Aahana Swrup
Prime Video’s drama show ‘The Runarounds’ tells a riveting story about a ragtag group of teenagers with big ambitions, who have the tenacity to back up their dreams. Charlie Cooper, a fresh-faced high school graduate, has aspirations of making it big with his bandmates. However, he only has one summer to achieve his goals before most of his friends inevitably scatter across the country in pursuit of college and other obligations. Thus, despite the odds stacked against them, Charlie and his friends continue to pursue their artistry in earnest.
Various facets of each member’s personal life present unique challenges in the band’s journey. Even so, the friendship and shared passion between the boys and their small behind-the-scenes team remain a guiding light that promises to lead them toward their destiny. The story, intricately infused with music, offers a realistic coming-of-age story about young artists and their youthful devotion to their art. Interestingly, the on-screen band and their narratives have an intriguing origin story.
The Runarounds are a Real Band That Found Their Start on Outer Banks
‘The Runarounds’ is a unique show that mixes fiction with reality in a remarkable way. For years, creator Jonas Pate has had the idea of centering a story around a teenage rock band. However, he wasn’t keen on casting actors with limited musical backgrounds who would have to fake the actual rock band aspect of the tale. Instead, he preferred the prospect of making a story with a real high school band that could authentically connect to the premise’s musical foundation. Yet, the mechanics of bringing together such a project remained challenging for the longest time. Nonetheless, everything changed after ‘Outer Banks,’ the teen drama show on which Pate served as a showrunner, entered unprecedented mainstream success.
Consequently, Pate turned to the stars of the Netflix show, Chase Stokes and Madelyn Cline, who spread word on their social media regarding a casting call for young musicians. The search for a high school band was initially spread in association with ‘Outer Banks,’ which was set to feature a band in one of its episodes. Ultimately, 5000 musicians applied, which included William Lipton, Axel Ellis, Jeremy Yun, Zendé Murdock, and Jesse Golliher, aka the future leads of ‘The Runarounds.’ Thus, the band was formed in 2021, initially for an appearance in season 3 episode 7 of ‘Outerbanks.’ By 2022, Pate cast the same musicians as actors for the pilot of ‘The Runarounds,’ which he shot on spec. In the time that it took for the show to officially begin filming, the band had already been together for years, even recording original music and performing shows and festivals.
The Runarounds is Loosely Inspired by the Story of the Real Band
Initially, Jonas Pate was moved to create a show around a high school rock band because of his love for Dillon Fence, a band from the 90s originating from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The showrunner was inspired by the real-life band’s journey and artistry and deeply felt they deserved much more than what they got from the industry. Thus, his passion for them ignited his interest in creating ‘The Runarounds.’ However, Pate still wanted to tell a unique story that felt authentic to the actual real-life band at the center of the show’s narrative. For the same reason, he shaped the project’s development around the lived experiences of his central cast. The creator elaborated on the story’s creation process in an interview with Metro Philadelphia.
Pate shared, “Once we started, we had ’em all (Lipton, Ellis, Yun, Murdock, and Golliher) down and we knew that they were going to be the band. So we would just interview them in therapy sessions: We were literally like, who’s your mom? Who’s your dad? Where’d you grow up? Were you rich? Were you poor? Do they believe in you as a musician or do they not? And so we would just write to that. We tried to make the characters as close to their actual personalities as we could.” Inevitably, their on-screen personas ended up diverging somewhat from the real-life band members.
For one, in the story, Charlie and his bandmates are high school friends who came together in a more organic manner. This remains an inciting divergence between the on-screen Runarounds and their real-life counterpart. Yet, Pate and his team of screenwriters, which includes Nora Kirkpatrick, David Wilcox, and Ilana Wolpert, retained key similarities between the actual cast and their fictitious counterparts. Therefore, even though the band’s on-screen journey remains non-biographical in terms of details, it shares a thematic and emotional link to Lipton and the other actors’ real-life experiences. The formation of The Runarounds as a band and the filming for the show itself share a significant time gap between them. In that period, the young musicians, Lipton, Ellis, Yun, Murdock, and Golliher, found their own joint musical identity, writing songs, putting out music, and putting on shows together as a unit. Ultimately, it’s this very experience that lends the show its artistic authenticity.
The Runarounds Taps Into the Reality of Teenage Dreams
One of the most exceptional aspects of ‘The Runarounds’ stems from its realistic depiction of artistic passion, especially as it’s found in one’s teenage years. The crux of the story revolves around the volatility of late teenagehood, wherein young people are expected to make consequential decisions about their lives. Therefore, individuals with artistic passions are faced with the choice between chasing dreams and securing a reliable, safe future for themselves. Through Charlie and his friends’ fictionalized narratives, the show strives to explore this same dilemma, allowing the characters to become universally resonant and relatable to the audience.
Jonas Pate spoke about this in a conversation with Port City Daily. He said, “If you do anything artistic, it is kind of like jumping off a cliff — like your only reasonable expectation and training is poverty and crushing defeat. So you really have to be willing to do it. You have to be a little insane. And young people make that choice without really understanding the life consequences of that until they’re older. And that’s the spirit of that — that willingness to do it with a bunch of your best friends. That’s my favorite thing about ‘The Runarounds.'” Ultimately, the show’s commitment to telling a bona fide story about musicians, told through the employment of realistic elements, lends the story its overarching authenticity.
Read More: Is Two Graves Based on a True Story?
You must be logged in to post a comment.