The John B Farewell Tour Ends in the Old Studio

Chase Stokes, who played John B on Outer Banks for seven years, sat down with the Chicks in the Office hosts in their soon-to-be-renovated studio, making him the last guest in that space. The timing felt poetic to everyone: the show's final season had just dropped on Netflix, and Stokes was wrapping a press run that would, for the first time in nearly a decade, leave him without a set date to return to work with his castmates. "I found out this week that John B has apparently almost died 27 times by the end of season four," Stokes said. "To have the ending come all the way full circle and truly give a happy ending, not kind of bullshit it or leave it open-ended — I think it's something a lot of shows don't want to do."

Seven Years of Survival and Shedding Skin

Stokes's path to Outer Banks was not a straight line. Before the show, he was a pizza delivery guy in Florida, $30,000 in credit card debt, on unemployment, with an eviction notice on his door. He had faked his way into representation by creating a fake Gmail account pretending to be a manager, then immediately confessed to the agent who responded. His first legitimate audition was for The Vampire Diaries — a self-tape he shot like a short film in the woods with two borrowed cameras. The agent told him all he needed was a blank wall.