Director Mae Martin, along with stars Toni Collette, Sarah Gadon, Brandon Jay McLaren, Alyvia Alyn Lind and Sydney Topliffe, reminisce about their adolescence at THR's TIFF suite at the 1 Hotel in Toronto. Martin gives insight into her life and how she translated it into the 'Wayward' script. Plus, she shares that she created playlist with the ensemble cast from the early 2000's era.
00:00It's very weird to think anyone's ever thinking of you, to be honest, as an actor that just comes out of the blue and like, what?
00:06But yeah, when I... I mean, the character is crazy. So that's kind of offensive, really, actually.
00:19I've always written kind of around adolescence and a lot of adult characters that are processing their teens,
00:25and I wanted to write about adolescence and coming of age.
00:29And my best friend in my teens was sent to one of these troubled teen institutes.
00:34And when she came back, she had these very, like, theatrical stories almost about the bizarre kind of therapy that they did.
00:42So I became interested in that industry, the troubled teen industry, and then kind of put a genre on top of it.
00:48How was everyone else's teen hood slash high school experience?
00:51I went to art school, so I had a great high school experience.
00:56I did the Music Man when I was 16, not doing drugs.
01:01I've been an actor my entire life, so I have had eyes on me my entire life since I was three.
01:06That's amazing.
01:08So no time for anything else.
01:11I was playing a lot of soccer. I played D1 soccer in the States on a full ride, so I was doing a lot of athletic things.
01:17That was pretty wholesome.
01:18Yeah, yeah, no.
01:19I was in rehab.
01:21And that's why you're leading us there.
01:24Right.
01:26How did you assemble this cast? Did you have anyone in mind?
01:29I put out a bat signal.
01:31No, I just feel so, so lucky, and casting is so crucial, and finding people who are intelligent and want to take control of their characters.
01:42And, yeah, it's just been so amazing.
01:45And, I mean, we wrote, in the writer's room, we wrote Evelyn sort of, we would say, you know, someone like Toni Collette, and we never thought we would actually even get you to read it.
01:54But we're, so to have you actually do it is amazing.
01:57And, yeah, it's just been the best.
01:58I'm working in Canada with all these, yeah.
02:00I love shooting in Toronto.
02:01It's the best.
02:02Yeah, it's good to be back.
02:03Tonally, I was very unsure when I came in because it could have gone in so many directions.
02:08So it took me a beat to kind of grasp onto it.
02:11But the crux of it was so immediate, and it's so original.
02:15It's so original.
02:16It's so reflective of May and May's perspective of things.
02:21Pathology.
02:22There's that.
02:23The other P word.
02:24Yeah, and there was no way I wasn't going to do it.
02:26I just immediately loved it.
02:28What do you think Evelyn ranks in so far as, like, crazy?
02:32Crazy?
02:33Yeah, or just, like, eccentric.
02:33I think she has really very good intentions.
02:36She just goes about it all the wrong way.
02:38I mean, there's a lot of what she talks about that I really believe in.
02:41Yeah, me too.
02:42But it's just always a little tilted.
02:44Yeah.
02:45Yeah, the entry point makes sense on some level.
02:47That's why people get interested, and then...
02:49Like, the origins of the troubled teen industry are self-help cults from the 70s that really...
02:55The central tenets make a lot of sense, and then, yeah, narcissism always creeps in,
03:01and then someone exploits people, and yeah.
03:04But I'm interested in that.
03:05They offer a solution to a real problem.
03:07I was a wayward teen, so everything around 2003, I was 16, and everything was very visceral,
03:15and I think I was pretty worried about being cool, and I dropped out of school, and things
03:21were crazy.
03:22But, yeah, even, like, I made a playlist for you guys of music from that era, and...
03:27I didn't get it.
03:28It was...
03:28Oh, sorry.
03:29Sorry.
03:30It's awesome.
03:31I'll share it with you.
03:31Because you guys know the songs, but there is some stuff you hadn't heard, right?
03:35Like, yeah, and Canadian stuff.
03:36Well, I wasn't born, so I needed all the help I could get, because I was not around during
03:41that time.
03:42Yeah.
03:42Deeply depressing.
03:43The music in the show is great.
03:44I think it's great, I don't know.
03:46Yeah.
03:47Yeah, what was on the playlist?
03:48There's a lot of third eye blind.
03:50There's some third eye blind.
03:51There's some kind of early 2000s Canadiana, like Sam Roberts, and The Odds, and people
03:58like that.
03:59The Hidden Cameras, Tragically Hip.
04:02Tragically Hip!
04:03And then there's this whole other element, because Sidney and Olivia's characters are
04:09obsessed with 60s culture, so we got Pink Floyd and T-Rex and some great, great people.
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