After seven years of treasure hunts, impossible escapes and life as Sarah Cameron, Madelyn Cline is finally learning what life looks like without Outer Banks constantly waiting around the corner.
Vanity Fair spends a rare day off with the actress in its latest Off the Clock video, following Cline through a surprisingly ordinary mixture of exercise, food, friendship and a night out in Los Angeles.
But underneath the relaxed format sits a much bigger transition.
Outer Banks is over.
And Cline is still figuring out exactly how that feels.
The video was filmed during press for the fifth and final season of the Netflix adventure series, which premiered on August 20, 2026.
For Cline, the end represents far more than simply finishing another television job.
She has spent roughly seven years of her life connected to Sarah Cameron.
“Stepping away from Outer Banks is… I’m happy, I’m proud, I’m satisfied, but I’m going to miss it and it is a little scary,” she admits during the Vanity Fair video.
The length of that chapter is still difficult for her to process.
Seven years passed extraordinarily quickly.
And because the series filmed extensively in Charleston, South Carolina — where Cline grew up — the job also unexpectedly brought her back close to her family.
She describes that as one of the gifts of the experience.
Outer Banks may have launched her career internationally, but it also allowed her to spend years working in a place that already felt like home.
Now that routine is disappearing.
The final season brings the Pogues’ story to an end after five seasons, with Sarah, John B, Kiara, Pope and Cleo attempting to recover from JJ’s death while making one final attempt to secure the freedom they have spent the entire series chasing.
For Cline, saying goodbye has clearly been emotional.
Netflix has described the final chapter as the conclusion of the Pogues’ journey, while Cline has separately recalled the cast becoming overwhelmed during their final scenes together.
The Vanity Fair video catches her in the strange period immediately after that experience — still promoting Outer Banks, but already beginning to establish a life that no longer revolves around shooting it.
Her day starts with something considerably less dramatic than escaping armed treasure hunters.
A workout.
Cline admits that she has struggled to get back into a regular exercise routine and has been sleeping a lot.
She has also noticed that although she lost some weight, she lost strength with it.
Her current goal is therefore refreshingly straightforward.
She wants to feel strong again.
That means training with her friend Lukas Gage, whom Cline describes as her best friend and “soulmate.”
The pair originally met around a decade ago while working on an independent film, although Cline explains that it took them years to realise they should actually become close friends.
Their workout provides some of the funniest moments of the video, particularly as Cline remembers the many physical activities she tried growing up.
Kickboxing.
Horse riding.
Ballet.
Weightlifting.
She even competed in one small horse show and won a first-place ribbon.
Then she decided the pressure was too much.
The obvious irony of someone who disliked competitive pressure eventually becoming a Hollywood actress is not lost on anyone around her.
After training comes food.
Cline stops at Erewhon for a turmeric smoothie, salads and flowers while casually revealing another piece of extremely important celebrity information:
She does not like pineapple.
If she ever designed her own smoothie, she suggests something closer to peaches and cream.
The sequence also gives Cline an opportunity to talk about Los Angeles itself.
She has lived there for almost ten years.
At first, she hated it.
She did not understand the city and struggled to connect with it.
That changed once she built friendships and began finding steady work.
Now she says she cannot imagine living anywhere else.
There is a reason days like this matter to her.
Film and television production can take actors away for months at a time.
Cline talks about missing birthdays, parties and ordinary gatherings while shooting.
A free day in Los Angeles therefore means more than simply not working.
It means temporarily getting back the small pieces of normal life that disappear while making a series.
And her day becomes increasingly less normal as it continues.
The evening takes Cline to Hamburger Mary’s in West Hollywood for a drag show, where she spends time with performers and receives a particularly enthusiastic welcome.
The segment connects with another part of Cline’s career when the conversation turns to horror movies and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
She talks about performing one of her own stunts for the film, which involved learning how to flip over the side of a boat while secured in a harness.
Watching the finished moment back apparently made the fall look considerably more chaotic than it felt while shooting.
Her conclusion is simple:
She cannot escape boats.
Considering the amount of time Sarah Cameron has spent around water, that feels appropriate.
Yet the most interesting thing about Vanity Fair’s video is how little it feels like a conventional promotional interview.
There is no formal chair.
No carefully organised discussion of upcoming projects.
Instead, Cline talks while exercising, ordering food, driving around Los Angeles and spending time with friends.
That gives her comments about Outer Banks a different weight.
The franchise that transformed her from a relatively unknown young actress into an international star is ending in the background while normal life slowly begins to return.
Cline sounds proud rather than desperate to distance herself from the series.
She also sounds genuinely uncertain about what comes after something that occupied such a large portion of her twenties.
That combination makes sense.
Outer Banks premiered in 2020 and became one of Netflix’s defining young-adult adventure series.
Sarah Cameron became inseparable from Cline’s public identity.
The cast grew up together.
The audience grew with them.
And the final season now closes a period of her life that existed before much of the fame that followed.
There will obviously be other films and other characters.
Cline has already expanded far beyond the show through projects including Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
But there will only ever be one first role that changes everything.
For Madelyn Cline, that was Sarah Cameron.
Vanity Fair’s Off the Clock video catches her in the brief space between that chapter closing and whatever comes next.
A workout.
A smoothie.
Some time with friends.
A drag show.
And a chance to realise that after seven years of constantly being a Pogue, having an ordinary day off can feel pretty special too.
Watch A Day Off With Madelyn Cline below.
