Although Mae Martin has established themself as a non-binary comedian in recent years, their latest role takes a darker look at finding acceptance.
In Netflix‘s Wayward, now available to stream, Martin told Deadline they wanted to use self-help cults of the ’70s like Synanon and the troubled teen industry it sparked as “a useful metaphor for all of the sort of oppressive systems that we are seduced by.”
In addition to creating and writing the series, Martin stars in Wayward as Alex Dempsey, a transgender cop who moves to the peculiar community of Tall Pines with his pregnant wife Laura (Sarah Gadon), where he attempts to help teens Leile (Alyvia Alyn Lind) and Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) escape a local academy with dark secrets.
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“Alex is a character who’s desperate for acceptance, and he finds this what seems like a liberal utopia, the way a lot of those cults in the ’70s did seem to promise all of the right things,” explained Martin. “And he’s definitely someone who’s seduced by and yearning for that kind of heteronormative hypermasculinity and a nuclear family. So, it was juicy to explore that.”
Martin also teased a “weirdly niche Canadian comedy moment” in the series, in which they share a fight scene with Kids in the Hall‘s Mark McKinney, which they described as a “very full-circle” moment.
“But he’s so brilliant, Mark, and he’s so perfect for something like this, because he can do that thing where he straddles drama and comedy, and the tension’s great,” they raved.
While putting “this kind of wild, mythic twist” on a very real dark trend, the series also provided a sense of “wish fulfillment” for Martin, who based Leile and Abbie on themself and a high school friend who was taken to a similar facility. That friend also served as a consultant in the Wayward writers’ room.
“Cause she really was not in need of any radical intervention in my opinion, and I maybe was,” said Martin. “So, I always had a lot of guilt that she got sent away and I didn’t. I mean, I was already living alone at that point, but I always imagined what it would be like if I busted in there to break her out. So, it’s a bit of wish fulfillment, and ‘Would I have been able to psychologically withstand the kind of unraveling that goes on in there?’”
Read on about Mae Martin’s Wayward, how they toed the line of comedy and drama, and Toni Collette‘s “intimidating” on-set presence.
DEADLINE: I loved Wayward, and I was also a fan of Feel Good. Tell me about how that prepared you for going into this show.
MAE MARTIN: In every way, in terms of building confidence as a writer and actor, but there were also two totally different processes, so I definitely underestimated the scale and kind of ambitiousness of Wayward, because my experience has been making a kind of intimate guerilla style British show with a small cast and crew. So, it was a doozy, but it was amazing.
DEADLINE: And what was it about the troubled teen industry, especially during that era, 2003, that drew you to this?
MARTIN: I’ve always wanted to write about that industry. My best friend was sent to one of those schools when we were 16. She was taken over the border and then taken to to one of those schools, and when she came back, she just had the the craziest story. She was gone for two years, and she came back and had these insane stories about the type of weirdly theatrical aggressive therapy that they were doing in there. And it’s such an unregulated industry, and at the time, there was just no transparency and a lot of parents thought they were sending their kids to a therapeutic boarding school, and actually it’s pretty opaque what goes on in some of those schools. So, I always wanted to write about it. I mean we’ve put a big genre twist on it but used that truthful framework about the way we treat teenagers and disempower them. … Because I think when I researched that industry—because the school that my friend was sent to ended up getting shut down for abuse and neglect, and a lot of those schools now are being investigated and there’s a bit more transparency—but when I researched the schools, I just had no idea that they all spawned from self-help cults in the ’70s, and it kind of writes itself. And a lot of this stuff that seems very heightened and thriller-y in the show actually does have a lot of truth in it, like the cult Synanon, that ultimately turned into the germs of the troubled teen industry, and they use a lot of this attack therapy and behavioral modification and things like that. So, the more I dug into it, the more I wanted to talk about it. I hope we did an OK job, even though we put this kind of wild, mythic twist on it. But one of our writers in the writers’ room was in one of those schools, and we had a lot of consultants, and my friend was actually a consultant on the show.
DEADLINE: So, are the two kids in the show inspired by the two of you? Was that kind of wish fulfillment, you breaking in to save her or something?
MARTIN: Exactly! Cause she really was not in need of any radical intervention in my opinion, and I maybe was. So, I always had a lot of guilt that she got sent away and I didn’t. I mean, I was already living alone at that point, but I always imagined what it would be like if I busted in there to break her out. So, it’s a bit of wish fulfillment, and “Would I have been able to psychologically withstand the kind of unraveling that goes on in there?”
DEADLINE: Also, I’m curious to know about your character and getting into the mindset of the social political climate of 2003 and playing a trans cop in a small town.
MARTIN: Yeah, I hope people get that it’s not pro-cop.
DEADLINE: I didn’t think that at all.
MARTIN: Great, I was nervous about it. But to me, in the same way that cults are a useful metaphor for all of the sort of oppressive systems that we are seduced by, Alex is a character who’s desperate for acceptance, and he finds this what seems like a liberal utopia, the way a lot of those cults in the ’70s did seem to promise all of the right things. And he’s definitely someone who’s seduced by and yearning for that kind of heteronormative hypermasculinity and a nuclear family. So, it was juicy to explore that. The world is so mind-bogglingly—the things that we’re capable of as people, it’s so overwhelming. And so, I’m always interested in how much of our critical thinking we suppress just in order to thrive in a sick world. And especially as a young person, I think teenagers have such an acute sense of injustice, and they can see the absurdity of everything that they’re being asked to work towards, and we just kind of deride them and ridicule them. But of course they’re more morally sound than any of us.
