Outer Banks premieres April 15 and it’s the perfect thrill ride to binge while we’re all stuck at home. The series follows a group of friends — John B., Kiara, Pope, and JJ — who call themselves the “Pogues.” They are living it up and getting into trouble in the popular beach vacation destination of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. When a hurricane knocks out the power, it sets off a chain of events that leads to a treasure hunt for gold. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Jonathan Daviss, who plays Pope, to get the low-down on the Pogues and those Kooks.
“It’s all split into categories. There’s the Kooks, who are the rich and live on Figure Eight, the million-dollar house side of the island,” Jonathan told HollywoodLife. “There are the Pogues, the kids who live on The Cut, the working-class side of the island. They rely more on each other and going outside. They would be the kids who could be without their phones for the next couple of months.”
These tight-knit friends each bring something different to their group. Jonathan revealed that Pope is “the smart one. He’s the voice of reason, despite the fact that a lot of the time they end up on adventures anyway. He’s cautious but he’ll still hop in head-first. He’ll just dip his toe in the water before he jumps in.”
When the hunt for the gold takes center stage, Jonathan admitted that Pope is a bit hesitant about diving into this adventure. “Pope’s always a skeptic,” Jonathan continued. “He enjoys his friends. He loves John B. They’ve been close for a very long time. When it’s first brought up, he’s super skeptical. He’s always going to be skeptical. He’s a realist, and it doesn’t seem real. And then when it starts getting real, it’s hard for anybody to not get attached to it. He’s trying to be skeptical, but at the end of the day, he wants to have some fun. Pope is really skeptical at first, but he trusts his friends. If his friends are 100 percent for it, then he’s on board.”
The role of Pope stood out to Jonathan from the moment he read the script. While Pope is the most level-headed of the Pogues, he’s not to be messed with. “I remember when I read the pilot way back when they were first auditioning, it just seemed like so much fun,” Jonathan said. “Pope seemed like he was the brains, the one making the plan, and I enjoyed that. When I was auditioning, I thought that despite the fact that he was considered to be the nerdy one, he was still in the action. It felt like he could hold his own in terms of the physically demanding parts of the show. He is a server and he is a worker. He’s smart, but he’s not to be underestimated.”
Jonathan also teased that Pope has a “unique circumstance” with his merit scholarship. “That’s his one way out,” Jonathan told HollywoodLife. “He’d be in the same group as John B. and JJ if he wasn’t super smart. His parents know that, too. His way out is not through the gold but the scholarship, and that’s very real to him. Everybody wants to find their way out of The Cut, and that scholarship is it for him. There are not many ways you can get out and doing what you want to do in life unless you have a scholarship or something crazy like that. It speaks a lot to the class system that despite how smart Pope is — and he’s probably one of the smart people on that island — he still has to do a bunch of rigmarole.”
Outer Banks also stars Chase Stokes, Rudy Pankow, Madison Bailey, Madelyn Cline, and Charles Esten. The entire first season will be available April 15 on Netflix.