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Explore ‘Sterling Point’s Relationship Highs & Lows With the Cast
Welcome to Sterling Point, where “bad sh*t doesn’t happen.” Enlightening journeys of self-discovery, complicated family dynamics, and messy summer romances, on the other hand? Those are a given.
Annie (Ella Rubin) spends Sterling Point Season 1 not just falling in love with the beautiful Canadian island she inherits from her late grandfather but also with the people who live there. While Megan Park‘s teen drama is all about family — the adopted 17-year-old was led to believe that said grandfather wanted nothing to do with her and her twin brother (Keen Ruffalo) — deep friendships and romantic bonds also take center stage.
As Annie sets out to get to the bottom of her family’s secrets — primarily the history of her adoptive mother, who died when she was young — she connects with the steady local Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie). She also reconnects with childhood friend and summer vacationer Rory (Daniel Quinn-Toye), who becomes her other confidant. Things get messy, but that’s life as a teenager, right?
“People always ask me like, how do you write YA characters?” Park told Swooon. “I’m like, well, I’m just writing them as people. I’m not thinking about them as young people… But I just try to keep it authentic every step of the way and grounded and real. And I think you can have all the tropes of a YA show, love triangles first, but you can also be talking about real things like motherhood and grief and nature versus nurture. I think those two can go hand in hand.”
Annie isn’t the only one to find romance while her whole life is upended, either. Her newfound secret sister, Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle), falls for Oona (Bo Bragason), her best friend and the island’s resident ladies’ woman. When he rolls into town ready to sell the island, even Connor gets hints of a potential connection, depending on who you ask. (We asked Ruffalo himself.)
All of that considered, it should come as no surprise that Swooon has selected the Sterling Point cast as the leads of our August edition of Sizzle Reel, which spotlights the best romances on TV this summer. Rubin, Whiteduck-Lavoie, and Quinn-Toye break down the love triangle’s crucial points, while Hoeferle and Bragason discuss their character’s friends-to-lovers-to-exes arc in the first season of the Prime Video series. Without further ado, let’s dive into all the drama on the island. (Sterling Point Season 1 spoilers ahead.)
Prime Video / Illustration by Rebecca Perlmutter.
First Feelings of First Love
Sterling Point may be the first show to depict a meet-cute via seaplane. Annie meets Ellis first as her pilot. He picks her up at the Toronto airport and drops her off at the cabin where her whole life would change. The sparks are evident during their banter-filled exchange. (“You were, like, swaggy as hell on the plane,” Rubin tells her costar.)
“There is interest, but she’s almost so inundated with other thoughts, and she’s trying to get somewhere, and something’s happening, and I almost think it is there and yet she doesn’t realize it yet,” Rubin says of their meeting, which she describes as equal parts fun and chaotic to shoot.
Whiteduck-Lavoie refers to Annie and Ellis’ Season 1 arc as a slow burn — which is the term Ramona uses when Annie reveals that they kissed in Episode 7. “But I think [for] Ellis, obviously, it’s love at first sight,” he admits. “For him to go pick up a city girl, I think he’s crushing a little bit, but he’s hiding it, obviously.”
Just like any teenager figuring out a rite of passage like first love, Annie slowly deciphers how she feels about Ellis. “I think Annie doesn’t really know how to have a crush, and so she’s not really familiar with what that feeling is or how to identify it,” she says.
Matt Stevens
As Annie grows closer to Ramona, she opens up about her past experience with romance — or lack thereof. Before Annie’s love life got so complicated in Sterling Point, she assumed she was asexual, which is why she’s stayed with her closeted gay boyfriend since sixth grade. But it’s her kiss with Rory, not Ellis, that sparks Annie’s revelation.
Annie sees a familiar face at the aforementioned party. Rory and Annie went to middle school together and their parents — including Rory’s unfiltered, real estate developer mom (Missi Pyle) — were friends.
“I think it’s one of those things where they were kids and then they meet each other again as adults, and they kind of have to re-meet each other,” Quinn-Toye explains. “I think there is history there, but not romantic. I mean, Rory says he had liked her in school. He had this big crush on her, but he wasn’t making it into a sort of thing. He didn’t have the confidence back then.”
