Madelyn Cline reveals how Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery changed her for Outer Banks season 3

Madelyn Cline has been busy.

Instead of relaxing before returning to film the third season of Outer Banks (premiering Feb. 23 on Netflix), the 25-year-old actor flew to Greece for the summer of 2021 to shoot Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. What resulted was a whirlwind year working on both projects with only a little time in between. Calling in from "a little vacation" in Hawaii, Cline tells EW with a laugh, "It is so nice, but it's funny — I'm so used to going and going and going and I've just kind of been sitting still, and it's making me a little itchy."

After the past few years she's had playing Kook-princess-turned-Pogue Sarah Cameron on Outer Banks and vaping Twitch streamer Whiskey in the Knives Out sequel, it's no surprise that time off feels foreign for her now. "I wrapped Knives Out the beginning of September, and then we went back to film Outer Banks in February," she says. But even those few months she had in between Glass Onion and season 3 of her hit Netflix treasure hunt drama were still spent focusing on work. "Outer Banks is so physically demanding and emotionally demanding, so it was nice to have a little bit of time to prepare myself going into the new season. And I also had time to take the lessons that I learned from the Glass Onion set, the incredible cast, and Rian Johnson as a director, and really try to bring all the knowledge I could from Glass Onion to Outer Banks, because I learned so much."

Cline still can't believe she got to join the all star cast of Glass Onion — including Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kate Hudson, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Dave Bautista, and more — for the new whodunnit mystery, because she knew the opportunity was going to be a transformative experience for her as an actor. But she had no idea just how much her time filming the movie would change her.

"I was just so excited to have that extra foundation, but, I mean, I was always too scared to ask my Glass Onion cast 'what's your method?' even though I was so hungry to learn from them," she admits with a laugh. "But honestly, the most incredible lessons they taught me was just from having the absolute pleasure of watching them work and be in the midst of their craft. It was so wonderful. The biggest, most helpful lesson is with the absolute freedom with which they worked and how they were on set — if they didn't like anything that they did, it was just, 'We'll cut that,' and they would just start over. There wasn't so much pressure that they put on themselves, they just allowed themselves to be in the moment and be free and try things and maybe fail and we'll try it again, we'll do another take."

Cline describes it as "feeling like we were in the trenches of the theater" during those summer months in Greece. "We did so much together and we learned so much from each other and it was really, really such an eye-opening and wonderful experience," she says. "I felt like a sponge."

When she eventually returned to film season 3 of Outer Banks, she felt more confident than ever in her abilities as an actor. And the timing couldn't have been better, since the new season takes her character Sarah Cameron to higher highs ... and much lower lows. "Once again, we ramped it up and the stakes are higher than ever," Cline says. "It is quite a journey this year, again. Our writers are really all gas no breaks sometimes, and this season, a lot of what Sarah and John B have been through together, and the Pogues as well, comes to a head. I'm really proud of the way that we've handled it this season. I'm really excited for people to see it. You won't be bored."

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