'Crew Girl' Executive Producer Jeff Norton Reveals How the New Netflix Rowing Drama Came to Life

For fans of YA dramas, Netflix has your next binge lined up. Introducing Crew Girl, a new 8-episode series about a rowing-mad teen girl who finds herself coxswaining a crew of eight boys. Here’s our big interview with executive producer Jeff Norton to tell you how the project came together.

Between working on Geek Girl, being the showrunner of Finding Her Edge, and helping bring Netflix’s latest YA drama Crew Girl to our screens as an executive producer, Jeff Norton is a busy man nowadays. As we began our interview over Zoom, he was sitting in the passenger seat of a car, traveling between sets while filming the new season of Finding Her Edge. We spoke to him about what we can expect from Finding Her Edge Season 2 in more detail here. In this interview, we discuss how his latest project, Crew Girl, came together.

In Crew Girl, we follow 16-year-old rowing prodigy Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau), who, after a family scandal, is forced to move to a new school on the other side of the country with her mother. However, when she arrives to forge out a new life, she soon learns that the school she attends does not have a girls’ rowing team. In order to keep up her training, she wiggles her way into coxswaining the boys’ rowing team. Once she becomes the cox, she finds herself caught in a tricky love triangle with the arrogant team member Josh Regis (Sam Braun), and Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark), the underrated MVP of the team.

Crew Girl marks Jeff Norton’s third YA drama. It’s fair to say he’s carving out his own niche and doing it really well. In this interview, we discuss all things Crew Girl, the place of YA dramas in streaming, and what’s in store for the future.

You can find the other portion of this interview with Jeff Norton, where we looked at the future of Finding Her Edge, and we also got to sit down with Vivian Lin, the showrunner of Crew Girl, last week to look at what’s ahead for the show.

What is it about elite rowing specifically that makes it feel ripe for a Netflix series?

I do want to just give credit where credit is due. I was working very closely with Netflix right after Geek Girl came out, and I was in preparation on Finding Her Edge when the team at Netflix came to me with the idea of rowing. They had this idea of doing a teen drama set in the world of rowing, and specifically this notion of having the one lone female in a boat of eight guys. Netflix then hired me to develop the format with them.

I wrote a document together with Netflix, which I then took out to potential show-runners. I was about to go to camera on Finding Her Edge, so there was no way that I be the show-runner. I’ve known Vivian [Lin] for a number of years, and we’ve actually developed a show together in the past. I called her up and asked: What do you think about rowing? She was incredibly enthusiastic. What I said to everybody was — pretend that this is a magazine article that you have stumbled upon, and then make it your own. Figure out what the characters should be, what the overall story arc is going to be, and feel inspired the way you would if you were flipping through The New Yorker and came across a magazine article about a singles rower who then became a coxy in a boat of eight boys —and then bring it to life.

Having been a show-runner yourself, what was the collaborative dynamic like stepping into the EP role on Crew Girl and supporting the team as they shaped the series?

I think I’m a big believer in empowerment. For me, allowing Vivian [Lin] and the writing team the ability to tell the story that she wanted to tell and give them the space to do that.

When I’m show-running, the thing I most appreciate is feeling the support of the executive producers and of the platform. And so really, it’s about making that team feel that they are going to tell a story that’s very personal to them — and I think you get a better show because of it.

Are you a fan of rowing yourself?

I don’t row, but I am a fan and I was very inspired. I lived in Boston for a couple of years, and I went to grad school across the Charles River. There was a specific bridge I would cross every day quite early, and the crew would be up and down the Charles River underneath where I was walking. Many, many mornings, I would stop and I would watch them and be completely awestruck by the symmetry and the athleticism and the sheer beauty of these boats on the water.

I’ve been on the rowing machine at the gym, but that is the extent of my rowing experience.

We created the time and the space for the actors to do a rowing boot camp before we started principal photography, and it was an incredibly good bonding experience for them because it’s a tough sport — not just because of the physicality, it’s also balance and working together as a team. In a way, it’s a metaphor for making a show because everybody has to perform individually, but they also have to work as a team.

Were the actors any good?

They all got it. All of the actors are naturally athletic. We cast for acting first, and we sought to match the actor irrespective of any rowing experience because in a show like this, the rowing is important, but really the most important is the emotional journey that these characters go on. And so that was a big part of it.

Then we knew and we felt fairly confident that with some training, they would be believable on the water, and they over-performed.

