Mae Martin: From Toronto Teen Comic to Feel Good and Wayward
A Canadian comedian who started at thirteen, made addiction and love into one of the best TV comedies of its era, and then pivoted to a thriller.
Mae Martin is a Canadian comedian who started doing stand-up at thirteen, built a career in the UK, and then made Feel Good, a tender, funny and often painful show about addiction and love that became a quiet landmark of 2020s television. Since then Martin has released the Netflix special SAP, won Taskmaster, put out an indie rock album and created Wayward, a Netflix thriller. Martin uses they/them pronouns.
A teenage comic in Toronto
Martin was born in Toronto in 1987. They started performing as a young teenager with a comedy troupe and worked around The Second City, and at sixteen became the youngest person nominated for Canada's Tim Sims Encouragement Fund Award. Later they wrote for the Canadian sketch series Baroness von Sketch Show, work that won two Canadian Screen Awards.
That early start shaped the material. Martin has talked in stand-up and in Feel Good about being a teenager in adult comedy clubs, about drug addiction that began young, and about how the comedy scene was both a refuge and part of the problem.
London and the Edinburgh years
Martin moved to London in 2011 and became a fixture of the British circuit. Their 2015 Edinburgh Fringe show Us led to a BBC Radio 4 series, Mae Martin's Guide to 21st Century Sexuality, a funny and thoughtful look at how labels for sexuality and gender were shifting. The ideas also became a book for young readers, Can Everyone Please Calm Down? A Guide to 21st Century Sexuality (2019).
The 2017 Fringe show Dope, about addiction and obsession, was shortlisted for the Edinburgh Comedy Award and became Martin's first Netflix special in 2019. It is the direct precursor to Feel Good: the same honesty about using, the same habit of finding comedy in the logic of compulsion. For context on that circuit, see our history of British alternative comedy.
Feel Good (2020-2021)
Feel Good, co-created with Joe Hampson, premiered on Channel 4 in the UK in 2020 and on Netflix worldwide; a second and final season followed in 2021 on Netflix. Martin plays a fictionalised Mae, a Canadian comedian in recovery in Manchester, who falls in love with George (Charlotte Ritchie), a woman who has never dated a woman and is not ready to tell her friends. Lisa Kudrow plays Mae's mother, a performance of brittle, comic coldness that is one of the show's pleasures.
The show is about addiction in a broad sense: to drugs, to a person, to the feeling of being wanted. Season one is a romantic comedy with a frayed edge. Season two goes deeper into trauma and memory, including what happened to Mae as a young teenager in the comedy world, and into gender identity. It manages all of this without ever becoming an issue drama.
Charlotte Ritchie and Martin have rare chemistry, and the BAFTA TV Awards nominated Martin for best female comedy performance. Twelve episodes in total, it stands with Fleabag as a short, complete British-made comedy that uses autobiographical-feeling material to tell a carefully structured story.
| Season | Year | Episodes | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| One | 2020 | 6 | Mae and George fall in love; Mae's sobriety and George's secrecy collide. |
| Two | 2021 | 6 | Mae confronts what happened in their teenage years and questions their gender identity. |
SAP (Netflix, 2023)
Martin's second Netflix special, SAP, came out in 2023 and was nominated for a Juno Award for comedy album of the year. It is warmer and more personal than Dope, built around romance, gender, being a sentimental person in an ironic culture, and the comedy of being misread. Martin's delivery is quick and boyish, constantly undercutting itself, and the special earns its sincerity by laughing at it first.
If you like comedians who use the hour to work through identity with jokes rather than lectures, it pairs well with Hannah Gadsby's work (see our Hannah Gadsby profile).
Taskmaster, documentary and music
- Taskmaster (2023): Martin won series 15 of the British panel show, a result that delighted a big UK audience.
- The Flight Attendant (2022): a recurring role in the second season of the HBO Max series.
- Fluid: Life Beyond the Binary (2024): Martin hosted this CBC documentary on gender for The Nature of Things.
- Music: their debut indie rock album, I'm a TV, came out in February 2025.
Wayward (Netflix, 2025)
Wayward is the biggest turn in Martin's career: a limited thriller series they created, wrote and produced, starring as Alex Dempsey, a police officer in a small town who uncovers what is happening inside a school for troubled teenagers. Toni Collette co-stars. It premiered on Netflix in September 2025.
It is not a comedy, but it is recognisably Martin's: interested in institutions that claim to fix young people, in how adults fail the young, and in characters who have been through something themselves. Fans of Feel Good will see the thematic line clearly. In February 2026 Martin signed a first-look deal with Netflix, and they were named host of the 2026 Juno Awards.
What makes Mae Martin's comedy distinctive
- Addiction as a frame, not a confession. Martin talks about obsession (with drugs, people, approval) as a lens on everything.
- Gender and sexuality without a lecture. The material is personal, curious and very funny about the absurdity of labels.
- Softness as a strength. Martin's persona is gentle and self-deprecating, which lets the hard material in.
- Range. Stand-up, sketch, radio, a YA book, a sitcom, a thriller and an album: few comedians of the generation have moved between forms so successfully.
If you like Mae Martin
Martin's mix of softness, self-mockery and serious subject matter has company. James Acaster, a peer from the same British circuit, turned a disastrous year, a break-up and therapy into the special Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999. Maria Bamford has spent decades making the most rigorous comedy about mental illness in America. And Fleabag remains the obvious companion to Feel Good: another short, complete series about a funny person avoiding the thing that hurts.
For more on how comedians handle addiction and mental health on stage, read our guide to comedy and mental health.
Frequently asked questions
What pronouns does Mae Martin use?
They/them. Martin came out as non-binary in 2021.
Is Feel Good based on Mae Martin's life?
Partly. Martin co-created the series with Joe Hampson and drew on their own experiences of addiction, stand-up and relationships, but the show is fiction and the characters are not direct portraits of real people.
What is Wayward on Netflix?
A 2025 limited series created, written and produced by Mae Martin, who stars as Alex Dempsey, a small-town police officer who uncovers a troubled-teen facility. Toni Collette co-stars. It is a thriller rather than a comedy.
Where can I watch Mae Martin's stand-up?
Both of their specials, Dope (2019) and SAP (2023), are on Netflix.