Canadian comic Mae Martin on mining their past for hit Netflix series ‘Feel Good’

TORONTO — After a whirlwind year of critical kudos and celebrity fans including Victoria Beckham, London-based Canadian comedy star Mae Martin is set to celebrate on home soil.

The Toronto-raised co-creator and star of Netflix’s dramedy series “Feel Good” says they hope to cross the pond next month to finally see loved ones who haven’t been able to applaud the actor-writer’s smash success in person due to the pandemic.

“I haven’t been home in a year and a half, since before season 1 came out, so it feels really weird to not have sat down with my family and my friends and processed this big thing,” Martin, who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, said in a recent Zoom interview.

“It’s been crazy because the first season came out at the start of lockdown here, at the start of the pandemic, and then I didn’t really feel the reaction to it because I was just in my apartment. And then we wrote and filmed and put out the second season, so I’m only now just emerging from my apartment and feeling that people seem to like it.”

And indeed, people do like it.

“Feel Good,” which recently launched its second season, has a 100 per cent approval rating from critics on movie review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, with the Irish Times calling it “a masterpiece of a sitcom.” 

It’s also earned the 34-year-old a BAFTA TV Award nomination for their semi-autobiographical performance as the aptly named Mae Martin, a queer Canadian standup comic and recovering addict living in England.

Charlotte Ritchie plays school teacher George, Mae’s previously straight love interest who struggles to reveal her same-sex relationship to her friends while dealing with the comedian’s addictive behaviour. “Friends” star Lisa Kudrow plays Mae’s mother.

The intimate and nuanced series, which has also aired on the U.K.’s Channel 4, recently got an Instagram rave from Beckham.

“I couldn’t believe that. An endorsement from a Spice Girl is kind of my childhood fantasy,” said Martin, who’s also met Mel B from the pop group.

Martin has also won two Royal Television Society awards for co-writing the series with co-creator Joe Hampson.

The two met at a comedy festival in 2012 and started writing “Feel Good” in 2016 after Martin “did a standup show that was about addiction and love and mining things that I hadn’t really looked at before, from my teens, especially,” said the comic.

Martin started performing comedy at age 13 in Toronto and forged long-lasting friendships with fellow comics including “Baroness von Sketch Show” co-creator and star Carolyn Taylor.

“But as explored in this season of ‘Feel Good,’ I was also a teenager in a very adult world,” said Martin, who has won two Canadian Screen Awards for writing on “Baroness.” 

“Although I have a lot of love for live comedy and comedians and that kind of green-room atmosphere, it’s also had its drawbacks, especially when I started in, like, 2001.” 

Martin said they were also “too young to be there” and got into trouble, leading to “a complicated relationship with the Toronto comedy scene.”

“I do take a hefty dose of responsibility as well, and I got heavily into drugs in my teens, so it’s all sort of tied up with that,” Martin said. “But I was just lucky I was able to go to the U.K. and have a fresh start. 

“I never want it to seem like I’m not hugely grateful to that community — I’m passionate about it, I feel like I was raised by that community. And, of course, unfortunately if you put a teenage girl in any industry, I think you’re going to have problems — especially at nighttime with alcohol.” 

Martin, whose father is British, moved to London with their then-partner 10 years ago and ended up falling in love with the city, they said.

Season 2 of “Feel Good” was shot entirely during the pandemic and will be the show’s last.

Martin said they always intended it to have a two-season arc and there won’t be a third season.

“I just feel like it would be sadistic to keep throwing problems at this poor couple,” they said. “And I think you’d end up having to undo all the personal growth that they’ve made.” 

Martin is set to do a standup tour in the United Kingdom in October, which they said will be “a lot sillier” than their previously personal and vulnerable shows.

They’re also writing a comedy thriller film with Hampson and hope to do another series.

“I’m so excited to play a character that’s not myself, because it’s a lot like talking about your own issues all the time and having your character with your same name,” Martin said. 

“I just want to do something crazy and challenge myself and see if I can do that.” 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2021.

Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press