Madelyn is featured on the cover of the latest issue of Cosmopolitan. This might be my favorite shoot ever! Check out the photos in the gallery!
“I’ve always read other people’s cover stories that start like this. ‘Having lunch with so-and-so at somewhere.’ Like, ‘She sits across from me and….’”
Madelyn Cline trails off as she slides into her seat, seeming to grasp what until recently felt unimaginable to the 25-year-old: She is now the so-and-so. (And I truly can’t resist, so yes, she is indeed sitting across from me in a booth with Pacific Ocean views at Malibu Farm, the kind of L.A. place you get after typing “beach aesthetic” into Instagram Explore.)
Unimaginable to her because just three years ago, she was still a literal unknown struggling to get auditions. Not too long before that, she was living out of her car. And then…“it” happened—that almost mythical Hollywood win.
For Madelyn, “it” went like this: Netflix hired her to costar in its 2020 teen adventure drama Outer Banks, which quickly became one of the service’s most streamed shows (season 3 premieres February 23). Then came an American Eagle deal. Then she was cast in this winter’s blockbuster mystery Glass Onion. And suddenly, she was all anyone could google.
Now she’s at lunch with that expression on her face. The one that comes from finally looking up and feeling almost shocked that you’re here. I recognize it because I’m wearing the same one—a few years ago, I wasn’t a person asking these kinds of “what’s it like to be one of the world’s most exciting new stars?” questions over salmon Nicoise salads either. So maybe we’re both soaking in the moment a little. I make one of those jokes that’s not actually a joke about how I’m writing down her exact outfit (cream-colored cropped turtleneck, matching puffer vest, black jeans, white sneakers, and a little bit of eyeliner from yesterday’s cover shoot that she couldn’t get off). She kids about what else I’m writing. At one point, she gets annoyed with a persistent fly, kills it with her bare hands, and slips into a serious magazine writer voice: “She killed a fly. She would hurt a fly.”
Once we really get into it though, we both move past the What This Moment Means shock, and Madelyn remains fully present—impressive eye contact, zero phone-scrolling breaks—and disarmingly nice (she is, in her own words, one “friendly motherfucker”). So nice, in fact, that she offers to split the check with me, even though it’s my literal job to pay the bill. I get the feeling this is the first and last time she’ll have to offer.
How did you unwind last night? It was a 10-hour shoot day and you spent a lot of it holding a 12-pound bowling ball. I’m tired just saying that.
I went home and made homemade Animal Style fries, like from In-N-Out. But when I put the fries in the oil, it was so hot, it just exploded. They were scorched on the outside and completely raw on the inside. And I had a couple of glasses of wine and watched Game of Thrones.