‘Crew Girl’ Star Miku Martineau on Rowing Boot Camp and Love Triangles

After a day of New York Fashion Week and press, actress Miku Martineau opted to spend the night in. Instead of buzzing around the city, as she had during the day, the 22-year-old settled in for the night to watch the latest Netflix YA, Crew Girl. To be fair, Martineau, as the star of the rowing-centric sports romance series, has been waiting quite awhile to see the finished product.

“I came home at 9 p.m. and just got in my pajamas and started watching,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter on a Zoom from New York. “It really intrigued me because I played a lot of sports growing up. I also had never done a coming-of-age YA sports romance story.”

The Toronto native had little to no knowledge about rowing going into the show, which premiered on the platform on Sept. 10. “We had a three-week bootcamp to learn how to row. All of the actors, my castmates and myself,” Martineau says. “We wanted to do our best to portray the sport accurately with what we were given and the time that we were given.”

In the Vivian Lin-created series, Martineau plays high school student Teagan Tao, a California high school student who’s been forced to move across the country to a an elite prep school. A rowing star at her former school, Martineau’s Teagan joins her new school’s boys rowing team as the coxswain after finding out there’s no girls team.

Like many YA romance shows, there’s a core love triangle between Teagan and two boys on the rowing team, Sam Braun’s Josh, the poor little rich boy type, and Kyle Clark’s Cam, the down-to-earth local boy. The show’s already been renewed for a second season.

“I just have a lot of respect for rowers and rowing,” she says. “It’s such a technical sport and it requires so much strength and resilience and coordination and communication.”

What sports did you play growing up?

I played hockey for years. Hockey and gymnastics were the main sports that I did, but I also did figure skating. I did a few years playing volleyball, soccer a little bit. I grew up with a brother who’s a year and a half older than me, so I think my dad just threw us into all of the same sports together. I loved playing sports growing up. It was such a huge part of my childhood. It teaches you so much about teamwork and communication. It’s just so much fun to be a kid and to be super into sports.

Hockey shows are having a moment right now. The shows right now are focused on men, but hopefully there’ll be one with women hockey players. Would you want to do one?

Yes. A female version of Heated Rivalry? I would be down. I’ve said this for years: I would love to do a show that’s related to hockey. I would love to do a show that’s related to any sport, to be honest. Even if I haven’t played it before, I love learning new skills for different roles. It’s so much fun. It’s a challenge to take on. It’s very physical and mental, and I love that aspect of it.

What do you do now that you’re into adulthood? Seems like you were in so many activites. It’s hard to make time when you’re working so much.

It’s harder. I live near the beaches of Toronto, so there’s a lot of beach volleyball all summer long, but I was working on Bet season two all summer. My friends would text me every weekend to play recreationally on the beach. I would say, “Oh, I wish I could, but I can’t. I’m working.” Because you’re so right. It does get so busy, but I would love to join a club or something if I had free time.

Have any of your previous roles taught you something about yourself in a surprising way?

It definitely teaches you a lot about confidence. The reason that I feel like quite confident person today is because all of the years that I’ve spent working in this industry. It’s a really huge game of believing in yourself. Maybe there’s hundreds of people auditioning for one role and perhaps you do a hundred auditions and you only get one. It’s really important to see the “rejection” part of it as just redirect.

If you really love the craft and continue to work at it and believe in yourself, eventually somebody else will believe in you as well. Working in this industry over the years, it’s made me really self-assured and made me believe in myself and made me realize, “Oh, I can do this job and I can handle this responsibility and I will show up and do my best job and I’ll also have fun doing it.” There’s so many learning lessons over the years.

You’re in New York for fashion week and press. How do you feel about doing stuff like that?

It’s so fun. This is my first fashion week, so it’s so cool and interesting. This is just the celebratory part that comes along with my job, so it’s just fun. It’s the end of summer. I’ve been working all summer, so I am so grateful to be in New York for a week, just doing fun events. You get to meet a lot of wonderful people too. I went to the Tory Burch show, and it was beautiful. I have never really been to such a professional fashion show before, so it was like watching the ballet.

Do you get nervous at these events? Or does that confidence we just talked about making you feel self-assured going into these as well?

I don’t think I really get nervous. I’m just there thinking “OK, let’s navigate it.” I don’t really know what to expect, but I just feel lucky to be there.

Do you consider yourself to be an extroverted person?

I think as the older I’ve gotten, the more extroverted I’ve become because the work I do is so social. A huge part of why I love what I do is the collaborative part of it. I love traveling to somewhere I’ve never really been before, living there for a few months, meeting 50-plus people and making really, really great friends. I would definitely say for sure I am an extrovert in that sense, but I think I’m also a mixed introvert. When I have moments of quietness and when I’m done work, I like my alone time or I just like very simple, quiet things.

What does that perfect day off away from people look like for you?

It means having maybe a nine-hour sleep, having a slow morning, eating a really yummy breakfast, hanging out with my cat, Brick, going on a walk. Maybe going on a walk with one of my girlfriends, relaxing, being outside, swimming in a lake, maybe doing an activity and maybe just going for a really nice dinner. I’m such a foodie, something chill, something simple, something outside and calm.

What’s your favorite kind of food to go and get out if you love to get food?

Everything. I’ve been eating a lot of Italian recently, but I love Japanese. I’ve been eating a lot of Korean food lately. I actually have an Uber Eats order that I’m looking at right now. I just ordered sushi for breakfast.

I love that.

[I like] everything under the sun. I got street tacos in New York the other night. I’m not a picky eater at all. I love all food.

The love triangle in the show is interesting. There’s a lot of back-and-forth, episode to episode. What was it like playing with that dynamic?

I love the duality. Sam and Kyle are such professionals, and I’m lucky to call them my friends in real life. Working with them was such a pleasure. I think we have such a great ensemble, and we’re all really good friends in real life. We really bonded on this show. The group chat goes off almost every day, so having to do scenes with them, it was very natural, it flowed, and we were always there for each other.

What was the memorable experience you have from the set or filming?

Definitely rowing boot camp.

What did rowing boot camp entail exactly?

I was shooting a sci-fi movie in Ithaca, New York, before I got to Victoria, [British Columbia]. I believe some of the boys were already in Victoria or in Vancouver training. I was doing separate training, so I was learning how to row on a single scull. When I got to Victoria, I was learning all the terminology, how an eights-boat works and how to become a coxswain, just as Teagan is also learning throughout the show. That was so much fun because we would just be out on the water all day long, hours long, under the sun. Getting a huge workout in, and all the boys were doing so great. They were trying so hard, and they looked great on the water too. It’s a really cool experience to completely learn a new sport, not just by yourself, but with a group of people. It made us a team on the water, and that helped us become team players on a cast.