Biography

Mae Martin is a British-Canadian comedian and actress who trained in improvisation and sketch comedy for four years at the Toronto outpost of the famed comedy institution, The Second City, whose notable alumni include Amy Poehler, Steve Carrell, Mike Myers, and Tina Fey. She also won two Canadian Comedy Awards as part of the comedy troupe The Young And The Useless.

Martin moved to the UK in 2011, fast making a name for herself on both sides of the Atlantic. Her stand-up show Dope began at the 2017 Melbourne and Sydney comedy festivals before transferring to the Edinburgh Fringe and beyond, for her first UK tour that same year. Since then she has performed on BBC Three's live stand-up show Live At The BBC and Russell Howard's Good News, and has written for The Now Show and Newsjack.

Martin's BBC Radio 4 series Mae Martin's Guide To 21st Century Sexuality (2016)was nominated for a BBC Audio Drama Award and is loosely based on her own stand-up show Us, which premiered in 2015. An informative exploration of inclusive sexual behaviour and attitudes in the modern era, it is characteristically frank, confessional, and revealing.

This was followed in 2017 by Mae Martin's Guide to 21st Century Addiction, an intimate meditation, delving deep into her own past, on how a person becomes inextricably attached to harmful substances. On the same platform she also co-hosted the podcast GrownUpLand, targeted at millennials.

A voice for nervous teens and young people everywhere, she regularly incorporates material about her LGBT identity and her drug-taking past. Alongside releasing a Netflix comedy special, in 2019 she announced a new Netflix sitcom based on her identity and life experiences, entitled Feel Good, in which Lisa Kudrow plays her mother.

Martin often hosts her own stand-up nights across London, most notably Mae Martin and Friends at Soho Theatre.