Key takeaways:
- Netflix’s Wayward follows Alex Dempsey (Mae Martin), a detective uncovering dark secrets at Tall Pines Academy, a school for troubled teens.
- The hit Netflix series draws from Martin’s own experiences and their friend Nicole’s time at a troubled teen school.
- Martin also researched the real-life religious movement Synanon, whose confrontational therapy methods and controversial practices influenced Wayward.
Netflix’s hit drama series, Wayward, stars Mae Martin as a detective who moves to the small town of Tall Pines, only to discover that the town and its school are hosting a heap of deadly secrets.
In Wayward, which is set in 2003, Martin’s Alex Dempsey investigates the town’s school for “troubled teens,” Tall Pines Academy, and its eclectic leader, Evelyn (played by Toni Collette). Alex begins to suspect all is not right with the school and soon begins working with two teens from Toronto who have found themselves trapped in the school, with no hope of getting out.
Wayward is an intriguing and mysterious series, but is the Netflix hit based on a true story? Here’s what you need to know.
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Is Netflix’s Wayward based on a true story?
While the exact plot of Wayward is not based on a true story, Tall Pines Academy is based on Martin’s own childhood experiences, and an old friend from their teenage years who was sent to a school for troubled teens.
“I started developing Wayward based on a lot of things, but, mainly, my own experiences as a young person,” Martin, who created the series, told Tudum. “I was a wayward teen in the early 2000s, and my best friend Nicole was sent to one of these ‘troubled teen’ institutes when she was 16. When she came back and shared her stories, I became pretty obsessed with the industry,” Martin revealed.
Martin says they were “deeply intrigued” to learn that “a lot of its origins actually came from self-help groups and cults in the ’70s—and how there can be huge profits and often questionable practices. I knew it was rich for thriller territory.”
Martin’s friend Nicole became a consultant on Wayward, and the writers’ room also included someone who had been to one of the schools.
The real religious movement that inspired Netflix’s Wayward
Along with Nicole’s experience, Martin also drew inspiration from the religious movement Synanon to write Wayward.
“In researching these schools—a lot of which are now being talked about in different documentaries—I learned about Synanon,” Martin told Tudum. “That was a self-help cult in the ’70s in LA, which was ultimately shut down, but it kind of transformed and was part of the beginnings of the ‘troubled teen’ industry. So we took those facts and then dialled them up a bunch.”
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Synanon, which was originally known as “Tender Loving Care,” was a movement founded in Santa Monica, California, in 1958 by Charles Dederich, a former Alcoholic Anonymous member who believed that program’s approaches didn’t adequately address drug addiction and aimed to build his own confrontational community, according to UCLA and Rod Janzen’s The Rise and Fall of Synanon.
One of Synanon’s key principles was a “rugged” group-therapy session called “The Synanon Game,” in which participants could harshly scream at and criticize each other before hugging it out at the end, according to TIME magazine and clinical overviews of confrontation methods.
Episode 3 of Netflix’s Wayward stages a similar “Hot Seat,” where classmates throw blunt critiques at a student before hugging them, explicitly echoing Synanon’s confront-then-bond approach.
Synanon’s San Francisco headquarters, February 13, 1965.
Synanon ultimately attracted thousands of members throughout the 1960s and early ’70s, according to the Los Angeles Times and The Rise and Fall of Synanon. But by the late ’70s, reports of violence and coercive control had overtaken its image.
The Synanon Game reportedly became increasingly aggressive, and was eventually abandoned as the group turned toward authoritarian practices, according to PEOPLE. Dederich’s inner circle began stockpiling weapons and intimidating defectors, per the Los Angeles Times and TIME; in 1978, a rattlesnake was placed in the mailbox of attorney Paul Morantz after he sued the group, leading to Dederich’s arrest and Synanon’s fall.
By the early 1990s, Synanon was formally dissolved, according to court records.
Where can I watch Netflix’s Wayward?
The entire first season of the series is now available to stream on Netflix.