Annie was insecure, too, Rubin points out. A crush on Rory, who now has a vacation home on the island, wasn’t even in the realm of possibility back then. “And then, we meet her at a time where she kind of realizes that she could be someone’s romantic interest, and it sparks something for her that allows her to realize she’s really into this guy.”
She’s vulnerable with Rory about her feelings as she uncovers her family’s history and gets swept up in their connection. “She kind of feels amazed in a way that this [romance with Rory] is happening,” Rubin says. “I think it’s like totally wild to her.”
After Annie and Rory’s kiss in Episode 4, which Ellis witnesses, the two party hard at a club on the night of her 18th birthday. Annie surprises herself when she drunkenly falls into bed with (an equally drunk) Rory after. The next morning, Ellis sees Annie walk out of Rory’s house after their night together.
But a trip to summer camp in Episode 6 puts Ellis and Annie’s romance back at the forefront. An ever-supportive Ellis listens to Annie spill her guts about her lost childhood, and he’s there for her again in the aftermath of finding out Ramona is her adoptive parents’ biological daughter. He finds a shaken Annie in her safe space — the closet, which she explained to him at summer camp — and it turns out to be the “perfect place” for a “perfect kiss.”
It happens days before Annie’s set to leave the island and return home. Finally deciding to break the tension, Ellis tugs Annie closer from where she sits against the opposite wall. The move wasn’t scripted, the stars reveal, and was decided on the day by Park and her DP. “We were like, ‘How do I kind of get over to him?’ We were brainstorming, and they sat in the closet, and they were like, ‘What if…?'” Rubin says.
Matt Stevens
Rubin was the one to suggest the callback to Annie’s childhood with the closet. “It’s something I mentioned to Megan offhand once, and we were like, ‘What if we put that into Annie in some way,” she explains. “When we were talking about where the kiss should be, the closet [and] a forced proximity thing felt right because they’re both so, in a way, nervous with each other that it would only happen if they were like physically really close. And then Jacob just like killed it and really made the whole scene work beautifully.”
After, Annie asks Ramona what it feels like to be in love with someone. She still isn’t sure how to just be in a relationship with someone. Is she in love with Ellis just yet? “It’s funny because Annie’s someone who kind of spills her guts and tells people things all the time,” Rubin tells Swooon.
“I think she knows she feels something that she’s never felt before that’s completely unique,” the actress continues. “And I think that is the difference between how she feels with Ellis and Rory is that with Rory, he kind of sparks the fire that allows her to realize what she feels for Ellis because it is very real with both of them. And I think that there’s very real feelings there on all ends.”
Ruin the Friendship
Oona, who lives on the island with her little sister, Maple (Mabel Strachan), is basking in the glow of just having fun at the start of the season. She flirts hard with Annie as soon as she sets foot in the Sterling Point Marina, volunteering herself for a boating lesson.
While whether or not Annie really is giving both “single and bi” is up for debate, Rubin says that when it comes to those initial interactions with Oona, “I think she’s just living in the moment for the first time ever. It’s impossible not to flirt back if you just like someone as a person. So I think she wouldn’t even know whether she was flirting or not back. I think she thought this person was cool and beautiful and was responding.”
Regardless, Oona slows her roll when she notices the tension between Annie and Ellis. A short while later, Ramona’s return to town after her grandfather’s death turns Oona’s focus elsewhere. Through those classic longing glances, Ramona’s at-first unspoken feelings for Oona become clear quickly. It’s a newer development for Ramona, according to Hoeferle, who only just started to see her friend in this light.
“I remember us talking about this,” she says, referring to herself and Bragason. “I think Ramona was taking care of Gordon for the past two years, and Oona had tried to come and visit and help and be supportive, but it’s really dark. I think we kind of see at some point it’s very dark, and I wanted to protect you from that in a way… So when Ramona sees Oona for the first time again, I think it’s this wave of ‘Wow, you really care about me.’ She feels seen and held and supported in a time when she really, really needed that.”
Matt Stevens
She continues, “I don’t even think she realizes that she has a debilitating crush yet. I think it builds very quickly, but I think it is this untapped thing inside of her that she didn’t realize was there. But I think it’s been there for a while, but she sort of kept a lid on it.”
