Molly Smith Metzler first came to the Vineyard with $500 and a dream, not a plan. Fresh out of college, she took a job waitressing at the Edgartown Yacht Club, soaking up the Island’s beauty and contradictions. Years later, those moments and observations would thread through her work as a playwright and screenwriter, and most recently as the writer and creator of Netflix’s Sirens, an adaptation from her own play Elemeno Pea. Along with several other celebrated plays, her writing credits include Maid, Orange Is the New Black, and Shameless. But before Hollywood, she was just a young writer learning to observe, to listen, and to dream on an Island that felt like its own little world. From her fascination with Greek mythology to the real-life woman who inspired one of Sirens’ most complex characters, she spoke to Martha’s Vineyard Magazine about how a summer on the Vineyard became the foundation for much of her creative voice. An edited transcript follows.
Martha’s Vineyard Magazine: Your new Netflix show, Sirens, is adapted from your 2011 play Elemeno Pea. Sirens is set in a fictional coastal town, but the play was set on the Vineyard. What about the Island inspired you?
Molly Smith Metzler: I still daydream about the time I spent on Martha’s Vineyard. It was so beautiful. I was out of college and it was very random, because I didn’t know anyone on the Island. I had gone once with my best friend as her guest on vacation in Katama. I thought it would be a great place for me to go and write and maybe learn something, learn about myself. I applied to work at the Edgartown Yacht Club and got accepted. So, I moved there straight from graduation.
At the time they did a training with a New England culinary school fine dining and wine service, and so I did that and then I spent the next few months working there and living in Vineyard Haven and riding my bike. I just love Martha’s Vineyard. I love the little gingerbread houses, I love the natural beauty of the place, and I love the eclectic group of people that live there – the haves and have nots. There’s the service community there for the summer; there’s the immigrant population.… It was very Downton Abbey in a way that I found fascinating. But also, some of the nicest people I’ve ever met, that I’m still friends with, I met on Martha’s Vineyard. One of the other waitresses at the Edgartown Yacht Club is one of my best friends. She was in my wedding and I was in her wedding. It’s a very special place.
MVM: The Vineyard you reference isn’t all lighthouses and lobster rolls. It’s about pressure, power, old money, and seasonal help. Is that the Island you experienced, or the one you felt called to write about?
MSM: That is the Island I experienced through the eyes of a number of the service staff. I also got to know some people who were members of the yacht club and I spent the Fourth of July with a few of them at their homes. I got to see both sides.
MVM: You’ve described yourself as “a dog with a bone when it comes to classes in America.” It’s been nearly fifteen years since Elemeno Pea debuted. What keeps you returning to that theme in your work, and how has your understanding of class evolved during that time?
MSM: I grew up in New York in a place called Kingston, which is a sizable city with a big socioeconomic gap. There’s a lot of money and a lot of poverty. I grew up in the public school system. I grew up around that poverty. I didn’t grow up with money. As a scholarship kid, I’m aware of socioeconomics and I have questions about it. That’s why I write about it – to ask questions, look at it, poke at it, to ask: What is class in America? And can you change your stripes? That’s a question I’m always wondering about.
MVM: Sirens, as well as your successful Netflix limited series Maid, is about mothers, daughters, and classes divided. What about Martha’s Vineyard and your time living here lends itself to those themes?
MSM: I remember the oysters and the gimlets and the tans and the sails and the women and the beautiful clothing, but also the natural beauty of Martha’s Vineyard. I remember the yacht club. You had to be at a certain level of wealth to be there. Once, they were out having gimlets and oysters and they came in starving. They were having so much fun on their boats that they would forget it was lunch time. They came in around 3:30 p.m. and were like, “We need to eat right now!”…. They were so tan and happy and it seemed like such an amazing summer to be a member of that yacht club.
At one point I found out how long the waitlist was and how difficult it was to get in. I remember thinking the ultimate luxury in life is to forget to eat lunch – that’s what Martha’s Vineyard was to me. It’s such a beautiful, exclusive place, and it’s so hard to get there that it’s like its own time zone.
MVM: You have a gift for writing about women in moments of personal upheaval. What draws you to this topic? And can you talk about the title, Sirens, and what it means in the context of the story?
MSM: I am a student of Greek mythology and my daughter, who is twelve, is obsessed with it. She was studying the sirens at school. She came home and was like, “These three women on an island, what is their problem? Why are they so mean?” And I was in the middle of writing a pilot about three women who are ambitious.
Elemeno Pea was a rough name for a TV show. You go from a ninety-minute play to a five-and-a-half-hour miniseries. It became about larger themes: ambition, greed, class, power. It made me think about these epic stories on a Greek mythology scale.
MVM: Do any of the Sirens characters come from real people you met during your summer on the Vineyard?
MSM: Yes. There was a woman – a very beautiful second wife at the yacht club around the year 2000 – and her marriage fell apart in a sort of spectacular way. Everyone at the yacht club on the staff was talking about it. She was very nice, but very lonely, and then she literally disappeared. He replaced her the next summer. I remember her face and the way she appeared; she had so much power and then suddenly had none. Michaela is fiction, but I drew her from a very powerful woman rendered very powerless in a few months.
It’s a very magical island; I was under a spell for sure. I remember my brother and my mom being like, that place is a little culty looking.
MVM: As we said, the play was set on the Vineyard. The show is set in the fictional town of Port Haven. But we also spotted several Nantucket references. Is Port Haven a stand-in for Nantucket or the Vineyard? And why not name the place?
MSM: Well, it’s a fictional place, for sure. But it moved a little toward Nantucket as I developed it. I like Martha’s Vineyard more (laughs), so I wanted Port Haven to feel very small and wild, and Nantucket fit the bill better in terms of it being so small. But I made it its own thing, because it’s really neither of them. I have so much affection for Martha’s Vineyard. I couldn’t really do justice to Oak Bluffs or to Edgartown, so that was why I fictionalized it.
MVM: Let’s talk about the beautiful home at the center of the series. It feels like a house that you could easily find on the Vineyard, but also a little like a mystical Greek temple. Was that your goal?
MSM: That was definitely our intent. I should shout out our production designer, John Paino. Part of the reason we were so excited to be on an island was to integrate traditional Greek mythology images. It was like Nantucket meets Greek mythology, mermaids, things coming in pairs of three.... Another example is the columns, then blending the whites and blues of Nantucket, the pastels, the hydrangeas. We worked to bring all those things together.
MVM: Can you talk about working alongside other women while producing shows in which the themes are predominately about women and their relationships?
MSM: That is my absolute favorite thing about working with Netflix: how many women are in power positions there. When we get on the Zoom with the whole team, it is majority female, and I love that. We didn’t purposely hire women; women just happen to be the best people for the job. Why are women taking over? Because we’re better at the job or at least as good. However, we were very specific about hiring female directors, because the story has a lot of intimate themes and a very female triangle at the center.
MVM: If you could travel back in time and give post-grad Molly advice on writing, what would it be?
MSM: (Laughs) I would actually be like, “Good job. This is exactly right; it’s okay that you aren’t writing.” I had this dream that I would go to the Vineyard and write all these plays, but I actually just...worked. But I had this sense that I would write about this place sometime.... Sometimes in life you get feelings about stuff and it’s right to listen to those feelings…. In terms of what advice I would give myself, I might recommend that I would go with slightly more savings. I got on the ferry with 500 bucks and that lasted about a week and a half.
MVM: What’s next for you? Anything you can share with us?
MSM: I am going to do another project with Netflix. I can’t say much about it, but I am working on it right now and I’m really excited to share it when I can. I am also looking for an ongoing story, a family story. But I haven’t found it…yet.
