Netflix’s ‘Sirens’ Was Inspired By A Summer Trip To Martha’s Vineyard

Molly Smith Metzler’s Sirens is a clever, sexy, and darkly hilarious binge-watch that explores the influence of wealth and social class. With a Fargo-esque vibe and a quirky ensemble of eccentric characters, this show offers a delightful summer escape into a candy-coated world with a few nuts in the center.

Known for her first Netflix hit, the limited series Maid, the showrunner and creator has a penchant for telling stories with strong female leads and complicated familial ties; Maid was very motherhood-focused, and Sirens centers around the sister bond.

While Maid was inspired by Stephanie Land’s New York Times best-selling memoir “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive,” Metzler’s limited series Sirens is based on her play entitled Elemeno Pea, which she wrote as a graduate student at The Juilliard School. A summer spent working at a yacht club in Martha’s Vineyard was the impetus for the play-turned-television series, which marks the first project from her creative partnership with Netflix.

The five-episode series, centered on the Greek mythology of sirens, premiered on May 22 and quickly topped the streamer’s charts. Metzler got her dream cast with Meghann Fahy as Devon DeWitt, who is worried that her younger sister Simone (Milly Alcock) has an overly dependent and concerning relationship with her boss, the mysterious socialite Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore).

The story unravels over an explosive weekend at the Kells’ lavish estate. It begins when Devon goes to save Simone from Michaela’s cult-like environment, but her sister doesn’t seem to need or want saving. Also starring are Kevin Bacon as Michaela’s husband, Peter, Glenn Howerton as Ethan Corbin III, Bill Camp as Bruce DeWitt, and Felix Solis as Jose.

In an interview, Metzler told me about a life-changing summer in Martha’s Vineyard that forever influenced her thoughts on wealth and power. She was in her early twenties and had just graduated college at the time.

“I don’t come from money. I don’t come from poverty, either, but I don’t come from yacht clubs. I wanted to spend the summer writing, and I had this romantic idea that Martha’s Vineyard would be a great place to do it,” she explained. To afford her stay, she began working at an exclusive yacht club, and it was there that she learned about money and social status.

“It was a serious place; we were trained in the culinary arts. This was old money…really VIP clientele. I didn’t do any writing because I had to work so hard just to pay my rent. I had a hunch that I was learning something I would write about someday,” she reflected.

A decade later, the idea for a play emerged. “I remember writing the first scene between Devon and Simone. They’re arguing about the Easter eggs on the island, and Devon is saying, ‘You aren’t a part of this. You work here. You aren’t a part of this world.’ Then, ten years later, I wrote this mini-series about that world and that summer through the lens of where I came from. This has been a story I can’t seem to escape.”

Of that initial idea to go to Martha’s Vineyard, Metzler said the pull was strong. “I don’t know why because I didn’t know anyone there. I remember getting off the ferry and observing this world. I didn’t know that kind of wealth existed. I’d never seen it before…the pastels and the necklaces and the kind of tribal quality that these incredibly wealthy people had. It felt like a cult. I remember being taken with it and thinking their life was better than ours. I waited tables all summer, and I found it intoxicating.”

Then, when her mother and brother visited her there, she realized that her family didn’t fit in. “They were in awe and asked me, ‘What is this place? Is it a cult? Why does everyone look like an Easter egg?’ They were very critical of me and how taken with it I was,” she explained, adding how they were wearing the wrong clothes and stood out.

“My brother was smoking, and I remember feeling this impasse of where I came from versus where I was at that moment. I had that experience of trying something different from where I came from, trying to leave my hometown, and trying to reinvent myself in a new place, with my family telling me that I could not do that and how I couldn’t change who I was.”

As with Maid, the haves versus the have-nots plays a prevalent part in the story, with some wealthy people believing they can buy anything and anyone they want. To tell this story, Metzler was inspired by Greek mythology, particularly the sirens in Homer’s Odyssey.

“They’re described as half-birds, half-women, and are pretty grotesque. They have the upper body of a woman, but then they have wings and talons, and over time, they morph into beautiful mermaids. Their original depiction was birdlike. So, it’s a nod to that,” she explained, adding how lucky she was that Moore, like her character Michaela, loves birds of prey in real life and enjoyed working with them.

“I think Michaela is tremendously lonely on that island and has cultivated this community of birds and activists that keep her busy. I think she sees a lot of herself in the birds. She’s a bit of a predator. She can be ferocious. They have filled a hole in her life that needed filling because she left her career, and she works for Peter, like everyone else. I think this is her way of mothering.”

As for Michaela’s “Hey, hey,” that everyone mimics, Metzler was inspired by the women she encountered during that summer in Martha’s Vineyard. “While waitressing, I observed that one of the wives would come in with a certain necklace, and the next day, another wife would have it. There was a follow-the-leader with clothes, but I noticed it in their vernacular as well; they would pick up the same lingo and phraseology. I believed it was a world where something Michaela said could catch on, and in my head, it was something she said to Simone that then became a thing. She has that kind of power and influence, where something benign like that can become a hashtag for their entire summer event.”

Simone is so obsessed with Michaela that she wants to be her. Both women, she agrees, betray one another in spectacular ways. “It’s a complicated relationship and what happens there is open to interpretation. What I try to do as a writer is load both guns.”