‘Outer Banks’ Star Madelyn Cline Says Spanish Police Mistook Her for a Sex Ring Leader

Filming abroad comes with its own set of unpredictable adventures, but few actors have found themselves at the center of a mistaken identity story quite as bizarre as this one. Sometimes the strangest plot twists happen entirely off camera.

Madelyn Cline has spent the past several years balancing her breakout role on “Outer Banks” with an increasingly stacked film résumé, including a turn in “Glass Onion” and her upcoming project “Day Drinker,” which reunites her with Penélope Cruz and Johnny Depp. That production took her to Madrid for an extended stay, and it turned into something far stranger than the actress ever expected.

While living alone in an apartment in Madrid’s Salamanca district during filming, Cline says local police repeatedly showed up at her door, eventually revealing that authorities believed she was running a sex trafficking operation out of the building. It wasn’t until a candid conversation with her “Day Drinker” costar Penélope Cruz that Cline finally understood what was actually happening.

“Did I tell you the story about how when I was in Spain, I was working, and the police kept showing up to my apartment door?” Cline said on the August 13 episode of Jake Shane’s “Therapuss” podcast. When Shane joked they might have thought she was a prostitute, Cline clarified the situation was even stranger, replying that the police believed she was “the leader” of the operation entirely.

According to Cline, the repeated police visits left her frightened and confused for weeks, since officers kept speaking to her in Spanish, taking her passport and personal information without ever explaining what she’d allegedly done wrong. She eventually opened up about the situation during a conversation with Cruz on set, mentioning she was considering moving out of her apartment entirely because of how unsettling the visits had become.

That conversation turned out to be the key to solving the mystery. When Cline mentioned she was living in Madrid’s Salamanca neighborhood, Cruz quickly realized it was the same building she herself had lived in years earlier, and recalled receiving a call from an old neighbor around that time warning that police had tracked a local crime ring back to that specific address.

With that context, the pieces finally fell into place. “They tracked it back to the building and they were coming to my apartment directly and I found out later that it was some sex ring,” Cline explained, adding that police apparently believed she was the operation’s madam despite her having no connection to it whatsoever.

Despite how alarming the situation had been in the moment, Cline has since been able to look back on the experience with humor, while also making clear she holds no judgment toward sex workers and simply wanted to clarify she wasn’t actually involved in the industry herself. The story has quickly become one of the more memorable behind-the-scenes anecdotes to emerge from the “Day Drinker” production.

The film itself continues generating buzz well ahead of its release next year, thanks largely to its stacked ensemble pairing Cline with two of Hollywood’s most recognizable stars in Cruz and Depp. Given how eventful Cline’s time in Madrid apparently was off camera, fans are likely hoping some of that same unpredictable energy carries over into the finished film once it finally reaches theaters.

For now, Cline’s brush with mistaken identity stands as a reminder that international film shoots can bring plenty of surprises that have nothing to do with the actual production itself.

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