Harlan Coben's latest mind bending thriller series Run Away has finally arrived on Netflix today, giving us some much needed entertainment to soothe our New Year's Day hangovers.
The eight-part gripping new series follows a father Simon (James Nesbitt) whose life is turned upside down after his eldest daughter Paige (Ellie de Lange) runs away from home. One day he sees her busking in the park, and tries to bring her home, however, she's not alone and when he chases after her it sets off a chain of unthinkable events.
However, while we were totally gripped by the first few scenes, we were then completely distracted by the appearance of TikToker and content creator Maddie Grace Jepson.
Maddie appears in one of the first scenes of the series when Simon goes to the park and sees Paige busking. He approaches her but she runs away and the pair are intercepted by Paige's boyfriend Aaron (Thomas Flynn). Simon and Aaron then get into a physical altercation and the whole park looks on. Maddie stars as herself in the series as an influencer taking part in a yoga class at the park who films the whole fight and uploads it to YouTube, causing it to go viral.
Speaking to Cosmopolitan UK about her role in the series, Maddie revealed she got her part in the show after Netflix reached out to her acting agents, "It was really quite random. I've got my wonderful acting agents and it came through them. Netflix just said we would love Maddie to do it."
She added: "They said to me, 'We want you to do it. You don't need to tape. We just want you to come and do it.' It was really out of the blue. But I was very flattered. So I immediately was like, 'absolutely, I want to be part of this'."
Maddie had seen GK Barry take part in another Harlan Coben drama Missing You at the start of the year and said she enjoyed carrying on the tradition of featuring a familiar face in the drama series.
"I've watched quite a few of them [Harlan Coben series] before, and in the last one, I saw that GK Barry cameo," she said. "It's really nice to have a familiar face in there, as well as the incredible actors that they have."
Maddie's filming took place over two days in Manchester back in spring 2025. She revealed that while the end shots looked very sunny, in reality it was freezing while filming.
"It was so fun. It was cold," she laughs. "My shots are all outside. I was constantly covered in a big coat in between shots before I had to get into my yoga outfits."
TikToker Maddie, who has nearly 2 million followers on the app, is used to making videos go viral. Run Away actually isn't Maddie's first foray into acting. She began studying at Guildford School of Acting in 2017 and graduated during the pandemic.
Since building her TikTok career she's gone onto star in an episode of Channel 4's Big Mood and made her West End debut in 2025 when she joined the cast of Back To The Future: The Musical.
Run Away is available on Netflix now
