1 of 5 | Alyvia Alyn Lind stars in “Wayward,” premiering Thursday on Netflix. Photo courtesy of Saty+Pratha/Netflix
Alyvia Alyn Lind says she related to her character in Wayward, premiering Thursday on Netflix, as soon as she auditioned for the role. Lind plays Leila, a teenager forced to attend Tall Pines, a youth rehabilitation center run by Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette).
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Lind, 18, described the connection she felt reading about Leila. The actress auditioned for the role in front of Wayward creator and star Mae Martin.
“I know who this girl is,” Lind said. “I know exactly how she acts. I want to be this girl. I want to portray her in the best way I possibly can.”
Leila uses drugs and misses classes, but she is not a stereotypical delinquent. She has been traumatized by the death of her sister, about which Leila does not speak.
“Underneath every rough exterior is a soft center,” Lind said. “When you have a character that has their walls up so much and you cannot get past the force that they’ve built, it’s so fun to, over a season, see glimpses into who they are deep down.”
Leila’s best friend, Abbie, played by Sydney Topliffe, is committed to Tall Pines before Leila. Leila attempts to break Abbie out but is committed herself.
In fact, Lind first auditioned for the role of Abbie but was called back in for Leila. Two weeks after auditioning for Leila, she flew to Toronto to test with Topliffe and sang Leila’s praises.
“My favorite part about [Leila] is how she’s so fiercely loyal to all of her friends,” Lind said. “If you’re in her life, then you are in her life ’til the end. There is no getting out. She will protect you and she will fight for you to no end, to all ends.”
Lind said she is herself protective of her real-life friends. She also appreciated Leila’s headstrong independence, even though that attitude doesn’t work once she’s locked in Tall Pines.
“She can’t get out of it with smartass jokes,” Lind said. “So she’s forced to play the game and go along with it which was such a weird dynamic to play because she’s so headstrong.”
The show makes it clear that Tall Pines might not be an entirely altruistic operation. Martin plays a police officer suspicious of Evelyn.
Martin also provided the young cast with a survivor blog written by a friend who’d been in a similar institution, and documentaries about the troubled teen industry.
“The word ‘help’ is so demented in a way because they’re being put in this situation where people are telling them how to feel,” Lind said of the fictional Tall Pines. “They’re not talking to them. They’re not empathizing with them, with their situation. They’re telling them that their pain is their fault and that they need to fix it.”
Episode 6 of the eight-part series shares the details about the death of Leila’s sister. Lind did not get to read that script until partway into filming and had her own speculations about what happened.
“I thought about the million ways that could go and what that story could be,” she said. “I could not be more happy with the outcome. I think the episode is amazing and that’s the one that I’m most excited for people to see.”
Wayward was Lind’s first job after Chucky was not renewed for a fourth season. Having played Lexy, a teenager traumatized by the killer doll, for three seasons, Lind said she enjoyed starting over to develop a new character like Leila.
She also enjoyed cutting her long, blonde hair. She told the show’s hair department to “make it all choppy and weird and shaggy like Leila took a pair of scissors to her hair last night. I just wanted it to feel very real and like a teenage girl did this in her bedroom.”
Losing her hair was not traumatic at all, Lind said. In fact, it was quite the opposite.
“I felt so free,” she said. “My neck felt so breezy and airy. Yeah, it was one of my favorite hairstyles I’ve ever had for a character. It immediately put me into Leila’s shoes.”
Lind is the youngest of three sisters, Emily and Natalie, who also act like their mother, Barbara Alyn Woods. Alyvia began acting at age 3 on The Young and the Restless.
“Being in a family of actors from such a young age, it felt inevitable at some point,” she said. “I just wanted to do what my older sisters and my mom were doing. It was just that simple.”
Her training was helping her siblings rehearse.
“My sisters would run their lines,” she said. “Then I would go in and I’d say, ‘My turn,’ and I’d have the entire script memorized.”
The soap opera trained Lind in the fast pace of often two episodes per day. She said it did not feel like work as a kid.
“When I was younger, it was just like, I get to go to set and I get to hang out with all these people that are my friends and just do something that I love to do,” she said. “I guess that’s never really changed.”
Since Chucky never dies, creator Don Mancini still keeps the possibility of a new movie sequel alive. No plans have been announced, but he keeps casting Jennifer Tilly, Devon Sawa and original child actor Alex Vincent in new entries, so Lind holds out hope.
“Whatever there may be in the future of that franchise, sign me up,” she said. “Don, if you’re listening, sign me up.”
