Madison Bailey Nearly Drowned Until Her ‘Outer Banks’ Co-Star Rushed to Save Her

‘Outer Banks’ just wrapped its fifth and final season on Netflix, and the cast has spent the past few weeks doing what every ensemble does after a long run together: reminiscing. Between premiere red carpets and press junkets, Chase Stokes and Madison Bailey have been trading behind-the-scenes stories from five seasons of treasure hunting, boat chases, and Pogue chaos.

That nostalgia tour recently landed the two co-stars in a game of “Lie v. Lie” with Entertainment Weekly, the kind of lighthearted format built for playful trivia and old inside jokes. What started as a fun back-and-forth quickly turned into something far more serious once the conversation drifted toward the show’s underwater stunt work.

Stokes revealed that Bailey nearly drowned while filming a scene back in Season 2, and that he was the one who jumped in to pull her to safety. The moment happened in Barbados during a sequence where JJ, played by Rudy Pankow, gets knocked unconscious off a boat while Bailey’s character, Kiara, struggles to hold him above the water.

According to Stokes, he and Bailey had already been treading water for roughly a minute before the director even called action, making communication on set difficult from the start. As the cameras rolled, he noticed something was wrong when he could no longer see his co-star’s face.

Speaking on Entertainment Weekly, Stokes explained that Kiara’s face had vanished from view and he realized she was not able to breathe underwater. He jumped off the boat, swam over, and pulled Bailey up before anyone else on set fully grasped what was happening.

What made the moment even more unsettling was how the crew initially reacted. Because the scene called for a dramatic struggle in the water, several people on set assumed Bailey was simply delivering a convincing performance rather than genuinely fighting to stay afloat.

Bailey later added her own perspective on the chaos, admitting that she physically could not swim closer to the boat in that moment. She joked that everyone around her was impressed by what they thought was strong acting, unaware she was actually in real danger just a few feet away.

The exchange also revealed a fun contrast between the two actors’ comfort levels in the water. Bailey has been open about underwater filming being consistently one of the hardest parts of her job on ‘Outer Banks,’ while Stokes has built something of a reputation for making those same scenes look effortless.

That gap became a running joke throughout their interview, with Bailey needling Stokes for swimming “like a fish” while she struggled to keep pace beside him. It is a lighter callback to a moment that, at the time, was anything but funny for either of them.

Fans reacting to the resurfaced story have been quick to point out how seamlessly the near-tragedy was folded into a finished episode audiences watched without knowing what really happened behind the scenes. It is a reminder of just how much physical risk goes into the show’s signature boat and ocean sequences, season after season.

With ‘Outer Banks’ now closed out for good, stories like this one are becoming part of the show’s larger legacy, sitting alongside the stunts, friendships, and mishaps that shaped its five-season run. For Stokes and Bailey, it is also a small testament to a bond built through genuinely high-stakes moments, both on screen and off.

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