Season 4 of Outer Banks may be over, but drama among the cast is far from finished. With the end of the show’s fourth season came plenty of new storylines, including Rudy Pankow’s JJ and Madison Bailey’s Kiara finally exploring their romance on-screen. While their fictional characters share a relationship on OBX, fans have speculated the opposite about Pankow and Bailey IRL, and Pankow’s ex has now entered the chat, stirring up even more drama and speculation about the cast’s behind-the-scenes drama.
Hints of a potential feud between Pankow and Bailey came when fans noticed the show was using body doubles to make it appear like JJ and Kiara were embracing each other in various OBX scenes. But, why wouldn’t they want to film these scenes with one another? Well, fans have rooted for their characters to be together since the first season of OBX, and there have been rumors that Pankow’s partner, Elaine Siemek, and Bailey’s partner, Mariah Linney, were strongly against JJ and Kiara’s romance on the show. Her Campus reached out to Pankow and Bailey’s teams for comment on these drama rumors, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
An incident at a cast dinner in 2023 supposedly left Siemek at odds with Bailey and Linney. Fans noticed that Pankow and Bailey were rather close and often posted each other online during Seasons 1 and 2 of the Netflix series. However, this stopped when Season 3 arrived in February 2023. It’s truly unclear if there is real beef between Pankow, Bailey, Siemek, and Linney, though Pankow’s ex, Teo Marcella, is throwing in her two cents on the situation.
Siemek first met Pankow while she was working on the set of OBX. At the time, her was supposedly in a relationship with Marcella. Some fans have theorized that Siemek was jealous of Marcella due to her past with Pankow and her friendship with Bailey because they, too, met on the show’s set. What’s more, an old picture of the cast hanging out seemingly around Season 1 has now resurfaced on TikTok, which included both Siemek and Marcella.
After the picture went viral, Marcella lightly addressed the drama by posting a TikTok video on Nov. 16 with the audio, “I’m not just a b*tch, I’m a b*tch with a backstory.” Marcella directly referenced the resurfaced photo in the caption of her post, writing, “watching everyone guess what happened based of[f] one photo from 6 years ago.” Her Campus reached out to Pankow and Bailey’s teams about Marcella’s video, but did not hear back by the time of publication. The tea (or should I say Teo) is hot, y’all!
Neither Pankow, Siemek, nor Marcella have spoken publicly about this alleged drama, but I’ll be waiting with bated breath to see if they do.