A Closer Look at the Real-Life Inspiration in Netflix’s ‘Wayward’
In the hit Netflix series Wayward, the thriller-drama revolving around the inner workings and dark secrets of a fictional school for troubled teenagers, the devil is in the details.
The eight-episode limited series traces dual fictional narratives that overlap at a remote institution in a small Vermont town, vividly creating glimpses of the troubling abuse of the teenagers being “treated” within — in ways that are tantamount to torture in many instances.
The primary characters are two wayward high school besties who become trapped at the campus, the institution’s intimidating and enigmatic leader (played by Toni Collette), and a young married couple — one with secrets about the school and the other with ambitions to reveal them. They mostly have the feel of composite versions of the young people sent to such schools, but series — whether it’s officially acknowledged or not — is filled with details of a very real, notorious institution, and the people whose lives were impacted by what was endured there, which includes a missing persons case that remains cold after 22 years.
Wayward creator Mae Martin, who uses they/them pronouns and who portrays Officer Alex Dempsey in the show, revealed in a recent interview that Wayward’s scripts were drawn from their own real-life experiences. As a wayward teen, Martin saw a close friend shipped off to a troubled teen camp. That friend, Nicole, was a consulting producer on the series, a representative for Martin confirmed with THR.
While Martin has denied any direct connections, several of the details in the scripts — from the therapeutic tactics down to the Tall Pines Academy logo and the motto of “See Who You Really Are and DO Something About It” — either mirror details from CEDU (whose motto is: “See Yourself As You Are and Do Something About It”) or uncannily resemble the people who and events that occurred there.
CEDU, one of the most notorious troubled teen facilities in the nation’s history, was shuttered decades ago amid a flurry of lawsuits, and like the Wayward’s fictional institution, it was rampant with brutality, cruelty and had multiple residents disappear under strange circumstances in cases that local police have all but abandoned.
For many, CEDU is considered ground zero for the now multibillion-dollar troubled teen industry, an organization with a dark history of emotional, physical and psychological abuse. CEDU operated at multiple locations from 1967 until its closure in 2005, leaving behind a legacy of abuse that occurred within a cult-like environment based on degradation and stripping the identity from teenagers sent there for reasons extending from harmful drug addictions to everyday teen depression.
Wayward opens with a smashed window and heart-pounding chase as a mysterious teenage boy desperately flees his Tall Pines Academy dorm, and then the walls of the campus, into the unforgiving woods. Meanwhile, the school’s security team flips on the floodlights and comes after the runaway with the institution’s power. That escape may be heightened for dramatic impact, but it’s easy to presume a similar terror was felt by hundreds of teenagers who tried to escape the camps or institutions.
This was a consistent issue over the 40 years that CEDU existed as a law-flouting, minor-endangering alternative for parents. The unknown levels of abuse were quite real for those who attempted to flee, like the teen in Wayward’s opening moments, out of total desperation.
Wayward shows a close and corrupt relationship between law enforcement in Tall Pines — a town full of secrets — and the institution that brings money and young blood into the community. Tall Pines Academy’s cult-leader-like headmistress “likes to be involved,” as Alex (Martin) is told on day one at the local police force. Alex is also informed after a run-in with the desperate Tall Pines runaway (whose escape opens the series) that this happens all of the time and police often must bring them back to campus.
CEDU’s San Bernardino campus had a similar relationship with the local sheriff’s office. According to an investigation in Los Angeles Magazine, out of 415 reports of program-fleeing juveniles from CEDU’s San Bernardino location over eight years, local law enforcement logged only 10 “attempts to locate,” and four search and rescue missions. The L.A. Mag report also indicates that the sheriff’s office consistently stonewalled their investigation into the death of a missing teenager, Daniel Yuen.
One of the many character-driven plot threads in Wayward involved a character named Daniel (Milton Torres Lara), a conniving young man who is one of a handful of the series’ characters who don’t live to appear in the eighth and final episode. Daniel’s death (spoiler alert: He is stabbed by a fellow student) is covered up when he’s said to have run away.
At CEDU, a supposed runaway existed in real life: Daniel Yuen. L.A. Mag’s investigation reveals that many details emerged about the day of the teenager’s alleged escape. One that resonates, though, is an account by an unnamed source that Daniel had been disciplined for trying to flee, restrained by a fellow pupil “until a CEDU staff member arrived to take control.” Twenty-two years later, his parents having searched far and wide for their son — sometimes even aided by former CEDU staffers whom they were paying — have had no luck; Daniel Yuen is still missing.
A representative for Martin tells THR that they did not pull any story elements directly from L.A. Mag or from anything that occurred at CEDU. The plot details involving Daniel resembling Daniel Yuen’s disappearance are not at all intentional, she says. “Some of the character similarities are really just a coincidence. They were not pulling from this particular story,” Martin’s publicist, Amanda Pelletier, tells THR.
