Mae Martin on exploring ‘hypermasculinity’ playing trans police officer in Netflix’s Wayward

Mae Martin has spoken about exploring “hypermasculinity” while playing Alex, a trans police officer in Netflix’s new thriller Wayward.

The new eight-part miniseries is created by Feel Good and Taskmaster star Mae Martin, and the comedian also takes the lead role of bumbling local cop Alex in the bucolic town of Tall Pines.

Wayward sees Alex become suspicious of a local school for troubled teens, and the mysterious woman, Evelyn Wade (played by Muriel’s Wedding star Toni Collette), presiding over it. The officer runs into two students, Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind), who appear desperate to escape the school, while a series of unusual incidents in Tall Pines lead him to investigate further, with Evelyn appearing at the centre of all of the town’s problems.

“Wayward is a thrilling and genre-bending limited series about the eternal struggle between one generation and the next, what happens when friendship and loyalty are put to the ultimate test, and how buried truths always find a way of coming to the surface,” reads an official synopsis.

Alex has only just moved into the area, with his pregnant wife Laura (Sarah Gadon) in tow. Speaking to Deadline recently, Martin explained how they found it “juicy” to explore Alex’s need for a nuclear family as a transgender man.

“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,” Martin explained.

“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.”

Expanding on why they made Alex the way he is, Martin told Tudum: “I’m always drawn to the protagonists who are figuring things out in real time with the audience. So I wanted him to be the voice of the audience.

“He’s very desperate to conform and to fit in and find community. I like that struggle in him, and he’s a little bit bumbling… He makes some bad choices and some good choices.”

Since its release on Netflix on 25 September, Wayward has earned rave reviews from critics and viewers alike, with The Guardian praising Collette as “utterly magnificent” and The Independent calling it one of the “more odd and entertaining” thrillers of recent times.

Wayward is streaming on Netflix now.

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