Madison Bailey Teases “Deeply Sentimental” Outer Banks Final Season & New Rom-Com Maintenance Required

After playing stubborn, anti-capitalist, one-of-the-boys Kiara “Kie” Carrera for four seasons on Outer Banks, Madison Bailey is entering her rom-com era. In Prime Video’s Maintenance Required, she plays Izzy, one part of an all-female mechanic shop who loves wearing head-to-toe pink as much as she loves giving manicures to people as they wait for their car repairs. Izzy’s best friend Charlie (Madelaine Petsch) owns the shop and is in a complicated situationship with Beau (Jacob Scipio), her anonymous online crush she doesn’t realize is also her corporate rival IRL. While sparks fly on and offline for Charlie and Beau, her besties Izzy and Kam (Katy O’Brian) provide the comedic relief and humor often lacking in recent romance movies. The movie is a classic rom-com (a nice modern twist on You’ve Got Mail) that allows Bailey to show off, as she puts it, a “more feminine” side we have yet to see from her onscreen.  

Now that Outer Banks is filming its fifth and final season, which Bailey is feeling “deeply sentimental” about, she’ll have the chance to explore whatever she wants. Whether that’s music (her first love), more acting, or all of the above, Bailey is certain she wants to explore all the different facets of her identity as a Black, queer woman. Over Zoom, Bailey talks to Refinery29 about OBX season 5, what’s next for her after Outer Banks, putting the “com” in rom-com Maintenance Required, and her thoughts on the age-old nail shapes debate: square or almond? 

Madison Bailey: It is such a fun movie, and I think that's why I wanted to be part of it. I read the script and [was excited] to be the comedy part of a rom-com. It just felt like something very different from what I've done before. I'm also playing a much more feminine character than I've got to play on screen. And so I got to tap into this side of me, this girly girl side of me, that was really fun. Also the cast is amazing, and I wanted to work with them as well.

MB: ​​Rom-coms are one of my favorite genres because they're just fun to watch. You can fall for the characters quickly, and it's an easy watch. Personally, one of my favorites is 50 First Dates. And I think it was really fun to do this genre that sort of had its peak in the early 2000s and I wish we were making more of them. I was happy to be doing a movie that I would be excited to watch.

MB: We need more! Just fun, easy, watches!

MB: The stylist and the nail tech on set definitely had some free reign. I have a green set and a pink set that I wear for the majority of the movie. I think I have four or five nail changes in total, two of them that I pitched and sent pictures for inspo for it was super collaborative. 

MB: Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, just on my socials. And I was like, Oh, this is so cool. I love fun nails personally. I love a simple fringe, but I also love doing all of the things and making every nail different. The process of putting on the nails was pretty easy. We just did nail stickers because I couldn't actually do acrylic due to having to change them per scene. So it was a little bit of a task because they weren’t as secure. I didn't get to just live my normal life with acrylic nails. They were very lightly on, so the whole day kind of looks like this [motions gingerly picking up things with her nails], and a lot of being so careful. I just accepted that they were gonna pop off throughout the day.

MB: Absolutely! Or I was just like, and we're rolling, and I'm like, no, no, no, I don't have my nails. I'm missing two. I cannot! 

MB: In the movie I had two long square sets and two shorter almond sets. Personally, I like long and tapered squares, not completely square. But not stiletto because I feel like it's hard to do that. So just a tapered square for me personally.

MB: [laughs] I love the long almond though! I like the long almonds better than the short almond.

MB: We were really fortunate for the majority of it to just come very naturally to all of us. As far as bonding, we did a lot of dinners, we did some activities, like an escape room, just fun things hanging out. Off set [hangouts] always help. But also I think we just clicked immediately.

MB: No, honestly, in my 11 years of being an actor, it was maybe the easiest scene I've ever done. [laughs] I was like, I know my lines. I'm off book. I'm ready to go call action. Where are we starting? “Super Bass” is one of those songs that people dedicated to learning the lyrics like 10 years ago and you'll never forget them.

MB: [laughs] I would say I'm a Barb. I definitely am.

MB: It was just so fun. I would say I'm a girly girl [but] I typically play very tomboy characters so I was very excited to tap into this side of myself and map out the looks and collaborate with the stylist. We wanted her style to be funky, but not unrealistic, just maximalist and fun and then with the jewelry, bringing some Oakland swag to her. 

MB: Deeply sentimental. Not only are we just trying to absorb everything for the last time and just really take it in, I think we've all been overwhelmed with gratitude this year. I would say that's the number one word: gratitude. We show our love to each other every day. We always tell each other that and we've just built such a support group and such a bond. It's going to be so insane to not be working with these people anymore, and I think we're feeling all that comes with that. Like, the other day, we were like, This is our Is this our last boat day? Like, is this our last time going out on the boats and coming back in at sunset? We’re all in our feels this year.

MB: What can I tease? I would just say that this season holds a different space tonally than we've seen in past seasons. We're all dealing with this loss [JJ’s death], and we see it pan out for all of these characters that are typically free-for-all, nothing-to-lose kids, and then we experience a loss and it hits all of us.

MB: Yeah. I mean, there's definitely moments where we're in tears [for the show] and there's more to cry about. I'm looking around like, Ah, everything's so sad. This is it! This is our last year! But like I said, just feeling so grateful.

MB: I think I'm excited to just to really be able to pick the projects that I want to do. I think I have done amazing projects that I really wanted to do. But it's also like there is an element of what I can do in this timeframe? And there are scripts that I've loved that [I couldn’t do] because they were shooting while I'm shooting [Outer Banks]. So I'm excited to have the availability in my schedule to really map out what I want to do.

MB: Absolutely. I mean, it's my hope that by the time I'm done with this amazing job that I have, that I will have been able to tell not only stories that I'm not that familiar with, but also to be able to tell all the stories within myself. Because, like you said, I am intersectional. I'm a woman, I'm Black, I'm queer, and I want to tell all of those stories from different perspectives and multiple times. I'm excited for those opportunities.

MB: What do I want to tell my 29 year old self? You know what? I've said that 30 sounds a lot better than 29 so I would tell my 29-year-old self to just wait it out. Like, next year is your year. Next year the fun starts. Enjoy your last year in your 20s for what it is but they make it sound so fun. I'm 26 and I'm telling you, 30 has got to be good, because this is tough. So I would say just soak it in and know that the best years are on the way.