Actor Chase Stokes may be living the luxe life in LA, but his heart is still running around down South. “I was in Malibu the other day,” the baseball-capped Netflix star tells Alexa over Zoom, “and it was high tide, and you couldn’t even go on the beach because the water was up to the shoreline.” He’s longing to be back in Charleston, where even at high tide, “you’ve got 50 yards of sand where you can take the dogs and sprint around, or get in the water and not be immediately bordering on frostbite.” You can take the boy out of the Outer Banks…
Or should we say, the “Outer Banks.” The hit series about a tight-knit group of treasure-hunting, (mostly) working-class teens has been shooting in South Carolina, standing in for its northern relative, for four seasons — with some notable departures for its globe-hopping characters. Most recently, Stokes’ character, the impetuous but big-hearted adventurer John B Routledge, found himself in the Orinoco Basin in South America, looking for the lost city of gold, El Dorado. Part of the show’s draw, he says, “is the National Geographic, David Attenborough, ‘Planet Earth’-esque landscapes. I never thought I’d be able to play a version of what I like to believe is a young Indiana Jones.”
He’s got the square jaw and the self-effacing charisma to fit that suit, for sure. And Stokes knows his source material. He may be only 32, but his taste in movies is old school — and Spielberg’s iconic archaeologist is top of the list. “One of the most proud purchases I ever made, after we finished the first season of ‘Outer Banks,’ was an original poster of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’’’ he says. “It was just my thing. I grew up on that franchise!” Other favorites? “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”; “10 Things I Hate About You.” He loves a quality rom-com.
Stokes is likely making first-edition poster money now, but much like John B, he keeps his scrappy origins close. His star role in “Outer Banks,” after a string of small roles in shows including “Stranger Things,” came just as his bank account was inching awfully close to zero. “Yesterday, I was out with my girlfriend” — that would be megawatt country star and former Alexa cover star Kelsea Ballerini — “and we drove by the very first apartment I had when I moved to LA,” he recalls. “It was this sub-300-square-foot junior studio. She said, ‘Would you, if you had to, go back to that apartment and restart?’” He said yes, without hesitation. “It was a really beautiful thing to give myself that little reminder: I would absolutely go back and take the journey again.” (Last year Ballerini shared the flirty DMs she first sent to Stokes to catch his eye.)
It seems unlikely he’d ever have to, though, as the new season of “Outer Banks” heats up. Out Oct. 10, the first episode sees John B and his friends, who call themselves the Pogues (named after the tiny fish, not the band), living the dream as they open a surf shop on Kildare Island. But don’t get too comfortable: This season takes the cast to ever more far-flung locales. The shoot took a year to the day, much longer than previous seasons, Stokes says. “Part of that was the strike, and the other part was that we shot in Morocco for what was supposed to be two weeks and ended up being two months.” What happened? “Oh, all sorts of things I think I’m probably not legally allowed to say,” he answers impishly.
The show first appeared in April 2020, smack in the middle of the pandemic, delivering a much-needed dose of “Goonies”-style escapism mixed with “Gossip Girl”-esque eye candy and drama. That season saw John B and the rest of the Pogues, JJ (Rudy Pankow), Kiara (Madison Bailey), Pope (Jonathan Daviss) and Sarah (Madelyn Cline), searching for a sunken ship with treasure aboard, a quest started by John B’s missing father. “We’ve pushed the boundaries into this really massive treasure-hunting show about these kids who are consistently in way over their heads,” Stokes says with a laugh.
Last month also saw Stokes in the Netflix film “Uglies,” an adaptation of the YA book about a dystopian, plastic surgery-centric society. And he’s got two more films on the way soon, starting with the military drama “Valiant One,” co-starring Lana Condor, in which Stokes plays a desk jockey soldier unexpectedly thrown into the line of fire. “It’s not the world of shoot-’em-up and exploding things,” Stokes explains. “And don’t get me wrong, I would die to do something like that! It’s just a very different story.” Next is “Marked Men,” a forthcoming drama from the director of “The Notebook.” “I adore Nick Cassavetes,” Stokes says. “He has been an all-time, like, grail filmmaker for me to work with, and he’s a lifelong friend and mentor.”
