“Should I cut all my hair off?” Madelyn Cline asks, pulling her blond waves out of an updo. “I was thinking of getting a pixie cut and—”
KJ Apa cuts her off: “No, no, no,” he says, incredulously. “You’re crazy right now—you’ve been working too long. When you work too long, you start thinking, Maybe I should dye my hair pink, or maybe just shave it all off! I love your hair. Don’t chop it off.”
It feels like I’ve crashed a private catch-up between friends versus what I’m actually doing, interviewing two costars on a press tour. The actors each rose to fame on the waves of teenage TV catnip; Madelyn on Netflix’s hit Outer Banks,¹ KJ on the seven-season CW show Riverdale. And now their paths—and palpable chemistry—have converged in The Map That Leads to You, a Prime Video romantic drama by director Lasse Hallströn.²
1. Outer Banks season 4 debuted with a whopping 1.2 billion minutes watched, making it a huge success for Netflix. To no one’s surprise, the show will return for season 5 in 2026.
2. The director behind What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and nearly all of ABBA’s music videos, fun fact.
In the movie, Madelyn plays a straitlaced student named Heather who collides with KJ’s spontaneous stranger Jack while on a Mamma Mia!–coded European sabbatical. “It turns her girls’ trip upside down in the best way possible,” explains Madelyn. “They say opposites attract, and together Heather and Jack form one very complete Venn diagram.”
In real life, Madelyn and KJ’s bond is less “opposites attract” and more “two kids with race car brains hyped up on pixie sticks,” a pair of sprinting hares in a world of tortoises. In the beginning, they had only a passing familiarity with each other’s work. KJ first caught an episode of Outer Banks while shooting The Map That Leads to You, and Madelyn watched season 1 of Riverdale while recovering from wisdom-tooth surgery (meaning, she remembers basically none of it). Yet the two have obviously now forged a deep, if chaotic, friendship full of playful fighting, flirting, and finishing each other’s sentences.
“I always know that whenever KJ and I are going to be doing something together, it’s going to be an absolute mess and a really good time,” Madelyn says. “We’re like Mr. and Mrs. Smith—if it was mixed with Dumb and Dumber.”
Where does that leave our chances of staying on topic during this interview? Truthfully: doomed.
Giorgio Armani sweater and pants, hat from The Society Archive.
In The Map That Leads to You, your characters have a great talk about past lives. Do either of you believe in those?
KJ: I do now. So much crazy stuff happened while we were shooting.
MC: Oh my god.
KJ: We spoke to this dude who clued us in to how you have relationships with people in your current life that you potentially had relationships with in the past.
Have you two crossed paths before?
MC: He told me that in a past life, we lived in Italy and I was your mom.
KJ: Yeah! Wasn’t it in the 1800s?
MC: And then in another past life, we were brother and sister.
KJ: Now we’re just colleagues.
MC: We got downgraded.
Has anything this man said about your current lives actually checked out?
KJ: I will say this: A good 60 percent of what he said has not happened.
MC: True, but I think that’s because we asked him for specifics. He did say that, for our mutual friend Alex Fine,³ this was his first lifetime on Earth and he’s an alien. That I believe!
KJ: We all believe that because, honestly, he doesn’t have any logical sense.
3. A triple threat in his own right, having founded the wellness/fitness company Almost Home, acted in 1883 and American Primeval, and married singer Cassie, with whom he has three kids.
I love that this movie brought you to a place where you’re like, “You know what? I believe in past lives.”
KJ: With Madelyn, I felt like we’d known each other for a while. Everything was just easy. I wish it was like that working with most actresses. What can you say? Look at her, she’s an absolute monkey beast.
What does it mean to be a monkey beast?
KJ: Basically, being a beast is all about…you know what? I can’t say it. It’s just something you feel in someone.
MC: If you know, you know. If a fellow beast is looking at you and says, “I see you…you’re one of us, you’re a beast,” then you don’t question it.
What do monkey beasts get up to when they aren’t shooting romantic movies together?
KJ: I’d go to the dentist, honestly. I haven’t been to the dentist in a long time.
MC: Oh wait, I haven’t either. We should make an appointment.
KJ: I have a 3-year-old⁴ and any spare time I get, I’m doing my own shit. So honestly, I wouldn’t go anywhere. I’d stay home and get all the things that I need to get done done.
MC: That’s some real dad shit. Daddy beast. If I had time off—
KJ: I bet you would choose to work.
MC: You’re completely correct.⁵ If I had a month off and I could somehow make work happen, I would do that. Or I would stay home and sleep. I love sleep. I love being in my enclosure. I find it to be so much fun being nonverbal.
4. KJ shares his son with ex-girlfriend Clara Berry.
5. Madelyn’s filmography reflects her hustle: In addition to The Map That Leads to You, she was recently in I Know What You Did Last Summer and continues to lead Outer Banks.
