The series will be on Netflix this September
BY LUCY CHUNG, IMAGE BY MICHAEL GIBSON/NETFLIX © 2024
Mae Martin is inviting you into the pastoral landscape of their upcoming thriller Wayward on Netflix this September. Their writing debut for Feel Good flaunted Martin’s writing chops and ability to navigate thought-provoking explorations of sapphic romance.
The Canadian comedian is now taking a departure from the stand-up stage and entering a haunting arena of small-town secrets, in the forest-hugged snug of Tall Pines.
The limited series premieres on 25 September and features Martin as the drama’s star, as well as co-showrunner and executive producer. The show is decked with exciting features such as Toni Collette, Patrick J. Adams and Sarah Gadon.
Martin shared with Tudum that their inspiration for the Netflix series came from their own experiences of being a teenager.
“I was a wayward teen in the early 2000s, and my best friend was sent to one of these troubled teen institutes when she was 16,” they said. “She came back and had just the craziest stories about it.” These stories and experiences have become the basis of Wayward’s plot, centring around the disturbing reality of a “troubled teen” facility.
Martin developed, “We were saying it’s like if you took the kids from Booksmart and put them in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Martin will star as the police officer, Alex Dempsey, a newcomer to the unassuming and picturesque town, Tall Pines. Not long after moving into his new home with his pregnant wife, Laura (Gadon), he connects with two students, Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind) from the local school for “troubled teens”.
The pair are desperate to escape and offer a window into the town’s rotted underbelly, leading Alex down a chain of investigation. Evelyn (Colette) becomes Alex’s chief suspect in this thrilling genre-bending exploration of how buried truths always come to the surface.
Martin elaborates on the show’s themes, explaining, “Wayward has a ton of metaphors for the systems that we all participate in as adults, and how much of our empathy and critical thinking we have to suppress to just live in the world. I think that all the characters are grappling with that in this show.”
Despite the high stakes for the teenagers in Tall Pines, the series maintains Martin’s signature humour and is both scary and heartfelt.
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