The comedian behind Channel 4’s rom-com reimagining has a definitive message: ‘girls bang – they’re horny, filthy, weird, and funny’

Text Emma Madden

Mae Martin, the Toronto-born, London-based comedian clung to the stage from an early age. From 11, she was spending most nights working up an audience for laughs; going through puberty on Toronto’s comedy circuit, where highs were chased and drugs flowed free. After almost two decades on the scene — highlights of which include several triumphant tours, a very funny book on sexuality, and numerous millennial-targeted radio shows — she’s awaiting the release of what’s sure to be the pinnacle of her career so far, as well as one one of this year’s TV highlights. Feel Good, a semi-autobiographical, six-part series, begins with a standup set, and descends into a treatise on drug addiction, codependent love, and monomania, all while offering insight on how the three overlap. Mae wrote the series with her best friend Joe Hampson (Skins). Alongside Mae is Call The Midwife’s Charlotte Ritchie, who stars as fictional-Mae’s new addiction. With searing detail, quickfire dialogue, and comedic timing, Feel Good makes the ultra-specific (like, not being able to cum unless your lover speaks to you in a low-pitched Susan Sarandon voice, kind of specific) universally relatable. With its well-helmed pathos and lifelike depiction of human desire and romantic powerplay, Feel Good is the queer, drug-addled followup to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag that we deserve. Dazed spoke with Mae the day after Feel Good’s first public screening, where we found her with blushing red ears.

How did it feel watching it back in front of an audience for the first time? Mae Martin: It was so surreal, because I’ve been watching it for months. We finished the edit in August, so we’ve been in this weird vacuum, not knowing how people will respond to it. The fact they were laughing was huge. My favourite thing is any gasps or ‘oooohs’, so that was such a relief. A lot of adrenaline last night though because it’s quite exposing. I was sitting behind you and I could see your ears turning red during one of your sex scenes with George (Charlotte Ritchie) Mae Martin: Yes, they were burning hot. Even talking about it now, involuntarily, it’ll start to happen. It’s really annoying. When we were filming, the makeup lady kept having to come in and reapply foundation to my ears, and even in the edit, we had to dip into the effects budget to tone my ears down. It was fucking hell. This show is going to put you on a much more prominent platform. How will you react to the increased visibility? Mae Martin: Well, I think anyone who says they don’t at least want a bit of recognition is lying. I’ve been doing comedy twenty years so it’s been a long old slog. It’s about being authentic to yourself while trying to please the biggest amount of people possible. What I found is the more specific and vulnerable you are, the more people connect with it, so all the weird things that you’re ashamed of and think ‘there’s no way anyone can relate to this’ but then you say it and people are like ‘oh my god, me too!’ “When men direct sex scenes between women, they’re often very soft and tender, and shot like music videos... but really, girls bang. They’re horny and they’re filthy and they have sex drives, and they can be weird and funny” – Mae Martin Can you be so explicitly open and vulnerable with your friends and family or it is just limited to the stage? Mae Martin: No, I’m a chronic oversharer! I tell them to a therapist too, so that’s healthy. It is weird talking about dark things and then getting laughs from them. You sort of think it’s therapeutic to be talking about heavy things on stage, but actually, I don’t know whether that means you’re dealing with those things. You’re getting laughs but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve conquered the things. I think it is also important to be open in your private life. What made you decide that you *had* to do comedy? Mae Martin: I remember when Ace Ventura came out, and I remember thinking ‘Jim Carrey is the king’. On my lunchbreaks at school, I used to do this thing called ‘The Mae Show’, I mean, what a narcissist! Everybody at my school would get tickets and I’d do push-ups and they would cheer, and then I’d do scenes from Ace Ventura. I don’t think it’d come out in the UK at that point but it had come out in Canada, so I had this edge because I went to school in the UK for one year, so I pretended that Ace Ventura was a creation of my own. Then when it came out I lost a lot of friends. How did you go from Jim Carey goofs to dark and personal comedy? Mae Martin: I think the genesis of this show came from a standup I did called Dope, which was dealing with themes of addictive behaviour in all facets of my life – being addicted to Bette Midler as a kid, then to comedy, then to drugs, then to love. You’ve clearly had this idea in mind for a long time, is this TV show the greatest distillation of it? Mae Martin: I think so, because I’m not just narrativising my own neuroses. It was also an opportunity to inhabit the perspectives of other people, and to think outside of myself; thinking about how the people I dated might have experienced things and felt.

Feel Good stills