With her long coat, oversized glasses and dead-on stare, Toni Colette’s central Wayward character gives off the uncomfortable feeling of a cult leader. So it’s not surprising to see that in a recent interview about the show, Martin revealed that the inspiration for Colette’s Evelyn Wade was the Synanon cult, once called one of the “most dangerous and violent cults America had ever seen.”
“In researching these schools — a lot of which are now being talked about in different documentaries — I learned about Synanon,” Martin said in the interview, per Esquire. “That was a self-help cult in the ’70s in L.A., 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 dialed them up a bunch.”
One aspect included in the series is “The Synanon Game,” a group attack therapy dreamed up within the cult where members humiliated one another and encouraged the exposure of one another’s innermost weaknesses. This is directly lifted and placed into Wayward with the “Hot Seat” therapy session that the students endure. Following his time with Synanon, Mel Wasserman founded CEDU in the late 1960s in Palm Springs and it operated as a drug rehab foundation for years; “The Synanon Game” was adapted into hours-long emotional growth sessions called “raps,” where students were incentivized to “indict” their classmates for rule infractions and lay into their shame by screaming “disclosures” about them to the group. After this, at night, “smooshing” would soothe the pain felt in these sessions — as displayed in a form on Wayward. This is a session of group touching involving hugging, caressing, hair stroking and lap-sitting.
In Wayward, deputy Alex discovers that multiple teens have gone missing from the Academy. Alex does a quick online search and learns of an activist and investigative blogger named Maurice — an unhinged man who is working to expose the dark truth about Tall Pines Academy. After the two meet, their potentially fruitful partnership veers into mistrust and meets a violent end. In San Bernardino, as the investigation into some of CEDU’s missing kids was reopened, a remarkably similar meeting played out, according to David Safran, a CEDU survivor who has become involved in multiple media projects on the troubled teen industry and CEDU’s missing kids.
“In real life, that happened exactly like that,” Safran tells THR, referring to the outreach he received from Detective Alisha Rosa in November 2021. “It wasn’t Vermont. It was a newly promoted California detective who was transferred to the Twin Peaks station in the San Bernardino Mountains. She discovered multiple kids had gone missing from CEDU and quickly found my blog post on Medium and reached out to me. It really became the story of an intrepid cop and a citizen journalist connecting on how to find out what happens to these kids.”
Despite some key differences in the fictional Maurice’s backstory (he’s a parent of a missing kid, not, as Safran is, a former pupil of the institution) and their demeanors (Safran does not give “raving madman”), Safran notes other striking similarities between Maurice’s experience on the show and his own. One notable moment came in the scene where Wayward’s local sleuth tells Alex that he has heard nothing but radio silence from every media outlet he’s contacted about exposing Tall Pines Academy; this was Safran’s experience when contacting media outlets about the CEDU missing persons cases, including that of Daniel Yuen.
Finally, both Maurice and Safran were skeptical of a still-green detective attempting to take on a massive, entrenched institution like CEDU or the fictional Tall Pines Academy. Safran tells THR this shifted with time and that the real story with Detective Rosa came later, when she was taken off the revived CEDU missing kids case in a rug-pull by her superiors as her investigation, aided by Safran, was progressing.
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With the series now a major hit for the streamer — having shot to No. 1 on the Netflix Top 10 chart in its first week on the platform and remaining in the Top 10 since — it seems within the realm of possibility that Martin may be asked to bring the limited, one-and-done series back. Whether a potential second season could delve further into what life was like at CEDU — or focus on or acknowledge the connections to actual events — the institution is now the central mystery for Wayward. But for survivors like Safran, many of whom have expressed their opinions on the series online, the show is commendable for shining a light on the dark tactics found in corners of the troubled teen industry and for buoying the conversation about these horrors, though they feel the series should also lean into the reality of its depictions.
Wayward is fiction, but plenty of what is seen is based in fact. This is real, and is still happening.
“It’s just not the day-to-day countertherapeutic techniques, all that kind of stuff is similar, but not. It’s not authentic to the experience. They know the historical record, they know the lingo, they know the cult stuff,” Safran says of Wayward’s notable lack of acknowledgment of how fact-based it is. “Reality in the troubled teen industry is always darker and funnier and weirder.”
Pelletier, who represents Martin, tells THR that the Wayward team did not consider including a disclaimer to state that the story is based in any part on true events; the inclusion of information on resources for survivors of troubled teen institutions was not discussed, she says.
THR contacted Netflix to seek comment on the above connections, but the streamer did not immediately reply. This story will be updated with any response from the company.