I mean, we were really fortunate. The actors on Crew Girl, each and every one of them were just so compelling and brought something so specific to each character. It didn’t ever just feel like it was eight guys in a boat. They were each very specific individuals. And obviously they were written that way, and that’s the beauty of the writing, but the performances were just incredibly compelling.

Unlike Finding Her Edge and Geek Girl, which were built on existing, hit YA novels, Crew Girl is an original series. How did the development process shift when you were building a brand-new world from scratch rather than adapting a book with a built-in fanbase?

It’s both incredibly freeing and daunting at the same time: everything is possible, and yet the creative process is by definition one where you have to make choices.

I really like developing from books because I like that there is a North Star in terms of everybody involved in the project can literally sing from the same song sheet. But with Crew Girl, which is an original idea, Morwen [Bremner] and Vivian’s script became the foundation on which we built the rest of the show. It started with this little nugget of an idea from Netflix. I helped them work it into a format document. Then Vivian and Morwen really turned it into something that was fleshed out creatively and was a script executed with excellence.

Instead of having a book, we always came back to that. And, of course, Vivian also wrote a series overview. And so in a way, we were able to mirror the process of adaptation once that work was done, but it does require a lot more work up front because you do have to create the characters out of nothing.

I wanted to touch on your work in the broader landscape of YA dramas on Netflix. Between Geek Girl, Finding He Edge and Crew Girl, you’re carving out a real, successful niche. What do you foresee in the future? Do you plan on expanding into different sports, spinoffs, etc. Are these things on the table?

Firstly, I would love to do further seasons of all of these shows. And I’ve been very lucky to be able to do a second season of Geek Girl. Obviously, with Finding Her Edge, we’ve just started production. And if Crew Girl resonates with the audience in a way that I hope it will, I think we’ll be able to go again. In terms of other sports, I think for me, it’s less about the sports, per se, and it’s more about the emotionality of coming-of-age.

The thing I really love trying to capture in all of my young adult shows — and these three have each got an element of it — is that there’s something very relatable because everybody at every age or stage is still figuring out who they are. I don’t know a single adult that feels like they’re fully formed. They’re still trying new things. They’re still trying to figure out the best version of themselves. Sometimes they’re re-inventing themselves. And I think one of the things I love about young adult storytelling is how it connects with a certain age demographic a feeling that never actually goes away.

That’s one of the reasons why these shows have been successful, is because they actually play to a much broader audience than just the core demographics of teen viewership.

There’s something very real about the authentic experience of being a teenager and trying to find your place in the world that carries on through your 20s, 30s, and onwards. And so that’s the thing that I’m attracted to with these types of shows. One of my cast members called it the ‘Jeff Norton Cinematic Universe,’and I think that’s probably the thing that ties all the shows together. It’s capturing the big feels of what it means to figure out who you are.

Back when we interviewed you before Finding Her Edge Season 1, the Winter Olympics was just around the corner. With Crew Girl, the Charles Regatta is not far away. Is that a coincidence?

On Finding Her Edge, it was definitely strategy. When I pitched that show to Netflix back in the autumn of 2024, one of the things I did say very specifically was that if they gave me the green light right away, I could have a show on the platform concurrent with the Milan Olympics.

In terms of the timing of Crew Girl, it’s less about Head of the Charles and I think more about back to school. The show has a sort of back to school feel to it, and the show roughly opens with Teagan arriving at school. You get the sense it’s late summer, possibly into September. And then the funny thing is, our launch date, which is September 10th, is actually the exact same date that we started principal photography. So there’s a nice symmetry that the audience will actually get to enjoy the show in the same period of time that we filmed it.

I think when they’re watching the show, people will see this late summer vibe turning into autumn. One of the things I always love about school shows is that when I was a kid it was this sense of possibility — that anything’s possible. I used to love doing back to school shopping and getting my pencils and getting a new backpack and things like that, and then school starts and anything is possible.

The timing of Crew Girl‘s launch will play into that sense of anticipation that comes with back to school, or back to college.

What do you hope viewers take away from Crew Girl?

I really try and tell stories in my shows that are inspirational and positive. And hopefully you’ve got a sense from watching Crew Girl, and certainly Finding Her Edge is that way as well.

There’s some amazing shows that are being created that are a little bit darker — or dare I say cynical — and that’s not what I do. I really try and put positivity out there. I’m always trying to find stories or characters that are positive and inspirational.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity

We thank Jeff Norton for his time. Crew Girl debuts on Netflix on September 10. While Jeff Norton was responsible for helping usher in Crew Girl, showrunning duties rested in the hands of Vivian Lin, who we interviewed a few weeks back. Again, you can check out that interview here.