Balenciaga dress, Madelyn’s own earring (worn throughout).
Relatable. If you do travel, who knows, maybe you’ll meet someone cute on the train like in your movie.
KJ: I want that to happen to me, honestly. It’s lonely these days.
How do you meet people? Can a rom-com meet-cute even happen given the state of the internet?
MC: I think yes, but for me, it usually happens through work or mutuals.
KJ: Honestly, cool things still happen to me in real life sometimes. I was flying back from Paris and the flight attendant gave me her number on a napkin. I loved that.
MC: Did she really?
Did you call her?
KJ: Oh yeah, and I hung out with her.
MC: You did?
KJ: I did. I’m not going to tell you what we did. But also, I find that the grocery store is another great way to meet people.⁶ People aren’t really on their phones much, so it’s an easy way to have conversations.
6. Is KJ being 100 percent serious about all this? Maybe not. Did we still publish it verbatim just in case? 100 percent.
You make eyes over the produce?
KJ: Yeah. Honestly, for me too, I can just ask my son to go talk to a girl for me. I say, “Go tell that girl I love her.”
Have you ever actually done that?
KJ: One time. My son is so unashamed. He’ll just go do whatever I tell him to do.
Like a little wingman.
KJ: He’s a beast. And he knows what he’s doing, I’ll say that.
MC: He learned from the best.
What’s the accuracy rate of that move? It’s gotta be either 0 or 100.
KJ: Not accurate. Because a lot of the time, he goes up to the wrong woman.
And then you’ve got a date with a 90-year-old from the grocery store.
MC: I don’t have a son to do that with yet.
KJ: I’m your son!
MC: You have been. My son with an even tinier son. We’re like a Russian doll set.
KJ: I’m your freaky beast.
We’ve fully derailed—it’s perfect.
MC: As soon as we get together, all of a sudden we start talking in code.
On KJ: Burberry coat, t-shirt from The Society Archive, Giorgio Armani pants, Marsèll boots, David Yurman jewelry.
On Madelyn: Isabel Marant dress, Araks bra and briefs, Dolce & Gabbana boots, Thistles sunglasses, Cartier ring.
Has this always been your dynamic? Was the banter immediate?
MC: Yeah, it’s funny. KJ operates solely on feeling. He leads with how something makes him feel, and if it doesn’t make him feel a certain way, he’s on to something else.
KJ: I’d say that’s accurate. By the way, that’s why I’m sober now.
MC: I know this because I’m your mom.
How do you operate, Madelyn?
MC: I can be spontaneous and instinctual, but I’m also a workaholic.
KJ: I mean, you’re on another planet most of the time, in a beautiful way. You’re constantly teetering the line of somehow getting everything done at a very high standard, while making fun of everything at all times. Somehow everything becomes pink and fluffy and stupid.⁷
MC: Pink and fluffy and stupid…that is what my brain looks like. It’s fluffy because there’s a little bit of mold on it. It’s a little rotted. There’s a bit of brain rot going on.
7. For the record, KJ also describes Madelyn like this: “She has such a lightness about her that makes coming to work so enjoyable, because you smile every time you look at her. I’m moody, but I can’t not be in a good mood around her—it’s infectious. It’s really a blessing for me to be with people like her. It makes my job easier, it makes my life easier, and it makes my life more enjoyable.”
And Madelyn, what does KJ’s brain look like?
MC: Let’s say we’re in a cartoon. And you know how in parts of a cartoon, they zoom into a person’s brain and it’s this physical space with little people inside? KJ has three of them, and they’re all shooting BB guns at the walls. There’s a thousand of these little BB guns just shooting around, pinging off the walls, and it’s not stopping.⁸
KJ: Do I have ADHD?
MC: Hmm, any more silly questions?
KJ: Fuck off. Do you think I do?
MC: KJ, we both do.
KJ: I don’t even know how we shot a movie together. And with Lasse!
MC: I don’t know how we finished any of our scenes.
KJ: He was wandering around looking for seashells during filming.
MC: One day, we did genuinely lose him. We couldn’t find him for 30, 45 minutes. I think he was trying to get on the wrong train. He’s wonderful.
KJ: Really wonderful. I love him so much because although he’s in his 70s, he still has all of his curiosity for life. I think that’s why he cast us in the movie—he casts like-minded people.⁹
8. Madelyn also has this to say about KJ: “KJ is an open book. I really felt like we were a team on this one. He was my partner, and we were fully in it together.”
9. “I think onscreen chemistry is really hard to replicate if it doesn’t naturally exist,” Madelyn says about likeness and similarities. “I mean, you can do what you can, but there’s nothing quite like it.”
How “like-minded” are you to your characters, pragmatic Heather and spontaneous Jack?
KJ: I’m similar in that my relationship with my higher power is very strong,¹⁰ and I rely on it every day. I always turn back to, Okay, I’m not in control. Whatever’s happening to me is happening to me for a reason bigger than I’ll ever understand.
