Fans of Mae Martin know the 38-year-old Canadian multihyphenate as a stand-up, actor, singer-songwriter, podcaster, author, screenwriter, painter and co-creator of the sitcom Feel Good. With their new TV show Wayward, Martin has now also become a dynamic action star.

So much so, on a video call in August, I compare Martin’s role in Wayward to something Mark Wahlberg would do. Upon their stunned reaction, I immediately apologise. “No, I’m thrilled to hear that!” says Martin, with a laugh. “I don’t think most people are going to take that from it, but I’m thrilled!”

Through their smart, confessional comedy that covers sexual fluidity, existential angst, and how strange it is that coffee comes from beans, Martin has amassed a dedicated fanbase. Their stand-up special Dope delves into their history with drug addiction, while Sap goes into gender dysphoria, coming out as non-binary, and getting top surgery. You even find out the sexual position they were conceived in. (Martin complains about being a “doggy-style baby – you want to be conceived face to face”.)

Likewise, as an actor, Martin starred in Feel Good as “Mae Martin”, a comic who moves from Toronto to London and dates Charlotte (played by Charlotte Ritchie). Beneath the cheery exterior lies darkness: Martin (both the fictional and real one) is a former drug addict who was kicked out of their home at 16 and went to rehab at 19. In season two, Mae confronts an older comic who abused them when they were a child. Not all of it’s real, but much of it is: in a Guardian interview, Martin clarified that the abusive comic was based on two men in their life.

However, Wayward, an eight-episode miniseries Martin created for Netflix, is a dystopian thriller that delights in genre twists, fight sequences, and teens navigating their hormones amidst life-or-death conundrums. In Feel Good, Mae impresses Charlotte by climbing over a fence; in the first episode of Wayward, Martin’s character, Alex, not only avoids being stabbed by an intruder, but Alex snatches the weapon off the attacker and sticks the blade through his chest.

Wayward, though, still stems from some autobiography. “It’s a story I’ve wanted to tell since my teens, because my best friend was kidnapped by one of these schools,” says Martin, who’s speaking to me from a rented cabin in Lake Arrowhead during a writing retreat. “She was sent from Canada to an American ‘troubled teen’ institute, and came back with crazy stories about unregulated practices and therapy. I’ve been researching it for 20 years. The germ for that industry was cults in the 1970s, like Synanon, that were doing behavioural modification. It’s bizarre! It writes itself!”

Set in 2003, Wayward follows two teens, Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind), who smoke weed, take mushrooms, and flunk exams. When Abbie is sent to Tall Pines Academy, an American school for “troubled teens” run by stern Evelyn (Toni Collette), Leila sneaks in and discovers it’s effectively a brainwashing prison for kids. Did Martin also fantasise about rescuing her friend? “Exactly. I was a wayward youth and felt like I should have been the one sent there.”

The “troubled teen” industry is slowly making its way into public discussion. In 2020, Paris Hilton’s documentary This Is Paris detailed the physical, mental, and sexual abuse she received as a 17-year-old at Provo Canyon School. One of the writers on Wayward is Misha Osherovich, who, aged 15, was sent against their will to Island View, a school they’ve compared in interviews to conversion therapy.

Cults are always a useful metaphor for our complicity in systems that we’re a part of, and how much critical thinking we have to suppress in order to thrive in a sick world

“We put a huge genre twist on top,” says Martin. “But you’ll be surprised by how theatrical some of the therapy is [at these schools]. There’s sleep deprivation and starvation. In the early 2000s, multiple kids went missing or were injured.” Episode three reveals what’s known as attack therapy. “That’s real. Everyone screams at one person until they break.”

Prone to violence, Alex is a cop who moves to Tall Pines with his wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon), and attempts to rescue Abbie and Leila. “He’s definitely not a hero,” says Martin. “I wanted to explore how he’s so seduced by the idea of this heteronormative nuclear family, and the outdated ideas of being a provider.” Martin has previously tweeted about defunding the police. Is it strange to humanise a cop? “I’m obviously nervous. I hope people see that it’s very much not copaganda. It’s commenting on how the police, just like all the other nefarious organisations in the town, are corrupt.”

On season one of Feel Good, the Mae character uses “she/her” pronouns but doesn’t fully identify as a woman, preferring to be known as “corn” due to their haircut. On season two, Mae ponders if they’re non-binary or trans, at one point calling themselves “more of an Adam Driver or a Ryan Gosling”. On Wayward, Alex isn’t just a man, he’s a cop with muscles and a gun. “I thought about making him a ‘they/them’, but he’s in a small town, and that wasn’t really in the public vernacular back in 2003,” says Martin, who reveals in Sap that they’ve started taking testosterone. “It certainly felt nice being a ‘he’ on set for six months. I liked it.”

While Wayward seeks to unsettle viewers, it has a racially diverse cast who aren’t discriminated for their skin colour. Similarly, a lesbian romance among the teens passes without judgment. “Cults seem utopian on the surface,” says Martin. “They preach acceptance, free love, and personal freedom. This town, on the surface, seems so progressive. But then there’s this dark side. I’m also an advocate of allowing diverse characters to be three-dimensional, and not having their whole story arc defined by fighting against bigotry. That takes up enough time in real life. I want to see other aspects of their life.”

Martin wrote the pilot to Wayward between seasons one and two of Feel Good. Martin was only meant to spend six months in LA running a writers’ room; they’ve since made the move permanent but deny it’s an attempt to break into Hollywood. In fact, after years of insisting Feel Good would end with season two, they’ve changed their mind. “Joe [Hampson] and I have an idea for another season of Feel Good that you won’t have had to have seen the first two to get. We’re talking about it.” It might actually happen? “Yeah. I mean, nobody wants it, but we do. We talk about it with Charlotte. I miss her.”

When I admit I initially thought Wayward was based on Martin’s stint as a teen in rehab, which I learned about from Feel Good, they tell me, “I had the opposite experience. The rehab I went to was focused on harm reduction, and they treated us, the kids, as human beings. It was run by incredible social workers. I remember being pitched one of these schools, and I feel like I narrowly avoided quite a gruelling experience.”

They continue, “But, listen, some people come out of those schools and say it saved their life. At the end of the day, this is a thriller with a genre twist on adolescence. Cults are always a useful metaphor for our complicity in systems that we’re a part of, and how much critical thinking we have to suppress in order to thrive in a sick world.”

Wayward streams on Netflix on September 25