Miku Martineau

At Netflix’s End of Summer Bash in Los Angeles, Miku Martineau found herself among young actors representing several generations of the streamer’s YA storytelling: Outer Banks stars nearing the end of their run, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan of Never Have I Ever, and Anna Cathcart, who first played Kitty Song-Covey in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before before inheriting her own love story with XO, Kitty.

Martineau’s own Netflix history is becoming substantial, too. She made her screen debut opposite Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the 2021 action thriller Kate, then led BET as Yumeko, the compulsive gambler at the center of the live-action series inspired by Homura Kawamoto and Tōru Naomura’s manga Kakegurui. In fact, BET helped lead directly to what came next: at the show’s wrap party, someone from Netflix told Martineau about an upcoming series called Crew Girl and encouraged her to audition. A callback, a meeting with the showrunner and a few months later, she was in Victoria preparing to lead another Netflix series.

Developed by showrunner Vivian Lin, Crew Girl gives Martineau a very different kind of obsessive teenager to inhabit. She plays Teagan Tao, a 16-year-old rowing phenom forced to abandon her life in California when accusations against her hotelier father throw the family into crisis. Teagan and her mother, Ella (Jessica Paré), retreat to the small Massachusetts town where Ella grew up, and Teagan enrolls at Easton Prep, an elite institution without a girls’ rowing team.

Her unlikely route back to the sport is becoming coxswain of its dysfunctional boys’ varsity crew, where she is quickly caught between two teammates who occupy opposite ends of Easton’s social hierarchy. Josh Regis (Sam Braun) has inherited virtually every advantage Easton can offer, from generations of family history at the school to enormous wealth. Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark), meanwhile, has far less to fall back on. Rowing helped get him into Easton and could determine where he goes after. Between them—and a boatful of personalities Teagan has to somehow pull together—the series turns the precision of rowing into a backdrop for class, family, ambition and the requisite complications of a YA love triangle.

Crew Girl asked its actors to do more than convincingly sell the drama from inside a racing shell. Before production, the cast spent weeks learning the mechanics and conditioning of rowing. Filming then demanded its own kind of endurance: race days could leave the actors on the water for eight to 10 hours. That physical rigor also gave Martineau a deeper understanding of the philosophy behind the sport and of why Teagan clings to it so fiercely.

As Teagan explains in the first episode, rowing is partly about knowing how to reset yourself after each stroke. It feels like an apt idea for Martineau, too. With Kate and BET behind her and Crew Girl placing her at the center of Netflix’s next coming-of-age swing, she is resetting once again—this time for a new era of YA romance, and for whatever comes after the next stroke.

Timid Magazine: When the Easton Prep students learn about Teagan’s dad, she doesn’t have a huge outburst. She takes a drink and walks away. How did you approach that reaction?

Miku Martineau: When we’re young and huge life changes are thrown at us—things that seem so impactful and enormous in our adolescent lives—I don’t think there’s necessarily a right or wrong way to deal with them. We’re all figuring it out.

That’s how I looked at every choice Teagan makes in the show. She’s a 16-year-old girl pursuing something she’s deeply passionate about while also trying to restart her life after everything she’s known has changed. Maybe she doesn’t always handle things in the best way, but perhaps it was the right choice for that moment.

I also don’t think Teagan is somebody who’s desperate for other people’s approval. She’s opinionated in a fantastic and strong way. Obviously, what happens is hurtful, but Teagan is tough. She doesn’t break very easily. Sometimes her response is just, “Well…” and honestly, that can be a great response to things in life.

TM: Shortly afterward, Teagan has that emotional heart-to-heart with her mom while she’s drunk. How did you balance playing the intoxication with the vulnerability of that scene?

MM: I had the best scene partner. Jessica Paré, who plays my mom, is amazing, and Simon Barry, who directed the first episode, is also amazing. He was the showrunner on BET, so there was a lot of comfort and familiarity for me.

Simon is a great director because he lets me feel loose and able to do my own thing. And when you’re drunk, you’re loose. So it was about finding that middle ground between feeling free and also tired. It’s super late at night, you’re a little delirious anyway, and people say drinking can be like a truth serum. It makes it a little easier to be vulnerable and say what you’re really thinking.

Even without the drinking, that’s a big part of Teagan’s personality. She can be very upfront. She and her mom are going through this huge life change together, and her mom is very free-spirited. I think she’s quite different from Teagan, so they have an interesting and sometimes difficult dynamic throughout the series.

But what’s really important is that they love each other and are willing to do anything to make it work. There’s so much love and comfort between the two of them.

TM: The rowing sequences look seamless, but filming on the water adds so many technical complications. How did you balance actually rowing with everything the camera needed from you?

MM: Thank you so much for this question. I love understanding how things are made in film, and I don’t think people always take that into consideration. I’ve actually been wanting to talk about this.

I can only speak for myself, but I think the entire Crew Girl cast really cared about portraying the sport accurately. I think that’s one of an actor’s duties, along with listening to the people on set who are there to guide you. We did all of the rowing training and were as prepared as we could be, but rowing normally versus rowing while being filmed are completely different things.

For some of the water shots, they actually let me go out in the single scull by myself, which was great because those were the exact motions I had trained for and would do in rowing practice. But for the main racing sequences, because of safety, camera and technical reasons, we had to be attached to another boat on a barge.

That involved a lot of movie magic. You’re working with the camera while also trying to stay completely true to the posture and timing of rowing. Rowing boats also go much faster than a barge can, so everyone was working hard to make those shots work.

When I was in the single scull, for technical reasons, a lot of the time I could only have one oar in the water. One arm was really pulling while the other had to adjust to the setup. We tried our best with the time we had to make everything as accurate as possible.

It takes the coordination of so many things. I have so much respect for rowers. It’s such an intense, emotional and technical sport. It doesn’t just involve strength; there’s so much coordination. Learning how to row and then learning how to film those sequences was a very interesting challenge, and I hope we delivered.

TM: Teagan’s dad tells her that she’s really only racing against herself. Does that resonate with you as an actor working in such a competitive industry?

MM: Absolutely. Resilience plays such a huge part in an athlete’s mindset and in Teagan’s mind, and I feel that same importance of resilience in my own career as an actor.

I understand why people see acting as a competition, because multiple people audition for one thing and one person gets it. But in my mind, I’m not competing with anybody. I’m just doing it for myself.

If you’re going into acting, I think you should love it enough that if you audition for 100 things and get one, you’ll still be okay. You have to be resilient enough to understand that maybe something just wasn’t your role, and every audition you do can make you a better actor.

I’m so grateful for all of the auditions I didn’t get because they gave me time to practice my craft. It becomes a game of how long you’re willing to keep believing in yourself. Some people tap out when they feel like other people aren’t believing in them. But if you consistently show up for yourself and believe in yourself, eventually someone else will believe in you too.

TM: YA stories and love triangles can look effortless when they work, but getting audiences invested in those characters and relationships can be difficult. What did Crew Girl teach you about working in that genre?

MM: Every role and project comes with its own challenges. Of course, there’s always that thought of, “How will the audience like these characters? How can I make my performance the best it can be so they receive it well?”

But I try to do all the homework I can and then show up on the day, let it go, be free and play. That especially helped me with Teagan. I’ve played characters before who were very calculated and specific. Teagan, on the other hand, is a girl facing life as it comes at her, so I had to approach her that way too.

After I give the performance, I give the audience full freedom to feel however they want about Teagan. Making any show or movie is such a collaborative effort. There are writers, producers, directors and so many other people generating the story. I’m one small part of it.