Chase Stokes Is Ready For His Next Chapter

10th October, 2024

Words by Emily Zemler
Photography by Rachell Smith
Styling by Chris Kim

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Being cast as John B on Outer Banks completely changed Chase Stokes’ life. The American actor was cast on the Netflix series more than five years ago and it’s been a tumultuous journey to arrive at its fourth season, which premieres on 10 October, thanks to a pandemic and the actor’s strike. Strokes grew up playing hockey and consumed movies like the Indiana Jones franchise with fervour while travelling from game to game on buses. He fell in love with storytelling, but didn’t imagine himself being part of the industry until his late teens. He also never imagined that he would be part of a TV show that had such a significant impact.

“It's such a rarity to go the distance in television,” Chase says, speaking from his home in Nashville over Zoom. “To start a story and to finish it in the way that you hope is really rare—or to even continue to tell a story. There are so many shows that go one season, two seasons, and then get cancelled. So it is such a blessing to be with the show and to take this character forward and every season get an opportunity to layer him even more and to do callbacks to earlier seasons and to right his wrongs or maybe make the same mistake again. After five and a half years of doing this show, there will always be a part of me that is with John B.”

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With the good, however, comes the bad, and Chase has found himself in the spotlight in a way that has been surprising and sometimes uncomfortable. His relationship with country singer Kelsea Ballerini, for example, often makes headlines.

“One of the big things that shifts is your privacy and that's something that ebbs and flows,” the actor reflects. “It peaks when projects are coming out and life gets a little bit different when you have projects in the ether, and then it dims down as things fade away. Outer Banks has absolutely changed my life. And I could sit and talk about how it's messed with my mental health, but I can also say that it has been the best thing that's ever happened.”

Instead of allowing himself to be overwhelmed by the attention that has come with success, Chase has put a positive spin on the situation. Along with having a “great therapist,” Chase works with Bring Change to Mind, a non-profit founded by Glenn Close to help erase the shame around mental illness. “I just remember thinking when I was younger how I really never saw anybody who was talking about it,” Chase says. “So for me, I've really found peace in being open about my struggles with anxiety and even ADHD. I’ve tried to navigate this industry with a very honest sense of owning my mental health.”

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His honesty has impacted fans, who often approach Chase to thank him for helping to get rid of the stigma that surrounds mental health challenges. “It’s beautiful thing to be respected and appreciated for the art that you put out in the world, but my favourite encounters with people are when they bring that up,” he says. “Because I know that when I was 15 or 16 I didn't want to talk about it because I was scared of people judging me. To now have people who find solace or feel empowered from the work that we've done with Bring Change to Mind and for people to go out and want to learn more, that, to me, is where the real work is done.”

Chase is similarly open about his feeling of imposter syndrome, which he says he had for a long time in his career. He’s been a chronic workaholic for the past few years, largely because he wanted to prove himself in Hollywood. He’s scheduled movies in between seasons of Outer Banks, which films in Charleston, South Carolina, flying around the world with almost no downtime in between projects. His recent movie, Uglies, filmed back in 2021, but additional scenes were shot earlier this year, with Chase jetting between Morocco and Atlanta to complete it. It was worth it, he says, because to “make sure that the movie works.” It subsequently landed at No. 1 in Netflix’s Top 10. “It's a trippy time to have a number one film in the world on Netflix,” Chase admits. “And then have a show that has done pretty well on the platform come out less than a month later.”

The theme of Uglies, a young adult dystopian drama about a society that bases its worth on physical appearance, resonated with Chase, particularly working in Hollywood. He’s been on both sides of that judgement throughout his career.

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“I've heard many of times in my career, ‘He’s great actor, but he's too good looking for this role,’” Chase recalls. “And then I've also been in comparison with other artists who I respect in my category of work that I'm not attractive enough or they don't think that I am good looking enough or there's something weird looking about me. It’s a physical industry, but you sign up for it. You know that's a component of it. If you don't know that that's a reality of what you're getting into then I would highly suggest anybody thinking about it to probably not pursue this industry.”

The fourth season of Outer Banks opens a new adventure for John B and his pals, who discovered the legendary gold of El Dorado last season. The series jumps forward in time to a new mystery: the location of Blackbeard’s treasure. It also harkens back to earlier episodes when the show focused more on the friendships between the characters and their relationship with the Outer Banks, which Chase calls a “core sense of self” for the series.

“The tagline for the season, whether it was TikTok influenced or not, was ‘Bring it on home,’” he says. “And it is true. There is something very beautiful about that. Sometimes when you have your space that you're adjusted and acclimated to, and you run away from it, like we did in the last two seasons, to get back into it and to feel safe in that space really helped with performances. It helped with really crafting the characters again and finding moments that felt authentic and real. And from a production standpoint when you're shooting overseas, you're on such a time constraint, whereas when you're shooting in your home location if something isn't working or if it rains and or the light’s not right or you look at a scene and it's not making sense, you can come back another day and give it another shot. That was what brought that beautiful authenticity to season one. We were really tapping back into that.”

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The season is split into two parts this year, with the nail-biting adventure unfurling over ten episodes. Chase spent nearly a year shooting, with the production interrupted last fall by the actors strike in Hollywood. The actor, who grew up on the East Coast, now spends a significant amount of his time in Charleston, where he has a house. His mom visits regularly and his sister goes to college nearby, often stopping by the set to take Chase’s dog Milo for visits.

“Working here has been a really beautiful re-connective tissue because it’s gotten me even closer to my family than I have been in recent times,” he says. “You go to LA and you pursue a dream, and you maybe come back twice a year to see family. But I see them a hell of a lot more than twice a year now.”

Milo, a pandemic dog, is especially popular on set, hanging out in Chase’s trailer when the actor is filming. He’s grown up on Outer Banks, just like Chase, although he has yet to appear on camera. “He's kind of crazy,” Chase says. “I love him to death, but he's a golden retriever German shepherd mix, so that level of energy is hard to contain. I don't know if he would be willing to commit to the idea of a scene unless it's just him running in the background, and we don't care about continuity. Then, maybe, we could get away with it.”

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In his downtime during production, Chase has been focused on what he can learn from the crew on Outer Banks. He took screenwriting classes in college and wants to know everything about how movies and TV shows are made, from the camera gear to how a shot is conceived. He calls it the “best film school you could ask for” and has put together an amalgam of knowledge from both the crew, frequent director Jonas Pate, and series creators Josh Pate and Shannon Burke. “It’s really allowed me to become a filmmaker in a way that I'd never thought I could,” Chase says “To have that on the ground experience. I’m a little bit type A and I want to know how everything is working.”

Next up, Chase is starring in Valiant One, a thriller directed by Steve Barnett, which he co-executive produced. He also recently shot romance Marked Men with Nick Cassavetes and he’s been writing scripts of his own. He’s currently working on a screenplay with a friend that he hopes will become his directorial debut.

“Getting into producing and building out a slate of projects has been a big component of this chapter of my career,” he says. “And part of it is taking it seriously. A lot of actors think, ‘Oh, I have this platform. People think that I can do these things.’ And that's just not how it works. There are so many people who are smarter, have more experience, and have studied different forms of the craft of filmmaking for way longer than I have. The last two years have really been about learning from those people and being a fly on the wall and learning how they've gotten from the concept of an idea to a script, and from a script to a pitch to getting a greenlit by a studio or a streamer. I took all of that knowledge and realised, ‘If there are stories that I want to tell that aren't being brought to me, why not create those stories?’ That’s something that I'm very excited about in this next chapter.”