In taking on this movie, I was coming out of a really, really dark point in my life, and the script was one of those scripts that kept following me around. I knew I had so much to learn from that character, especially where I was in my life in terms of control and acceptance at a time when I was like, “I can’t do this anymore. I have to put my hands up and ask God to help me.” I knew that this character could help me. That’s just how God works in my life. I do think my character is more resilient than I am for sure.
MC: I think you’re a very resilient person.
KJ: I appreciate it. I was nervous about this because I hadn’t acted in a really long time and I hadn’t worked since Riverdale. I was just coming out of a really difficult time, so I was like, Shit, do I still have it? But I did it.
Something that I try to combat every day is this idea of self-worth. I think in our industry, as artists and as people who want to make a name for ourselves, a lot of self-worth is pulled from recognition of creation. You want to be recognized for what you’ve created, and you want people to see you.
10. KJ brought this part of his life to screen by playing a Christian singer/songwriter in 2020’s I Still Believe, which recently hit Netflix.
Do you find the same to be true in your own life, Madelyn?
MC: That’s actually something I was talking about the other day. Being an actor can be a bit of a mindfuck. People always say, “Don’t compare yourself to others” and “Don’t base your self-worth on things that you can’t control.” But ultimately, we do base our self-worth on our work because that’s our calling card, that’s our paycheck.
KJ: It’s the currency of what we do. When I think about these things, it all comes down to the people you end up attracting in your life. Working on this movie and working with someone like Lasse, like Madelyn, it’s a breath of fresh air to be like, Oh, I can put my ego away.
There are certain people where your ego wants to jump out a little more and you feel like you have to be a little more defensive or protective, but there are certain people who make you feel at peace. I want to spend more time with people in my daily life who make me feel like that.
Do you think the act of portraying romance onscreen allows you to be more optimistic about your real-life bonds?
KJ: You know what? That’s why I love what I do, because I get to live it. I get to experience it through someone else and so it is my reality at some point. I’m not going to lie, I fell in love with Madelyn on this movie in many ways that, one, are part of my job, and two, happened because she’s an amazing person. You lean into it because it’s fucking fun, and it’s life, and I like feeling great.¹¹
MC: Actually, this was a conversation KJ and I had pretty early on, about our own belief systems and how they tie into our characters. I want every project I do to be illuminating. It should feel like it’s holding up a mirror to you, because then I get to learn and experience things outside of my life as Madelyn. Each filming experience is so wonderful and beautiful and holds its own memories. How lucky are we to be able to live these tiny little forevers?
11. Another reason KJ thrived in this role? His New Zealand accent: “Playing Jack is the first time I’m using my natural accent, the first time in 10 years I’ve been able to live in the moment with another actor without feeling like I have a separation between me and the character with my voice, which is huge for me.”
On Madelyn: Tom Ford dress, Falke tights, Christian Louboutin shoes. On KJ: Tom Ford shirt and pants, Isabel Marant boots.
What do you know about yourself now that you didn’t before?
KJ: I know that no matter what happens, everything’s going to be okay. If I believe that, then I’m not allowed to stress. I’m not allowed to worry. It actually takes such a load off me. That’s what Jack taught me.
MC: I have this thing where I love spontaneity, but sometimes I catch myself trying to control outcomes of a situation, outcomes of a feeling, or what I think I should be feeling. Heather taught me how to completely give permission. You know what I also learned on this project?
What’s that?
MC: How to be a beast.
Any final messages for the beasts in Cosmo’s audience?
MC: I highly recommend the friends-to-lovers pipeline.
KJ: Don’t be afraid to love somebody. If you love someone, fucking give it everything, just don’t hold back. You live one time. You never know when that opportunity is going to happen again.
MC: If you love someone, just say it. It shouldn’t be this thing that is meant to be put into a case and opened up when you feel like it is the “right” time. Love is something that just happens. It’s nothing to be afraid of and you should express it.
KJ: Life makes you practical and logical. Go back to your first instinct, man. It’s to love.
(Title Image) On Madelyn: Mugler blazer and pants, Tom Ford shirt, Hermès tie, Madelyn’s own earring (worn throughout), Cartier ring. On KJ: Paul Smith blazer and pants, Carter Young shirt, Ray-Ban sunglasses, David Yurman jewelry. (Cover Image) On Madelyn: Khaite coat, t-shirt from The Society Archive, R13 shorts, Falke tights, Hermès boots, Bulgari necklace. On KJ: Loewe jacket and pants, t-shirt from The Society Archive, Frye boots, David Yurman jewelry.
Styled by Brandon Tan. Hair by Ledora for R+Co. Makeup by Jennifer Tioseco for Revlon. Production by Deer Studio NYC. Shot on location at the TWA Hotel.
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