Updated October 20, 2026
Chase Stokes has a roommate he never asked for, and he has made peace with it. Talking to Men’s Journal about imposter syndrome, the voice that tells him six years as John B on Outer Banks guarantee nothing about the next job, he called it “kind of like a roommate. They don’t always do their dishes, but they pay the rent on time.” Anyone who shared an apartment in their twenties knows exactly the truce he means.
The interview, by Annmarie Gajdos, ran on October 19, and the line already making the rounds is a different one: “I think the most masculine thing you can do is ask for help.” Both came out of a school visit he made in Manhattan earlier this month.
@hichasestokes Every kid deserves to see clearly and feel good doing it. Grateful I got to partner with @zennioptical and @bringchangetomind to give free prescription glasses to students at MECA in New York. This one meant a lot #zennipartner
The glasses came first
On October 7, Stokes spent the day at MECA, an early-college public high school in Manhattan, with Zenni Optical and Bring Change to Mind, the mental health nonprofit Glenn Close co-founded in 2010. Nearly 300 students got free vision screenings, and according to Zenni more than half of them needed new or updated prescriptions. Optical Academy handled the exams, Stokes handed out frames from the collection he designed with Zenni, and students from the school’s Bring Change to Mind club led a group conversation about mental health.
He has done this before. In January he took the same idea to Early College High School in Charleston, the city where Outer Banks filmed and which he was packing up to leave, and more than 150 students there went home with new glasses. He told the students, The Post and Courier reported, that his mission was “to make glasses cool — because vision is pretty sweet,” and that the day “felt like the right entryway into leaving Charleston.” Plenty of actors with an eyewear deal stop at the campaign shoot. In his own Instagram post about the New York day, shared with Zenni’s account, he wrote “This one meant a lot” right before the #zennipartner tag. He doesn’t hide the ad, and a second school visit in nine months makes the feeling easier to believe.
Why the frames matter to him
The personal part is where the interview gets good, and he is franker about his own record than a man promoting a product needs to be. Getting glasses, he said, “opened my eyes to reading in a way that I used to strain,” and then: “I definitely didn’t thrive in high school, academically.” He gives part of the blame to his own effort before wondering whether better eyewear would have made him more attentive and changed the experience. The answer he gives Men’s Journal is one word: “Probably.”
The masculinity line, in context
The headline comes from a longer thought about the pressure on men to stay guarded. “I think the most masculine thing you can do is be open and be vulnerable,” he said, and a moment later, “I think the most masculine thing you can do is ask for help.” Men’s Journal writes that he struggled with anxiety as a teenager. In his own telling, the hard part was the isolation: wondering “am I alone in that?”, or being made to “feel small” over a gut feeling he thought other people shared.
Actors say some version of this on press tours all the time, and it often sounds rehearsed. His version holds up because of how ordinary it gets once he is asked what actually helps. Men’s Journal lists therapy, movement and the people around him, and the piece he puts in his own words is routine, which he says is “usually the most beneficial for myself” when he can find a good one. Coming from someone whose last six years ran on Netflix’s production calendar, I believe him.
After John B
He left Outer Banks “really feeling the need to rediscover that creative, sort of identity,” and right now he feels “like a kid in a candy store.” The self-doubt has stayed. He just has “a healthier relationship with it,” because being part of a global hit “doesn’t mean that the next project is going to be a guaranteed win.” That is the roommate again, and it is a smart thing for an actor in his spot to say out loud. Fans of a long-running show tend to see its lead as a finished product, and he is telling them, politely, that he is starting over.
Where this leaves him
Stokes is selling glasses, and he never pretends otherwise. He also used the interview to say he didn’t thrive in high school and still lives with his self-doubt, which is the conversation a school full of teenagers getting their first frames could use from a face they recognize. If one of those students remembers the roommate line in ten years, Zenni got a bargain.
Sources
- Men’s Journal: Chase Stokes Says ‘The Most Masculine Thing You Can Do Is Ask for Help’, Oct 19, 2026
- Zenni: Zenni, Chase Stokes and Bring Change to Mind support student wellness through free vision care, Oct 9, 2026
- Chase Stokes on Instagram (@hichasestokes): the MECA visit, Oct 10, 2026
- The Post and Courier: ‘Outer Banks’ star Chase Stokes surprises Charleston school with free glasses, Jan 2026