While Oona becomes a pillar of support for Ramona, she also brings Stacey Mallory (Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova) as her date to Annie’s thank-you party for Ramona. Thanks to Annie, who’s firmly Team Ramoona, the friends get a moment alone in Episode 3. Oona touches Ramona’s thigh and leans in for a kiss before Stacey Mallory interrupts them. “I kind of see it as maybe a situation where [Oona] probably didn’t consider at that moment in time that Ramona would even be into her in that way,” Bragason says.
“It’s interesting because we filmed two versions of that scene,” Bragason adds. “We did one where we actually did kiss and then one where we left the gap. So when we were watching, we got told that they didn’t do the kiss. We were both kind of glad about it because then it makes the people want to see the slow burn. And also there’s that whole thing of like… I don’t know. In my personal life, I would love to have a best friend, and then suddenly it turned into something like, you end up dating your best friend.”
“It’s sweet,” Hoeferle chimes in. “It’s like that connection is already there and that support. And yeah, I thought that moment of that jealousy [toward Stacey Mallory] was really interesting because I think you realize like, ‘Oh, wait, are you jealous of me?’ It’s such a tender, like raw moment.”
“And also so scary,” Bragason says. “You don’t want to ruin it.” Hoeferle agrees. “My heart [was] beating, beating out my chest,” she says.
Though Oona asks Ramona out to the movies afterward, she stands Ramona up to spend the night with Stacey Mallory. She even claims it was never a date at all, out of fear of ruining their friendship. Later, Ramona tries to backtrack, explaining to Oona that she doesn’t want to lose “the best person in her life,” only for Oona to finally take the leap and kiss her. After Ramona finds out that her father isn’t who she thought he was, she disappears without a word. Oona’s fear of abandonment creeps back in, but she’s the one who finds Ramona and brings her back to Sterling Point, exchanging “I love yous” in the process.
Of course, the next bombshell that drops — Ramona is Steven’s (Jay Duplass) biological daughter — makes Oona wonder if Ramona will move to New York with him and forget about her. She claims that it “isn’t their time” and breaks up with her, encouraging Ramona to go. “I don’t agree with the way that Oona does it,” Bragason says. “I think it’s like, you know, push her away, so that way she goes and actually lives her life and she’s not tied down, but at the same time, it’s also like it’s her biggest fear kind of being realized that she’s going to go off because she can go off.”
Into the Unknown
As Annie jets off to Sterling Point, Connor decides to spend his summer with the French exchange student he thinks he’s in love with. When she breaks up with him before they go on their planned Ibiza trip, Connor makes his way to Sterling Point, eager to sell the island for millions. Unlike his sister, Connor doesn’t find a romantic connection on the island (yet). But has anyone caught his eye already? After all, Annie is convinced that Connor will change his mind about the place when he falls in love with someone there. That’s Connor’s MO.
Matt Stevens
Aside from Rory and his mother, Denise, Connor doesn’t spend much time with anyone on the island. However, he does enlist Sully’s (Nikko Angelo Hinayo) help to throw his Camp Rock 2-themed birthday party at Sully’s parents’ cafe. They hit it off instantly. “There was a world where we were discussing him and Sully, which is hilarious, and honestly, I love Nikko, but yeah, it’s a bit interesting because [Connor] is kind of like the only one that doesn’t really have [romance],” Ruffalo says.
He adds, “And I think Sully also being there for his birthday and kind of like being the only person that showed up. I think that really did mean a lot to him.”
Aside from Sully, Ruffalo reveals there’s another character Connor almost had something with. “There was also a world where we flirted with that idea [of Connor and Rory’s mom, Denise],” he dishes. “That was in there for a second.”
Before Connor returns to New York alongside Ramona and his father — while Annie stays behind — Connor ends the season by looking for his birth parents. “I think he gets to a vulnerable place at the end of the show,” Ruffalo points out.
Everyone has their own teenage experience, navigating the highs and loves of figuring out who you are and what you want. Growing up and falling in love are some of the bravest experiences anyone can embrace — at any point in one’s life. The characters in the world of Sterling Point do just that, all taking their own routes.
But as we see over the course of the first season, these paths often converge in the most beautiful ways — through love, through friendship, and through family. And no matter what, these teens will always find their way back home.
