Drew Starkey Thought He Was Fine After His Last ‘Outer Banks’ Scene — Then the Cameras Cut and He Cried for Two Hours

Drew Starkey spent the final months of Outer Banks filming convinced he had somehow become emotionally bulletproof. Then the last shot of his final scene wrapped — and everything he thought he had under control came apart at once.

The 32-year-old actor, who plays Rafe Cameron in the Netflix series, appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on July 30, where he opened up about what it was actually like to film the show’s fifth and final season after seven years with the production, according to Just JarFed.

“I Thought I Was a Sociopath”

Starkey described approaching the final weeks of filming with a strange sense of emotional detachment that he found genuinely puzzling at the time. While those around him were feeling the weight of the ending, he felt relatively little. He assumed he had simply processed the transition early or had reached a point where he was genuinely ready to move on. He described himself — with obvious self-awareness — as wondering whether he had simply stopped being capable of feeling anything about it.

That changed the moment someone called cut on his final scene.

Two Hours of Crying

The second filming ended, Starkey started crying — and didn’t stop for two solid hours. He described it as weeping rather than simply tearing up, a full and unrelenting release of everything he hadn’t felt during the weeks leading up to that moment. The memories, he said, came flooding back all at once.

What made it harder to contain was the crew. Throughout those two hours, cast and crew members kept approaching him to check in — and each time someone walked up, the tears would restart regardless of how composed he had managed to get in the moments before. He appreciated the kindness of it while also being completely unable to control his reaction to it.

The emotional weight of the moment made sense in hindsight. Starkey was 25 when he joined Outer Banks and is now 32 — the show spans nearly the entirety of his adult working life. The people he worked with became his closest friends. Seven years of shared experience doesn’t end quietly.

What’s Next

Outer Banks Season 5 — the show’s final run — premieres on Netflix on August 20. Starkey is also currently appearing opposite Anya Taylor-Joy in Apple TV+’s Lucky, which is streaming now.