Picture Credits: Netflix
Netflix’s newest YA drama Crew Girl takes viewers into the deeply competitive world of rowing, where 16-year-old Tegan Tao (Miku Martineau) leads a prep school’s boys’ crew—all while finding herself trapped in a love triangle. Ahead of the debut of Crew Girl on September 10, we recently caught up with showrunner Vivian Lin.
Netflix is going all-in on YA sports dramas recently. Look no further than Finding Her Edge, the ice-skating romance that took the streamer by storm earlier this year, and will officially return for Season 2. Up next is Crew Girl, an 8-episode series that follows a very similar path, and is executive produced by Finding Her Edge showrunner Jeff Norton.
In Crew Girl, we follow teenage rowing prodigy Teagan Tao. We could give you our own synopsis, but we asked showrunner Vivian Lin for her own elevator pitch. “It’s about Tegan, who is a superstar rower, whose whole life is upended by a family scandal,” she says. “So she is forced to relocate to this prep school where there’s no girl’s rowing team. In order for her to keep up her training, she has to join the boys’ crew as their coxswain. And there she has these very complicated relationships with the crew, including the team captain, Josh, who is an arrogant jerk to her, and the local boy, Cam, who is the underrated MVP of the team.”
Headline star Miku Martineau already has an esteemed history on Netflix, starring in Bet (2025). Crew Girl also stars Jessica Paré (Mad Men) as Ella Tao, Sam Braun (Time Cut, Bad Genius) as Josh Regis, Kyle Clark (Riverdale) as Cam Dillinger, and Thomas Cadrot (Scream VI) as Coach Matt Hayden. Meanwhile, Vivian Lin (The Lake, Killjoys) takes the reins as showrunner. Ahead of its Netflix debut, we caught up with Vivian Lin to get the rundown. Check out our interview down below:
What was the initial spark or idea that inspired Crew Girl?
My first experience with rowing was on a detective show. We did this episode about the murder of a rower. As we’re investigating the rowing, we would open up the rowing world; families, competitors, rivals, teammates. There was still so much left to explore after that. One of my writers on Crew Girl was also in that room and he’s from this rowing family, his sister’s a huge rower and he would have these crazy stories. We kind of left it at that, and then Jeff [Executive Producer Jeff Norton] came up to me and he gave me a call and he was like, ‘I want to pitch a rowing show to Netflix.’ I was like, yes!
The thing with rowing is that it’s so competitive. Rowers have crazy mental toughness because each race is going to kill you. Every race tries to kill you and the fact that you survive to the end is incredible. It’s just such a great sport. Everyone’s personality gets heightened, everybody’s tensions get heightened, and it just felt like a really great world to explore within this teen drama.
Are you a big fan of rowing yourself?
You know what? Yes, a little bit. We ended up taking our actual film crew, to row. I rowed both in an eight and a four person shell.
Crew Girl S1. Miku Martineau as Teagan in Episode 1 of Crew Girl S1. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
You dive into a lot on the show: sports, romance, family drama. What were the core themes for you?
For this show, I think there’s a lot of the core themes are about finding each other, finding people, finding a commonality and finding a found-family with people you don’t perhaps understand at first. Teagan goes on a journey from being a solo athlete to being a teammate and a leader and figuring out the value of that.
I also think the show plays with themes of being a have or have not and where that can come and influence sports, the rowing, and where it can’t. And where, eventually, you can shine and overcome. Those are the two bigger themes that I hope audiences take away.
When you were building this ensemble, what was your secret to making sure each of these characters felt so fully fleshed out and compelling on their own?
In the writing room, I always tell my writers that we have to gossip about the characters like they’re real people. We really make sure that when we’re gossiping about them, that we hit everything: What makes them hurt; what makes them move; what inspires them; what do they want; and really dig into the complexity.
With Josh, there’s a lot of family dynamics. With Cam, there’s a lot of have and have nots like socio-economic issues that he’s struggling with. And with Teagan, her whole life blew up. So, where do you begin? And where do you start? And how do you pivot? I think a lot of those characters were juicy for us to talk about.
And from there, we just made sure that if at any moment they didn’t feel like they were acting like a real person, like a real teenager, we would like kind of step back and say, okay, what’s working and what’s not working here?
Were you surprised by what any of the cast could bring to these characters, who are already so complex?
Yes. With Tegan, I was surprised that anyone could exist like her. When Miku [Martineau] came in, she’s both like petite and elegant and gentle, — but she’s also got this intense capability to her. Like, she absolutely can run five miles. Also, I feel like it’s funny as her coxing voice continues like her own arc throughout the series. At the very end, she’s yelling these cox calls, and they’re with such authority that it makes you want to run five miles yourself. It was amazing just that she could be such a teen and so vulnerable, but also the badass leader.
With Sam [Braun], you really needed to find someone who was both able to make you want to punch him in the face instantly — but also, then, to be able to win you back with charm and with an open heart and this vulnerability. I think Sam really captured that, and you really feel for him. He’s so empathetic.
With Kyle [Clark], who plays Cam, it’s funny, we actually had different versions of Cam. At one point, we had a very broody version of Cam. He came in and read for that version, and then he brought this warmth and boyishness to Cam, which kind of translates, and then we realised that was the missing ingredient to Cam.
Those were three surprises that we found when we were casting.
Crew Girl S1. (L to R) Baloo Garner as Jude Wilson, Samuel Braun as Josh Regis and Connor Paton as Rider Regis in Episode 1 of Crew Girl S1. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
At the time of this interview, we’re 65 days away from the next Charles Regatta, and we’ll be even closer when the show debuts. Do you think that this show will give viewers a new perspective on the sport?
It’s such an interesting sport; it’s interdependence. You have to all row together and completely in sync, and there’s something about having to be super competitive at the top of your game and be totally in sync with your team in order to win. There’s no superstars you can just rely on, like, in basketball, where you can get away with a superstar and everyone else could give you not so great. In rowing, absolutely everyone has to be the same level and pull together and really, really care for each other, even when they’re dying inside in cardio. So there’s really something impressive about that sport.
Looking ahead, how long do you foresee this series lasting—do you have a multi-season plan laid out?
Yes, I think it has the potential to go on as long as it wants to, because rowing goes on for a long time. And also there’s spinoff [potential]. We did the American version and there are other rowing cultures too. So I think there are legs to this. No guarantees though.
This interview has been edited for clarity
Crew Girl lands on Netflix on September 10, 2026.