Sam Braun and Miku Martineau in Crew Girl.Craig Minielly/Netflix
Miku Martineau has quietly become one of Netflix’s most bankable leads. After making her feature film debut opposite Mary Elizabeth Winstead in 2021’s Kate, the Japanese-Canadian actor broke out as high-stakes gambler Yumeko in the international hit series Bet.
Now, Martineau steps into her latest starring role for the mega-streamer in Crew Girl (premiering Sept. 10), playing Teagan Tao – a star rower forced to start over at an elite prep school, where she becomes the coxswain of a dysfunctional all-boys team.
While set in the U.S., Crew Girl was shot in Victoria and Vancouver, with a predominantly Canadian cast and writing team. The series is part of a growing push for more Canadian-made productions designed for international audiences, giving Martineau plenty of reason to champion her home industry.
“The Canadian film industry deserves its flowers too, so I’m so happy and proud that it’s blooming, and I can’t wait to see it continue to grow,” Martineau said. Beyond celebrating local roots, however, she remains fiercely focused on helping to shift the landscape for Asian representation. “We live in such a diverse world, and we deserve media and entertainment to portray that in the correct way,” she said.
Born and raised in Toronto, Martineau still maintains strong ties to the city, where her father, Peter, owns the Beacher Cafe and her mother works alongside him as a waitress. On a recent video call from her home in the city, Martineau talked to The Globe and Mail about the surprisingly meta experience of learning to row for Crew Girl and how an abridged school production of The Wizard of Oz first planted the acting seed.
Miku Martineau plays Teagan Tao in Crew Girl, which premieres on Sept. 10.Netflix
A lot of your past work fits into the sci-fi and fantasy genres, but Crew Girl feels much more grounded in the real world of classic teen dramas. What intrigued you the most about Teagan’s journey in this first season?
She’s a 16-year-old girl whose life just got completely turned upside down, so she’s kind of facing life as it comes at her. She’s navigating who she is, who her friends and romantic interests are, and her family dynamic, which is huge in the show. I think that’s something we all feel as teenagers when we’re trying to figure out who we are as individuals.
I also grew up playing so many sports – mainly gymnastics, hockey and volleyball, but also basketball, soccer, figure skating and dance. You learn really great qualities of resilience; you’re understanding how powerful your mind is and how strong you are. So I was like, “Oh, it would be really freeing to play a young woman who’s pursuing something she’s passionate about while also learning who she’ll be in this world.”
All of that sporting experience probably helped with your strength and conditioning, but you and your cast had actually never rowed prior to being cast on this show.
I have so much respect for rowers. It’s a sport that takes not just physical strength, but a lot of mental strength and coordination. During rowing training, all of us were becoming a crew. We’re all making this together, and it takes teamwork, patience and kindness, and those are all things that Teagan and her team are also learning in the show. That mirrored the real-life dynamic between me and my cast on a purely friendship level.
Crew Girl is surely going to be the next YA drama to ignite a fiery debate over a central love triangle, so I have to ask: Between arrogant team captain Josh (Sam Braun) and quiet underdog Cam (Kyle Clark), which team are you on?
I’m Team Teagan! I love the dynamics between Josh and Cam. Josh and Teagan are fiery, intense, passionate. She and Cam have more common ground of being the underdog, of wanting to prove themselves. She tries to get Cam to stand his ground a little bit more in the most positive way. So there’s great things about both of those guys – and they’re both studs. Come on! People are going to love them.
You grew up in the Beaches neighbourhood in Toronto without any connection to the entertainment industry. Did you always know that you were destined to be a performer?
When I was younger, I didn’t really watch that much TV or American cult classics. My dad is a very outdoorsy person. My mom immigrated from Japan, so we would watch a lot of [Hayao] Miyazaki movies. But I never really watched something and was like, “Oh wow, I want to do that.” It happened very naturally. I was a very imaginative kid.
I went to a very small elementary school, and we did this one play called Oz-some – our rendition of The Wizard of Oz. I was in Grade 3. Later in elementary school, I did something called show choir, which is the Canadian version of Pitch Perfect. I got a scholarship to go to this arts camp in New York City, and I also got a scholarship to go to Randolph [College for the Performing Arts in Toronto]. I did both of those two-to-three-week camps the summer right before high school, and I was like, “I love doing this.” I started taking workshops, and then through those workshops, I found my agent and booked Kate. Ever since then, I’ve been lucky enough to pursue this passion and also live a very normal life.
I’d imagine that part of that normalcy has to do with the fact that you could always go back and work at your family’s restaurant if acting doesn’t work out.
My brother’s a year and a half older than me, and he definitely worked there a lot more. I grew up with the restaurant being so embedded in my family. It’s not easy to own one restaurant – it’s a lot of work, labour, energy. I did not, respectfully, want to work there. I wanted to explore and try new things.
As one of the few Asian leads on Western television, do you feel a unique sense of responsibility in the roles you take on? How has your Japanese-Canadian heritage shaped that perspective and the stories you want to tell?
I’m just so proud to be a Japanese-Canadian actor. A common thing with younger people is that you just want to fit in, and growing up in a predominantly Caucasian neighbourhood, I definitely felt a little bit like an outlier, and I had insecurity surrounding my identity. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized it is a huge part of who I am. It’s a huge part of why I have the work ethic that I do, why I have my positivity that I do. I love that I get to represent as an Asian actor in this industry because there was a time where we wouldn’t be getting the opportunities to be playing such a variety of characters.
This interview has been edited and condensed.