The hot ensemble of Netflix’s newest teen drama, Outer Banks, has many people paying attention.
The new series stars enticing young actors in dramatic love triangles, as is customary for the genre. Their attempts to resolve conflicts with rising stakes are complicated by these conflicting affections. Outer Banks takes the idea and adds an intriguing twist of a season-long treasure hunt to find the show’s vanished patriarch’s hidden treasures, or as Variety more eloquently puts it, “Shirtless youngsters try to unravel a mystery.”
In North Carolina’s titular region, where the first season of Outer Banks is set, a group of young heroes come together to search for this lost treasure. The landscape itself exudes an unmistakable sense of Americana, evoking memories of Dawson’s Creek, another teen drama that made excellent use of the same backdrop. The teenage ensemble of Outer Banks engages in a variety of minor transgressions throughout the course of the first season, including breaking and entering, drug peddling, and multiple arson attacks. In other words, it is a series that is dripping with the exact kind of melodrama that you would expect from a show of this nature.
The rich Kooks and the blue collar Pogues are the two socioeconomic groups that make up the population of the Outer Banks in the show’s alternate reality. Any spectator who is familiar with the local economy of a tourist destination like the Outer Banks would recognise the distinction: half the town is made up of wealthy families that visit the area seasonally for enjoyment, while the other half is made up of residents who provide for their needs. Sarah Cameron, the charming Queen Bee of the centre crew, is one of the Kooks that appeared in Outer Banks season 1 of the show. She is portrayed by rising star Madelyn Cline, so you’re not alone if you think she looks familiar.
Madelyn Cline guest starred on The Originals and Stranger Things
Cline was raised in Charleston, a city in the other Carolina. She began acting at an early age, going to New York to appear in commercials for well-known domestic and foreign firms, according to her IMDb website. She has appeared in print and television advertisements for Sunny D, Next, and T-Mobile. Although she has a leading role in Outer Banks, it is not her first appearance on a famous series; prior to getting this job, she appeared in guest roles on two other shows with young casts.
She appeared in two episodes of the CW’s supernatural programme The Originals in 2017 as Jessica. Despite the fact that her stint on the Vampire Diaries spin-off was brief, casting directors must have taken notice of her since she quickly jumped over to Netflix for a two-episode role as Tina on the popular Stranger Things series (you may remember her from the opening chapters of season 2).
It’s conceivable that Cline’s efforts on Stranger Things put her on Netflix’s attention, enabling her to land the role of Sarah when Outer Banks needed a new cast member.
Madelyn Cline made the jump to HBO on Vice Principals
Cline had the fantastic pleasure to play Taylor Watts on the crazy HBO sitcom Vice Principals in 2016–2017. Walton Goggins (Justified) and Danny McBride (Eastbound and Down) starred in this hilarious single-camera sitcom about the frequently violent struggle for control at a North Charleston public school. The fact that Vice Principals’ fictional high school was so close to Cline’s childhood home in South Carolina is intriguing, though we’re not sure if this had any real bearing on her casting. Maybe it’s simply that Carolina look she has.
Nothing surpasses a leading role on your own series, but guest roles are wonderful and all and have given Cline the chance to participate on some very major successful shows. We hope to see her in season 2 of Outer Banks as well as in two future films, What Breaks the Ice, a coming-of-age drama from writer-director James DeMonaco (the Purge series), and Once Upon a Time in Staten Island. Both are anticipated to be published this year, so it appears that Cline will be appearing a lot more frequently soon.
