NEED TO KNOW
- Actress Lilah Pate talks with PEOPLE exclusively about playing Sophia in Prime Video’s The Runarounds
- Following roles in The Summer I Turned Pretty and Outer Banks, she says the project was extra special as she got to work with her father Jonas Pate, who created the series
- Set in Wilmington, N.C., Lilah says the cast regularly hung out with The Summer I Turned Pretty stars in between filming
Lilah Pate is taking the lead in The Runarounds.
Following supporting roles in The Summer I Turned Pretty and Outer Banks, the actress, 21, stars as Sophia Kinney in the Prime Video series, created by her father and Outer Banks co-creator Jonas Pate.
Set in Wilmington, N.C., the series follows the origin story of a band as they quickly go viral and rise to fame after graduating high school.
Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE, Lilah says the project was even more special for her as she got to work with her father in a professional capacity after admiring his work for so long.
“Growing up on a film set, I was always drawn to it,” Lilah tells PEOPLE of how her love for acting started at a young age. “I never wanted to leave. I was very much [my dad’s] mini me, his sidekick, always begging to be on set, always begging to be in the room when people auditioned. I was in the room for a lot of the original cast members for Outer Banks when they auditioned. I was always drawn to it, but [my dad] really only wanted me to pursue it if it was something that I truly loved. He was like, ‘Great, you wanna act then act, take improv, do local theater, study it in school.’”
“I continued to show him and learn from him and shadow him consistently,” she adds of how she proved herself to her father. “And then over time, after I had booked a few roles on my own, he saw that this is really what I wanted to do with my life.”
On the heels of his success with Outer Banks, Lilah’s father began to toy around with the idea of a show that details the origin story of a band, which would eventually turn into The Runarounds.
As he did a spec pilot for the show, she says he approached her about playing Sophia, who initially had a much smaller role. “We left to go film it without kind of expecting anything. And I never knew what was gonna happen because I knew when these shows go, you can get recast,” she notes.
However, the opposite ended up happening as she reveals one of the larger notes from the Amazon team was to make her role bigger.
“It was a very emotional moment, not only for me, but for my dad and I’s relationship and kind of finding her throughout,” she recalls. “So just a super unique crazy origin story for it.”
Lilah adds that while her father was super supportive as she took on the role, she also felt a lot of pressure to prove herself as an actress.
“He really wanted me to do a good job, and I felt that pressure. I remember he called me as I was leaving college and he said, ‘You can’t be good. You have to be great. I’m putting my entire career on your performance,’ which is completely valid,” she recalls.
“He took a chance, and I wanted to step up and prove that I understand the amount of privileges I’ve had through that and how many qualified and talented people there are that could have absolutely played this role. And I wanted to show that I also deserve to be here,” she continues, noting how they had a meaningful conversation about everything their first day on set.
“We had a long talk on our porch that night, and we just reminded ourselves of how lucky we are, how we can’t believe we’re pulling this off, how this is one in a billion chance of being able to work like this together. And how if we lose sight of that, if we let the pressures or the opinions of the world get in the way of how lucky we are, we are gonna regret that for the rest of our lives,” she adds. “And we just need to focus on the art and onset. I’m an actor and you are my director. Yes, we still have our relationship, we still have our banter and our funny insight jokes, but also if you’re gonna talk to me, you need to talk to me like an actor, and if I talk to you, I need to talk to you like a director, especially in front of other crew members in front of other actors.”
As she prepared for the role, she also took inspiration from previous projects she’s worked on, including Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, where she played Gigi in season 1.
“It was the most incredible first job,” she recalls of the hit series, which wraps its third and final season this year. “I’m so, so, so grateful for Jenny Han and that entire cast. It shot in Wilmington, N.C., and the cast kind of used my home as their home. And I got to watch Lola Tung lead with such grace, and she had so much responsibility at such a young age, this entire show on her shoulders.”
She adds that she even took a page from Tung’s book as she worked on The Runarounds.
“I remember even on the last day of filming [The Summer I Turned Pretty season 1], [Tung] wrote every single person a handwritten letter. And it wasn’t just like, ‘Thank you so much, HAGS,’ vibe. It was really detailed. She saw everyone, she took that opportunity, and she’s the most talented, hardworking person I know.”
“And I did that at the end of this season,” she reveals of how she carried on the tradition. “I really wanted to take what she taught me and what that entire cast taught me.”
In fact, as both The Summer I Turned Pretty and The Runarounds were filmed in Wilmington around the same time, the casts regularly hung out with each other when they were filming.
“We had like a couple months overlap, so all hanging out together, I was like, ‘Summer I Turned Pretty cast meet ‘Runarounds’ cast. Everyone hang out and be friends.’ That experience was so cool because we were the only two things really filming there, and a bunch of young people all getting to hang out and being a part of this world together.”
Additionally, she notes that having a small role in her father’s series Outer Banks was “such a unique experience” as the entire cast took her under their wing as their “younger sister” on set.
“I am so grateful for them,” she says of the cast of the Netflix series. “I call them every day with advice. They help me in every aspect of it and I could not be more grateful.”
“It makes me emotional, honestly,” she says of getting support from Madelyn Cline, Chase Stokes and more stars. “They are such incredible people and they took me in as their friend and little sister when they could have totally been like, “This is the boss’ kid, let’s avoid her.’ They didn’t do that. And they were in my life at a time that I really needed it, when I was younger and didn’t have too many friends.”
“And I think they showed me what an incredible family you could have being a part of a crew and choosing to do this weird circus lifestyle,” she adds. “I’ve looked up to them for so many years now and I learned from them. I watch them on set. I’m obsessed with all of them. They’re the most talented, funniest people. So to actually transition to being in my own show and having a real role and getting to take all those lessons, it’s crazy. I honestly can’t believe it’s happened. It feels like a dream.”
While Pate has high hopes for a potential second season of The Runarounds, including her character Sophia finding her “inner voice,” she’s keeping busy in the meantime, including filming a new project in London.
Though she has high aspirations for her career, going forward, she adds that she’s trying to keep it all in perspective after receiving some wise advice from her dad.
“I made a list of goals for myself for 2025, and I showed them to my dad and he was like, ‘I don’t like your goals.’ And I was like, ‘What? These are incredible goals. What are you talking about?’ And he said, ‘Well, they’re all outcome-related and we don’t have control over our outcome in life, unfortunately. There will be things you can’t control, but the things you can control are your output, how hard you work. So instead of having a goal to sell a script, write an incredible script that you keep pushing to make better. Change your goals to things that you can actually be accountable for so that if you don’t accomplish these things that are out of your control, you don’t feel like a failure.’”
“So I rewrote them and I’m trying to do that,” she says. “Obviously, there’s things, just the life goals and the bucket list things that you wanna do in your career, but I’ve been really trying to rework my brain and just kind of finding that inner peace with where I’m at instead of always looking forward to find that happiness.”
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The Runarounds season 1 is currently streaming on Prime Video.
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