to differentiate myself, to explore new spaces and have some wonder about stories that I haven’t been a part of telling.”
We’re sitting in the lobby of a hotel just off the 101 in North Hollywood, a few minutes from the home away from home that Cline shares with a good friend. Although it’s far from the more glamorous entertainment corridors, the succession of young men who approach asking for a photo with Cline (she cheerfully obliges, over and over) offers a reminder of the scope of her fame and of the broad reach of Outer Banks — she has 16 million Instagram followers and 7 million on TikTok.
The actor has just finished a whirlwind fortnight in town, and although she considers Los Angeles home, she has spent only two weeks here in 2024. That has meant few opportunities for her beloved SunLife matchas, uni at Malibu’s Broad Street Oyster, and Pilates classes at Alo with her girlfriends. These days she is a creature of everywhere and nowhere.
“There’s an excitement to being a floater,” Cline says. “There’s an air of anticipation. Although it might be nice not to live out of a suitcase and a storage unit.” This year she became a global ambassador for Revlon and starred in Tommy Hilfiger’s summer campaign opposite Noah Beck. Tonight she flies to Barcelona for a work project she can’t yet discuss, but a few weeks after our interview it is announced she will star in a reboot of the ‘90s hit thriller I Know What You Did Last Summer opposite Camila Mendes, out in summer 2025.
Cline grew up an only child in Goose Creek, a small city northwest of Charleston (where Outer Banks shoots). At 13, she began doing commercial print modeling. In the summer, she and her mother decamped temporarily to New York, where Cline would book jobs with the goal of setting aside the money for college. Although her parents are religious Lutherans and homeschooled her, Cline has no recollection of them offering anything but full-throated support of her interests, whether it was video games or crochet or painting or The Vampire Diaries. “My mom was always like, ‘I don’t know where you came from,’” she says. In mornings and evenings during high school, Cline worked at a barn caring for horses. She had had a frightening experience with a horse at a friend’s house, and her mother felt that a little exposure therapy would do her good. She managed to become an avid rider.
“As a kid who was very introverted, working at the barn and getting to know each one of those horses on a deep level was so important for me,” she says. “If you work with horses, you understand that they’re such intuitive creatures: No word has to be spoken. It’s about learning how to communicate with each other. That experience was something that really built my confidence when I was younger. Nowadays I think of myself as an introvert who has learned how to be an extrovert.”
It took all of six weeks at Coastal Carolina University for Cline to realize college was not for her. She moved to Atlanta, booked small roles on The Originals and Stranger Things, and then drove to Los Angeles. (She made it in three days, even though she managed to lose her wallet in the Grand Canyon.) Those first years weren’t easy: She got bedbugs in North Hollywood and moved to Sherman Oaks; she kept auditioning and started to wonder what was wrong when all around her, friends were booking jobs she could see herself doing. “Those years were so full of uncertainty,” she says. “I bounced around, auditioned, had one crisis of confidence after another, called my mom all the time.”
“I doomscroll in bed. I probably have the same insecurities my fans do”
MADELYN CLINE
But a part-time job at a self-tape studio, where she saw countless young actors recording auditions of the same roles in their own unique ways, taught her a lot about the craft. And three years into the grind of Los Angeles, Cline landed Outer Banks. Stardom came quickly, not least because Cline’s relationship with her costar Chase Stokes became catnip for the show’s young and passionate audience. The experience taught her to protect her privacy fiercely.
“When I’m just out of bed and I have sleep in my eyes and my hair is partially matted and I’m rolling up to the coffee shop, the awareness of how my life has changed hits me like a sh*t brick,” she says, laughing. “I become sensitive to everything: How am I standing? What am I doing with my hands? Imposter syndrome is so real. It’s weird to be put on a pedestal, especially as a woman. We’ve seen time and time again women being put on pedestals and just getting bashed down. I have spent so much time comparing myself, hating myself because I am not this person or that person or this kind of talented. I doomscroll in bed on Saturday mornings like anybody else, and I probably have all the same insecurities that my fans do. But when women approach me and say that they can connect to something I’ve done, I think to myself, The rest of it, it’s fine. Those interactions are really special, and everything else is just noise.”
Few occasions put butterflies in the stomachs of even the überfamous quite the way the Met Gala does. In 2023, fresh from a substantial role in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery opposite an all-star cast that included Daniel Craig, Janelle Monáe, Edward Norton, Hugh Grant, and Kate Hudson, Cline attended as a guest of Stella McCartney. This year, having signed on as a brand ambassador for Tommy Hilfiger, she was at the venerable American designer’s table. “Last year,” she says, “I tried to lubricate myself for the situation, overdid it, and was too drunk for small talk. This year I came prepared.” (Even so, after Matt Damon offered her a drink at the bar, she had to scurry away to the bathroom to collect herself.)
Cline acknowledges that her views and values have shifted as her career has taken her out of the enclave of her childhood. “South Carolina is conservative, especially the part I grew up in,” she says. “There was an undertone of prejudice. When I first moved to L.A., I think my parents were scared. But as I’ve discovered my own path and way of thinking, it has opened up their worlds as well and really broadened their point of view. Meanwhile, I’ve seen Charleston open up so much. There’s a new generation of people who have come to live there from everywhere, and the city is finally evolving.”
During the typical hiatus between seasons of Outer Banks, Cline has been happy to do little to nothing. She loves couch time with Rodney, her cavapoo; together they have binged all of Vanderpump Rules in three months. (She is Team Ariana all the way.) She loves escaping into a good sci-fi book or inviting girlfriends over for a wine night. By her own admission, she is not much of a cook: “If you invite me over for a potluck, I’ll bring the ice.” But this summer, Cline is too busy building the next chapter of her career to allow herself much repose.
“People keep throwing around the words Saturn return,” she says, referring to the moment when the planet takes the same position in the sky that it occupied at the time of one’s birth. That happens every 29 years or so, which means that Cline is entering her very own Saturn return — her astrological push into adulthood. “It feels like this massive period of transition is about to happen, and I’m really excited for it. Or maybe I’m in it and I don’t even know it yet.”
Hair by RENATO CAMPORA at The Wall Group.
Makeup by JEN TIOSECO at The Wall Group.
Manicure by YOKO SAKAKURA at A-Frame Agency.
Prop styling by BRYAN PORTER at Owl and the Elephant.
Madelyn Cline wearing PRADA sweater, $1,520, skirt, $2,950, and hat, $3,400. SYDNEY EVAN ring, $10,200.
Feature image: ETRO gown, $11,500, and pants, price upon request. SYDNEY EVAN ring, $10,200.
This story originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of C Magazine.
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