Mae Martin doesn’t like chit-chat. After the revealing series Feel goodthe Netflix stand-up special Mae Martin: SAPand click on podcast Beautifulfans think they know the real Mae and want to dive right in. “People come out and spill trauma — and I like that,” they say. “Anyway, I’m not good at small talk, I want to go deep.”
Martin speaks with a mix of humor, warmth and lively energy. His work dealt with, and often found funny, the strange or existential moments of life. “With stand-up, it was a huge turning point in my career when I started talking about real things – my life, addiction and pain,” they say. “People were suddenly fully engaged and laughing more. It’s really rewarding and validating to say the things that make us embarrassed and then have other people say, ‘Yes, me too.’”
Deadline speaks to Martin in Toronto, where they grew up, and it’s a full-circle moment. Years earlier, they were filming outside film premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival with a video camera or getting autographs from stars like Liev Schreiber. This time Martin was on the other side of the barrier at the world premiere festival of Obstinatethe Netflix series they created, produced and starred in. “We filmed the show here,” says Martin. “It’s really about adolescence and I associate Toronto with my adolescence. That was the backdrop to all my misadventures.”
The limited series is about the multi-billion dollar industry of troubled teens and specifically Wayward Pines Academy in the town of Tall Pines. It is an institution that promises to “solve the problem of adolescence”. Wearing formidable glasses, Evelyn (Toni Collette) runs the school and, it seems, perhaps the entire town. The viewers’ point of entry is through Abbie (Sydney Topliffe), whose parents send her to school, and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind), her best friend who tries to rescue her; as well as through Alex (Martin), a newly arrived police officer, and his pregnant wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon).
The Abbie-Leila relationship is modeled after Martin and his childhood best friend, who were taken to a school for troubled teenagers. The memory served as inspiration for the series. Martin describes Obstinate as “in essence, a love letter to teenage friendship”.
Netflix
The school’s origins are cult, an area that fascinates Martin. “Cults are a useful metaphor for the complicity we all have and what we are willing to turn a blind eye to in order to have a comfortable life.”
Martin’s previous series Feel goodfor Netflix and Channel 4, it was semi-autobiographical and over two seasons charted the relationship between Mae and George, played by Ghosts star Charlotte Ritchie. It also delved into Mae’s past and her own adolescence. Se Feel good it was a comedy with a powerful dramatic arc, Obstinate turns that formula on its head and is largely a drama with some lighter moments along the way.
“I was interested in creating tension properly,” says Martin of this radical change. “I really wanted to make sure that the funny moments were character-based and truthful, and that any horror and pain were truly deserved.”
Given that Martin had a successful career as a comic book and stand-up comedy writer, it was difficult to laugh at Obstinate“I feel like my inner clown is very close to the surface,” they say. “As I get older, I think, ‘Is this just a series of coping mechanisms? Am I really funny, or is this just a way of interacting with the world?’ I’m still figuring that out.”
Action Points
Michael Gibson/Netflix
When pressed about his dream role, Martin says he wants to be the next James Bond. Maybe the clues were there all along. In Feel goodMartin’s character tells his agent, “I always wanted to be John Wick.” In Obstinatean animated Martin plays cop Alex Dempsey, who cracks a few heads and is deeply involved in the action. “I’m clearly living a fantasy and I don’t know who keeps letting me do this,” they say. “I have perpetual imposter syndrome when it comes to acting, but I really fell in love with doing this show and working with Toni Collette, Sarah Gadon and the cast. I gave myself license to really go for it. It was really fun to release some aggression and play that character with all of her flaws.”
Martin was encouraged to dye his hair a darker shade so that Alex could be taken more seriously. And this character is serious. It has a darkness and yet longing for a happy family home in a perfect setting, which Tall Pines ultimately is not. For Martin, this role felt more like a traditional acting gig where they inhabit a fictional character rather than Feel good where they played a version of themselves.
Martin identifies a pivotal scene midway through the season. “It’s a sex scene between a trans police officer [Alex] and his wife who is eight months pregnant [Laura]. This representation would have meant a lot to me when I was young. It’s such a different thing to see: an eight-month pregnant woman fully clothed and this trans guy.”
For Martin, the fact that Alex is a trans man and “that’s not the most interesting or important thing about his character” on the show was significant. “What this means is that if you’re not preaching, or making it a central element of the show, you can actually be more subversive. Narratively, there’s a lot going on in this scene.”
Martin shares some screen time with Collette, who gives a masterclass in chilling villainy as a school and community leader with a specialty in manipulation. In the wrong hands, Evelyn could have been a pantomime villain, but Collette offers something more complex. “She really got the job done,” says Martin. “Where it could have been a sort of mustache-twirling villain, I think you get the sense that Evelyn really believes in what she’s doing and just has no self-awareness and is something of a narcissist.”
Obstinate Adolescence
Feel good and Obstinate are both produced by Objective Fiction. A creative line of these programs, through SAP Special stand-up, focuses on adolescence and its legacy. “In Feel good there was an adult suing his teenage children and then with SAP In the same way, I was driven by nostalgia and tried to make sense of it all,” says Martin. “I’m trying to understand how visceral those years were for me; all those first times are so intense. When you’re a teenager, everyone’s a mess, but you also know who you are.”
With ObstinateMartin is hopeful that audiences will reflect on their own adolescence. “I wish people would think about their own teenagers. We should absolutely listen to young people more. I don’t think we’ve ever really known what to do with teenagers. We sexualize them, we market to them, we make fun of them, we treat them like children but expect them to be adults. We so desperately need the next generation to save the planet that it would be nice to empower them a little.”
For Martin, it was important that the young cast of Obstinate like Topliffe, Lind, and others felt empowered among experienced artists like Collette, Gadon, and Patrick J. Adams.
“We were already editing the program when I watched [Netflix’s U.K. drama] Adolescence. There’s an episode with about 200 kids at that school, but if you give them that responsibility, or trust people with their character and their intuition, then they really move forward. It was important to me that [the young cast] It felt like they had ownership over the emotional world of their characters.”
Next steps
Publish-ObstinateMartin has a stand-up tour coming soon and projects with Feel good co-creator Joe Hampson in progress. “I miss working with him and we have a few things in development that we’re releasing because we’re desperate to write something funny again,” they say. “We have some good ideas and I’m just trying to attract him to Los Angeles.”
Martin also has his eye on roles created by other writers. “I’ve never been in a movie and I would love to act in someone else’s movie and play someone really different.”
They continue: “I would love to do an Elliott Smith biopic and play him or even play River Phoenix. I would also love to play a villain or do a children’s film.” This might be called keeping his options open, but considering that Martin has written comedies and now dramas, releases music, writes books, co-hosts a popular podcast, and has also started selling his artwork, those ambitions don’t seem lofty. Maybe Bond won’t be so far-fetched.
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