The Runarounds season 1 finale featured an iconic moment where the band bonded by singing Hannah Montana‘s song “The Climb” — but was that the first song choice?
During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly before the show premiered on Monday, September 1, William Lipton, Axel Ellis, Jeremy Yun, Zendé Murdock and Jesse Golliher recalled at least one other track in contention before the Disney throwback.
“I think it was ‘Waterfalls’ by TLC,” Ellis recalled before Lipton added, “I just remember very vividly Yana Grebenyuk Jonas [Pate] coming up to some of us on set and being like, ‘This is what we’re doing. It’s going to be phenomenal.’”
Golliher, meanwhile, recalled there being “a list of songs to choose from” in addition to “The Climb,” which Lipton called “by far the best” choice for the emotional scene.
Based on a teleplay from Outer Banks cocreator Pate and David Wilcox, the fictional series follows the real band of the same name. Lipton, Ellis, Yun, Murdock and Golliher formed the musical group in 2021 when Pate released a casting call for a group to appear on Outer Banks. The Runarounds was chosen out of 5,000 musicians who responded. The episode was filmed in 2022, as The Runarounds recorded an EP and went on tour.
“The time we met we played a bunch of music together,” Ellis recalled while speaking to Us. “But we also tried to act out some scenes. Thankfully we had Mr. Chase Stokes there with us just really coaching us.”
He continued: “It was our first time ever trying acting really. So he was awesome and had he not been there, I don’t know if I would be here.”
Murdock, meanwhile, offered more insight into the brief crossover with Outer Banks in season 3. He noted it was “not meant to be taken super seriously,” adding, “That was more for us in real life to go off the creation. That doesn’t have much to do with the universe.”
In addition to the musical group, The Runarounds also stars Brooklyn Decker, Maximo Salas, Marley Aliah, Hayes MacArthur, Mark Wystrach, Shea Pritchard, Lilah Pate and Kelley Pereira. J. Anthony Crane and Cullen Moss made brief appearances in different roles from the characters they currently play on Outer Banks.
Yun specifically showed his support for another opportunity for The Runarounds and the Outer Banks characters to cross paths.
“That’d be great. That’d be fun,” he shared. “We would be lucky to work with [them] as now the universes aren’t connected.”
Viewers tuning into The Runarounds will be thrilled to know that Jonas confirmed in December 2024 that Prime Video already ordered a second season before the show even premiered. He also revealed that he was writing a prequel to Outer Banks, titled Kildare. The series is still in the early stages but would feature a whole new set of young actors and focus on the founding of each group in the show’s fictional Figure 8 town.
Outer Banks is currently streaming on Netflix while The Runarounds is out on Prime Video.
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