‘Outer Banks’ Stars on Navigating Their Public, Private Lives Online

While Outer Banks stars Chase Stokes, Jonathan Daviss (JD), Rudy Pankow and Drew Starkey are enjoying all the success they’ve seen from the show, it’s still not without its challenges.

Ahead of the premiere of the Netflix show’s fourth season, the actors recently opened up in a joint interview for the cover of Cosmopolitan about navigating their public and personal lives online and the negative sides of social media.

“Every generation goes through an invasion of privacy when you become a public figure,” Daviss said. “You wish, as an artist, people would engage in the art and you could have who you are to yourself. But now it’s about trying to figure out who you are and what things you need to keep personal versus what things you can throw on social media.”

It’s a balance that can sometimes be hard to find, especially when online trolls start to target friends and loved ones. Pankow previously had to publicly defend his girlfriend, Elaine Siemek, in 2021 due to harassment she was receiving online.

“I think a lot of people can intertwine a narrative and what they want to believe. And they take it out on someone that doesn’t deserve it. That’s unfortunate and it’s hard. And what’s even more unfortunate is that it’s not in my control,” Pankow said of his reason for speaking out. “No one should go through something like that. And that’s why social media is so tricky, because sometimes it can enforce a narrative of a show as an actual narrative. For example, what we’re recording is meant to be consumed in the show. But some people might take it as literal.”

Stokes stressed that people need to understand and recognize the difference between “fictional characters” and the “humans that created them.” He added, “We’re in a time where you’re seeing a TikTok that is of the fictional character, and then you’re seeing a version of the nonfictional character. So the lines are really skewed.”

It’s also one of the reasons why Starkey limits his presence on social media. “It can be really cruel,” he noted. “I’m an incredibly sensitive person.”

Despite the negatives, there are still plenty of positives to the communities they’ve built with their fans online. Pankow said it’s nice seeing that “this many people appreciated what you made.”

But it can also be challenging for an actor when the majority of their fanbase is from a specific project. “Your relationship to the audience is intertwined with these characters that we’ve been playing,” Starkey explained, which “can make jumping out of this world scarier.”

Outer Banks season four, part one, also starring Madelyn Cline, Madison Bailey and Carlacia Grant, hits Netflix Oct. 10. The second part premieres Nov. 7.