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

Whereas Outer Banks stars Chase Stokes, Jonathan Daviss (JD), Rudy Pankow and Drew Starkey are having fun with all of the success they’ve seen from the present, it’s nonetheless not with out its challenges.

Forward of the premiere of the Netflix present’s fourth season, the actors not too long ago opened up in a joint interview for the quilt of Cosmopolitan about navigating their public and private lives on-line and the damaging sides of social media.

“Each technology goes by means of an invasion of privateness if you grow to be a public determine,” Daviss stated. “You would like, as an artist, individuals would have interaction within the artwork and you would have who you’re to your self. However now it’s about attempting to determine who you’re and what issues it’s essential to hold private versus what issues you possibly can throw on social media.”

It’s a steadiness that may typically be laborious to search out, particularly when on-line trolls begin to goal buddies and family members. Pankow beforehand needed to publicly defend his girlfriend, Elaine Siemek, in 2021 as a result of harassment she was receiving on-line.

“I feel lots of people can intertwine a story and what they need to imagine. They usually take it out on somebody that doesn’t deserve it. That’s unlucky and it’s laborious. And what’s much more unlucky is that it’s not in my management,” Pankow stated of his motive for talking out. “Nobody ought to undergo one thing like that. And that’s why social media is so difficult, as a result of typically it may possibly implement a story of a present as an precise narrative. For instance, what we’re recording is supposed to be consumed within the present. However some individuals would possibly take it as literal.”

Stokes pressured that folks want to grasp and acknowledge the distinction between “fictional characters” and the “people that created them.” He added, “We’re in a time the place you’re seeing a TikTok that’s of the fictional character, and then you definately’re seeing a model of the nonfictional character. So the traces are actually skewed.”

It’s additionally one of many the explanation why Starkey limits his presence on social media. “It may be actually merciless,” he famous. “I’m an extremely delicate particular person.”

Regardless of the negatives, there are nonetheless loads of positives to the communities they’ve constructed with their followers on-line. Pankow stated it’s good seeing that “this many individuals appreciated what you made.”

However it can be difficult for an actor when the vast majority of their fanbase is from a particular challenge. “Your relationship to the viewers is intertwined with these characters that we’ve been enjoying,” Starkey defined, which “could make leaping out of this world scarier.”

Outer Banks season 4, half one, additionally starring Madelyn Cline, Madison Bailey and Carlacia Grant, hits Netflix Oct. 10. The second half premieres Nov. 7.