DEADLINE: I know that you loved Kids in the Hall, so what was it like working with Mark McKinney and getting to do this whole fight scene and all that with him?
MARTIN: Oh man, so I babysat for him when I was 13, and I’m like a deep Kids in the Hall fan, and I went to see them at Massey Hall in Toronto when I was 13, and I it was like revelatory for me to see. They were like rock stars, everybody screaming the lyrics or the words and the punch lines. My mom took me, and I was obsessed, and I would go and wait at the stage door. He did a one-man show that year, maybe the next year. I waited at the stage door, and I ended up babysitting for him for years. So, it was very full-circle to get to to put him in the show, and we had a really good time. It’s definitely a weirdly niche Canadian comedy moment to see me beating the shit out of a Kid in the Hall. But he’s so brilliant, Mark, and he’s so perfect for something like this, because he can do that thing where he straddles drama and comedy, and the tension’s great. But also, when he says, “I’m gonna get a milk, do you want a milk?” I love that.
DEADLINE: That’s funny. And you do that well too, by the way, the grasp of both drama and comedy, and your timing is great.
MARTIN: Thanks. In pitching the show, that was the hardest thing to convey, cause it was like, “I promise it is humorous, and I promise it’s all scary, and those things can coexist.” Cause that’s what life is like, especially with teenagers. I feel like if you put a group of teenage girls in a life-and-death situation, there would be lulls, there would be moments of laughter as well, just cause teenagers can tap into that hysteria and the absurdity in any situation.
DEADLINE: And Toni Collette plays an amazing adversary and cult leader. What was it like working with her?
MARTIN: Deeply intimidating at first, but she was so great. I’ve been so lucky to work with these icons and heroes of mine. She’s so funny, and she just gets the joke of every line. She is so collaborative and tried to put everyone at ease knowing. I think, Sarah Gadon and I, who plays my wife, before Toni arrived, we were on set one day, and we ended up watching that scene from The Sixth Sense where she’s in the car with Haley Joel Osment, and she breaks down. And we were like, “We should not have watched this because now we feel like the worst actors in the world.” And it’s a master class. But we had such a good time. We went kayaking, me and Sarah and Toni, all under the full moon in Toronto. You can go with these kayaks out into Lake Ontario, and we have a lot of similar interests, me and Toni. We’re into like esoteric weird spiritual stuff, so it was good.
DEADLINE: That’s awesome.
MARTIN: And also, she has such gravitas that it’s not hard to fear Evelyn as well, it comes naturally when she gives you a withering look, it is like bone-chilling.
DEADLINE: Yeah. I have to say, I loved United States of Tara, and whenever she puts on the glasses and she has the hair, I see Shoshana Schoenbaum.
MARTIN: Yes! Oh, she can do—she’s really brilliant. And I’ve worked with Lisa Kudrow in Feel Good, and they made Clock Watchers together in the 90s with Parker Posey, so that was a nice synchronicity there.
DEADLINE: Classic! I love that. You talked about working with Sarah a little bit, and I’m really interested in her character and seeing that mystery unravel. Is there a potential for a Season 2?
MARTIN: I mean, you have to ask Netflix. I think they’re pretty adamant that it’s a miniseries, but who knows? With anything, like some of my favorite shows, I wish had had been one season, cause you do another season and you end up stretching the logic a little bit. But oh man, Sarah, I love her character’s arc, and she’s really at the heart of a lot of the mystery of the show … in those first few episodes, she’s kind of a bit manic pixie dream girl, like she’s sort of Dempsey’s fantasy, but of course there’s a lot going on. She’s so brilliant, Sarah, and intelligent.
DEADLINE: Yeah, she’s a great actress, Well, I know you also released your debut album this year, I’m a TV. Can you tell me about getting into the music side of your career and what’s next?
MARTIN: Well, I’m up here in the woods right now, writing some songs, but trying not to force it. I kind of try to do what I’m feeling most inspired by in the moment, and it’s so hard to do this, but I try really hard to tune out what would sell or what makes the most sense to come next, but I loved it. And all these things kind of exist in the same emotional palette or world. All my music is so heavily influenced by like early 2000s Canadian indie stuff that’s on the soundtrack for Wayward. I’ve got Tragically Hip and Sam Roberts, and then of course a lot of the kind of hippie stuff, like Pink Floyd and that kind of thing. Third Eye Blind is on the soundtrack, and in Wayward, I think if you listen to my music, you can tell it’s basically teen wish fulfillment for me. All that’s where my taste in music was forged, right in my teens when everything felt so visceral, so I’ve tried to capture that in the music as well.
DEADLINE: Well, I love what I’ve seen so far, and I can’t wait to see the rest of the season.
MARTIN: I hope you like it. It gets pretty weird by the end, but I think in a good way. It’s like you kind of have to let it wash over you, like a kind of parable or a myth.