Fiona Palomo felt some nerves joining the tight-knit crew Foreign banks – and it didn’t help that she appeared as the lover of one of the show’s thirstiest characters.
Palomo, 26, was first introduced as Sofia in Season 3 of the Netflix series (before being bumped up to series standard for Season 4), and she tells PEOPLE that it was “scary” to think about how fans would react. to her character’s blossoming romance with Rafe Cameron (Drew Starkey).
“It’s like, ‘I’m about to upset a lot of women,'” he jokes. “But it’s cool. It’s amazing to be on a project…where people are so invested in the characters and what’s going on.”
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“It’s cool to say, ‘Oh, God, I don’t know how this character is going to be received, because it’s like this character and that actor and all these little things,'” she adds. “But I think that just says how big a deal it is [Outer Banks] is, and I’m so happy that people have been good to me [thus] far.”
She even mentioned it to Starkey himself, 30, who isn’t as oblivious to the internet’s thirst for him as he might seem. She recalls, “We’d just be sitting on set, and I’d be like, ‘I know when this comes out, they’re going to be like, ‘Stay away from it!’ And we would laugh about it, he said, ‘Yeah, probably.'”
Fiona Palomo as Sofia in ‘Outer Banks’.
Courtesy of Netflix
Although it was “a little scary to see how [Sofia] should have been hired” ahead of the Oct. 10 premiere of season 4, part 1, Palomo says, “I feel like the love — or kindness — that I put into Sofia, and just to make sure that character works well and everything, to get excited and you seem to be very well accepted and very loved and it’s really nice. I’m really, really grateful.”
It shows her how “invested” the fans are, she says, before adding, “I’ve just seen really, really good stuff, and they really like it, they’re even defending her and saying, ‘Sofia, you deserve better.’ I’m like, ‘What’s going on?'”
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Palomo has only good things to say about working with Starkey – who has played the angry, violent older brother of Madelyn Cline’s Sarah Cameron since season one – as she describes him as “so kind, professional and welcoming”.
She couldn’t be more different from her character, she affirms. “I flew to Charleston to do a little chemistry with him, I guess, and that’s when I met him. And I remember — you have this scary image of Rafe and you’re obviously aware that he’s an actor — but he was really nice.”
It just speaks to “how amazing an actor he is,” she says.
“He really cares about his craft, and so do I, so it was really nice to have someone who cares so much to sit down and make sense of these characters and feel like they’ve spent all this time together that you never see on screen. ”
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Drew Starkey as Rafe, Fiona Palomo as Sofia in ‘Outer Banks’.
Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix
Building Rafe and Sofia’s backstory together was an important part of their preparations for Season 4, Palomo says, as the new installment sees their relationship progress to the point where Rafe makes promises about their future together.
She also knows that just looking at Sofia, “Pogue” with the working-class family, “you just want to sit down and say, ‘Sofia, we have to talk about this.’
But she sees some nuance in the bad boy, good girl cliché in it all, especially given Sofia’s family’s cultural background. She shares, “[She’s] it’s very warm and very simple [for her] relying on people and trusting and wanting to take care of them in some way. Well, I think she really means – [being with Rafe is] it’s not scary for her. I think she’s very ready to embrace all the parts of him and all that he is.”
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ia Challis as Ruthie, Austin North as Topper, Drew Starkey as Rafe, Fiona Palomo as Sofia, Deion Smith as Kelce in episode 404 of Outer Banks.
Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix
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“It’s really amazing that through some kindness and love, a person can potentially be more in touch with themselves,” she says of how Sofia may be changing Rafe, who has been “through such crazy events,” including the death of his father, Ward Cameron ( Charles Esten) in the 3rd season.
As for the rumor that Starkey might be the most withdrawn of the cast?
“I’m aware of it myself, but I also watch my castmates talk about how he’s not even aware of his cell phone. Like, period,” she says. “But it’s cool. He’s like a cool ’90s kid. He’s just like, ‘I don’t know where I left my phone. It could be anywhere on the set.’ And that’s cool. He just lives.”
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Part 1 of Foreign banks season 4 is now streaming on Netflix, with part 2 premiering on November 7th.
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Source: HIS Education