There's a change of direction for comedian Mae Martin, whose new project is Wayward, a thriller for Netflix co-starring Toni Collette.

“I often talk around adolescence or I write characters who are processing their teens. It was such an intense time for me, and is for everyone, but I've always known I wanted to more directly dive into that time and all the visceral feelings of adolescence,” Martin says.

Also, Martin drew from their own experiences. “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,” explains Martin. “She came back and had just the craziest stories about it.” Their interest in that delicate time eventually led Martin to research the “troubled teen” industry; they funneled that curiosity into Wayward, which centres around the disturbing reality of one such facility.

Enigmatic Evelyn Wade (Collette) is the leader of Tall Pines Academy and can be seen in the trailer controlling the volatile brand of “self-reflection” practiced at the facility.  Martin and their co-showrunner Ryan Scott were inspired by everything from Girl, Interrupted to Get Out to Fargo as they built Wayward. Martin says, “We were saying it’s like if you took the kids from Booksmart and put them in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

More here.

Wayward streams on Netflix from September 25.