Outer Banks creator Jonas Pate assembles a group of real-life musicians for his new drama about a teenage rock band
For the third season of the Netflix series Outer Banks, creator Jonas Pate put out a casting call for young musicians to play a gig on the popular YA show. Of the more than 5,000 people that responded, William Lipton, Axel Ellis, Jeremy Yun, Zendé Murdock and Jesse Golliher were cast as The Runarounds, not knowing that the intention was to spin the group into a series of their own. “The way they did it was pretty fun,” says Ellis. “Jonas posted on social media, ‘We’re looking for bands.’ Most of us thought we were signing up for an Outer Banks cameo, playing in a band for a song. But it was a whole different thing.”
A gig playing Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me” in a 2022 episode of Outer Banks has not only turned into an eight-episode drama about a high school band chasing stardom the summer after their graduation, but a bona fide pop group — like a One Direction of sorts. Since they were assembled by Pate, the five have done the work to form an ensemble that exists both onscreen and off. “You get into the room and write a lot of songs, and experience all the natural things that come with a real band,” says Lipton. “We did all the right things to prep, so everything that we want to be authentic on the show comes through. All the rehearsal scenes are just like us in real life, guitars strapped around us, shooting the s***.”
In the storytelling, Pate has tried to incorporate as much of the boys’ real lives as possible. “There was a little bit of interviewing,” says Murdock. “We sat down with the people who ended up being writers on the show and they asked us questions — the hard stuff — and we tried to give the most natural answers and let them into our personal lives.” For most of the guys, who have never acted before, this made inhabiting the characters easier. “I think Jonas figured that if he built our lives into it a little bit to jump-start the characters, that it would help us ease into the process of acting,” says Ellis. “It was a big help.”
Their friendship, though, was something the guys were left to forge on their own. “We’re all similar in age and we all have a shared love of music. We lived together during the pilot, so we were all in the same house, played pool, played some poker, and in our off times we’d go hang out downtown,” says Golliher. “You’re put in a perfect environment to just be friends with everybody.” While chemistry seems like something that could be faked for television, their camaraderie felt vital to the boys when it came to songwriting. “It’s such a vulnerable process,” says Lipton. “You have to be trusting of each person that’s on stage with you and in the writer’s room because you’re wearing your heart on your sleeve. You want to know that your boy’s got your back.”
Of course there is no music without a muse. On the series, Lipton’s character Charlie is mesmerized by Sophia, played by Pate’s real-life daughter Lilah. She may seem like an archetype, but to the actress, Sophia is more than a manic pixie dream girl meant to teach Charlie important life lessons. “Sophia’s mom passed away a few years before this story takes place, and since then she’s kind of been going through the motions of life, but she’s not really living,” she says. “She lost hope that she would ever feel alive again in a world without her mom. Throughout the course of the season, she taps into her artist soul and lets in friends that make her feel alive.”
Working with her father has been an incredible experience for Pate. “I see how much he cares about this project, about the art that he makes and about each individual member of this cast. And it is such a team effort. He cares about everyone’s ideas and he empowers everyone,” she says. “The first day on set, working with him was a little different because there’s a father-daughter relationship. Then we realized I’m an actor just like everyone else. We had a really great talk on the porch that night. We just realized how lucky we are to be in this situation and keep pinching ourselves that it really happened.”
As each character in The Runarounds tries to tap into their potential and wonders what their post-graduation future may bring, the actors portraying these characters had a deep understanding of what that moment in time feels like. “I was totally in that place, making those decisions,” says Pate of her time on set. “And there are so many relatable themes [in this show], of friendship, finding yourself and being there for each other. It’s about those transition years, when friends become your chosen family.”
The Runarounds, streaming on Prime Video