There’s something weird going on in Tall Pines and Mae Martin is investigating.
Toni Collette is in chilling form in the first full trailer for the upcoming Netflix limited series that Martin created and stars in. Collette plays Evelyn Wade, the leader of the Tall Pines Academy, a school supposedly for troubled teens and that promises in a promo video to “solve the problem of adolescence”.
Beneath some formidable glasses, Evelyn tells a new student who is being forcibly restrained: “I can’t wait for you to meet the new you.”
An unidentified character in the trailer says about the school: “Children go in, something else comes out.”
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Martin plays Alex Dempsey, a cop relocating to the seemingly picture-perfect town of Tall Pines in the show. Sarah Gadon is Alex’s pregnant wife and also a former student at Evelyn’s school.
All is not, however, as it seems. Alex connects with two students, Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind), from the Academy. They are desperate to escape and could be the key to unearthing a series of mysterious goings on in the town, not least the disappearance of numerous youngsters, which Alex begins to suspect relate back to the school and Evelyn.
The eight-episode limited drama drops on Netflix on September 25. The streamer has billed the show as “a thrilling and genre-bending limited series about the eternal struggle between one generation and the next, what happens when friendship and loyalty are put to the ultimate test, and how buried truths always find a way of coming to the surface.”
The show is in the official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival. Ahead of its world premiere at Toronto, Martin, co-creator of hit comedy-drama Feel Good, will be speaking about their new project and work in a TIFF session hosted by Deadline.
Wayward is one of Netflix Canada’s first originals. Martin also serves as co-showrunner and EP alongside Ryan Scott. Patrick J. Adams is among the guest stars in the series, which is produced by Objective Fiction and Sphere Media.