The Maryland native’s got a tight bond with his “Outer Banks” castmates, too; his phone buzzes partway through our interview and it’s his co-star, Bailey, checking in. “I’m very thankful that all of us have stuck close,” Stokes says, “because when your life changes like this, there’s not a lot of other people who can understand it. To still have that connective tissue and relatability, it’s a really special thing.”
“Outer Banks” fans know the Pogues have a uniform of sorts, a cutoffs-and-tanks aesthetic that nods at the relentless humidity of a Carolina summer. John B also wears a signature gray bandanna around his neck, a well-worn talisman that’s seen him through some stuff. (It has also been the subject of speculation about turning out to be an ancient artifact, which would be an excellent plot twist.)
Off-screen, Stokes is adept at switching between high-end and super casual. “What’s so fun about fashion is it’s your own self-expression, and there aren’t really any rules,” he says. “If anybody tries to place a rule around it, they’re sort of fooling themselves and attempting to fool you.”
Our shoot with Stokes finds him reflecting on the evolution of his own style.
“It feels really elevated,” he says. “I think at 32, it’s time for me to dress for my actual age. To dress in the ways that I traditionally would, versus maybe what the world sees me as on TV.”
“I think at 32, it’s time for me to dress for my actual age. To dress in the ways that I traditionally would, versus maybe what the world sees me as on TV.”
In his capacity as Ballerini’s boyfriend, he’s known to wear cowboy boots, trucker caps and even a “trucker’s wife” tee in one goofy Instagram post. When he and Ballerini step out on a red carpet, they make it count. The couple, who’ve been together since February 2023, were a study in contrasts at this year’s Met Gala: Ballerini in sheer paneling and florals in line with the theme, “The Garden of Time,” and Stokes a dark and glittery rock star, shirtless under a Michael Kors tux. “There was a lot of inspiration from early Michael Kors work,” he notes. “It was a dark contrast with what Kels was wearing.” I ask how his first gala went. Is it easy rubbing elbows with the style-setters of the world? “God, no,” he laughs. “I battle imposter syndrome so bad.”
Just as it was all about to be too much, Stokes hopped on a plane back to Charleston at 4 a.m. that night, then spent the next day on a boat in the middle of the ocean. It’s a head-spinning lifestyle, and he makes sure to build in moments of stillness to remember what’s what. “When life moves at this pace, it’s so important to align yourself with forms of normalcy, outside of just the workspace or outside of things like the Met, to make sure you just have a moment to touch grass,” Stokes says. “Because it can all get so fast and so high-paced that you lose sense of what is real and what is not.”
One of the most reliable ways to keep your head on straight amid the flashbulbs and the flattery? Date someone whose fan base often has no idea who you are. When Stokes is out with his girlfriend, he says, he’s likely to get someone’s smartphone slapped into his hand so he can take a photo of its owner with Ballerini. “They’re like, ‘I know you’re the boyfriend. Can you take a photo of us?’ You get your ego checked a little bit,” he says with a laugh.
Life with a singer, he explains, is a study in a different kind of art. “It’s fun to watch a song go from a voice memo on the back porch all the way to mixed and mastered and finalized,” he explains. And he’s been there for milestone moments, like the first time Ballerini’s mother heard her new ballad, “Sorry Mom.”
“[Kelsea] was on a retreat, and I had taken her mom to dinner,” Stokes recalls. “And she texted me, ‘Hey, I want you to listen to this with my mom.’ We sat in the car and I played it, and I watched her mom get really emotional, because it is such a beautiful song. It’s such an honest interpretation of what any child would, I hope, want to say to their mother at some point. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, ‘There’s nothing to be sorry about.’” She wasn’t the only one with tears in her eyes, he adds: “I was a wreck!”
But then, he shrugs: What is life about if not occasionally letting yourself be a wreck (or explore one)? “‘Outer Banks,’ Stokes says, “is sort of a metaphor for life: You’re never really prepared for anything as much as you’d like to be. Life will throw you curveballs. And it’s all about the people you keep close and the way you approach things. We like to think we have our shit together — and we rarely, rarely do.”
Editor: Serena French; Stylist: Ashley Pruitt for The Only Agency; Photo Editor: Jessica Hober; Talent Booker: Patty Adams Martinez; Groomer: Catherine Furniss for Art Department LA using Balmain Hair; Fashion Assistant: Mariah “Kaij” Jackson; Production Assistant: Zach Roy
