Outer Banks' Rudy Pankow had a hilarious reaction to his co-star learning about his Season 4 death.
While Netflix's teen treasure-hunting drama regularly places its cast in harm's way, Season 4 shocked audiences in killing off an original main character, JJ Maybank, played by Rudy Pankow.
As fans grapple with JJ's loss ahead of the show's fifth season, it appears Rudy Pankow knew his character's fate ahead of time and responded to his co-star's reaction in the best way.
Rudy Pankow's Reaction to Co-Star Learning About JJ's Death
In an exclusive interview with The Direct, Outer Banks star J. Anthony Crane explained how he learned his character Chandler Groff was going to kill JJ in the Season 4 finale, as well as Rudy Pankow's hilarious reply.
According to Crane, he had to wait a while before the writers gave him the season finale script, saying, "I get to script number nine. I was like, 'this isn't the end:'"
"What happened with me is, I get the part in, let's say December, and we're going to start shooting in mid-January. And, they start just sending me emails like scripts. So now I'm like up to script number seven. I'm trying to keep up; I'm reading as fast as I can. And, I get to script number nine. I was like, this isn't the end. They were like, yeah, there's one more we're working on. We're working on the last script. And, they just were never sending it. They didn't send it; they didn't send it. I even went down and shot stuff in Charleston from maybe Episode 1, Episode 2 and 3 in January. And then, we were breaking and all about to go to Morocco to shoot that finale."
Ultimately, he wasn't sent the season finale script which revealed JJ's death until the "night before we're leaving for Morocco:"
"We shot the finale first. In order. Before we shot the rest of the season. The night before we're leaving for Morocco, they emailed me Episode 10. I had just spent like the last week getting to know Rudy. We had this relationship we had to start carving out. And man, we were real like intimate right away. Really just friendly and got along really well and laughing a lot."
Season 4 of Outer Banks delivered a bombshell of a twist with Chandler Groff revealed to be JJ's birth father, as well as his mother's (the newly introduced Larissa Genrette) murderer and later his own.
But while Rudy Pankow seemingly knew about his character's death, and Crane's character would be responsible, the actor explained, "he didn't tell me. But I didn't know that he didn't know!"
"I think he knew what was going to happen, but he didn't tell me. But I didn't know that he didn't know! I didn't know he knew already. I thought we're all getting the script at the same time."
When the actor reached out to Pankow for his feelings on being killed off, the JJ star jokingly responded, "'Your character's pretty stabby':"
"I texted him like 'Whoa man, you okay with this?' As if to explain that he knew about it long ago, he said, 'Your character's pretty stabby.' You son of a gun. He knew all about it! He was just waiting for me to find out."
Leading up to Outer Banks' latest season, there were rumors that Season 4 might be Pankow's last.
Whether any online speculation was true, and just how early the JJ star knew how his Outer Banks story would end, is unknown (find out what J. Anthony Crane said about JJ's potential Season 5 return here):
J. Anthony Crane confessed playing JJ's murderer was "a tough thing to do" as audiences "love the heck out of that guy:"
"And, that's a tough thing to do on a show because people love the heck out of that guy. Actor and the character. You just want to do it right with the right amount consideration. You want to build that relationship as well as you possibly can. It's kind of like an honor in a way to send it out in the right way."
As for how the rest of Outer Banks Season 4 cast responded to him playing such a devastating villain, Crane acknowledged, "It was wild to be the one," but "they were real sweet with me:"
"It was wild. It was wild to be the one. But they were real sweet with me. We joked way too much. It's a delicate series of jokes when you're in the villain position. You've almost be like the funniest, nicest guy. Because you're this close to being that a-hole. Cause if you're too close to that guy is, they kind of expect it."
Since the finale concluded with the Pogues plotting to track down Groff, J. Anthony Crane is expected to return as part of Outer Banks Season 5 cast.
Netflix has yet to announce Season 5's release date.
Seasons 1-4 of Outer Banks are available to stream on Netflix.
