Drew Starkey Reveals He Cried the Most Out of Anyone on His Final ‘Outer Banks’ Day

Drew Starkey has spent seven years building a career around Rafe Cameron, the Netflix teen drama’s most complicated antagonist-turned-antihero, watching the character grow from villain to something far more layered across five seasons. As ‘Outer Banks‘ approaches its final season, Starkey has been increasingly candid about just how emotional wrapping the show actually was for him.

That candor first surfaced during a late-July appearance on ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,’ where Starkey described the final months of filming as deceptively calm, admitting he genuinely believed he was handling the show’s end well right up until cameras stopped rolling on his very last scene.

Once that happened, he said the emotion hit all at once, describing himself as weeping constantly and crying for a solid two hours afterward as crew members kept checking on him.

Now, in a new interview with GQ, Starkey has opened up even further about that final day, revealing just how deeply the experience affected him compared to everyone else on set. Reflecting on his time on the show, Starkey said, “I’ve loved, loved, loved my experience on that show,” before admitting he was a wreck on his last day and cried so much that he felt guilty for not feeling anything leading up to it.

According to Starkey, he initially told himself he was glad the show was ending, only for that composure to completely collapse the moment his final scene wrapped. He described the shift as sudden and overwhelming, saying that right after they yelled cut, it turned into pure waterworks, adding that he believes he cried more than anyone else involved in production.

Starkey’s connection to ‘Outer Banks’ stretches back to the show’s April 2020 premiere, when he was 25 years old playing a character who began as one of the series’ most straightforwardly villainous figures. Over five seasons, Rafe evolved considerably, and Starkey has previously credited that evolving relationship with the character, alongside the genuine friendships formed with his castmates, for why the ending hit him so much harder than he anticipated.

That emotional weight tracks with how Starkey has described the show’s cast and crew more broadly, calling them his best friends and framing the entire experience as one of the most sentimental stretches of his career. Now 32, he’s spoken about how strange it felt to realize just how much time had passed since he first joined the series as a much younger actor.

‘Outer Banks’ Season 5 marks the show’s fifth and final season, set to premiere on Netflix on August 20, closing out the saga of the Pogues and the treasure-hunting mysteries that have defined the series since its debut. For fans who’ve followed Rafe’s complicated arc across the entire run, Starkey’s emotional reflection offers a fitting coda to a character defined by far more nuance than his villainous introduction initially suggested.

With the final season just weeks away, Starkey’s comments add an extra layer of poignancy to how audiences might approach watching Rafe’s story reach its conclusion. Knowing just how emotionally invested the actor himself was in saying goodbye suggests the finale carries real weight behind the scenes, not just within the show’s fictional stakes.

For a series that built its identity around treasure, mystery, and a tightly bonded group of friends, it seems fitting that its ending left just as strong an impression on the people who made it as it’s likely to leave on the fans who’ve followed it for seven years.

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