For Nava Mau, ‘Baby Reindeer’ Felt Private. Then It Blew Up.

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For Nava Mau, ‘Baby Reindeer’ Felt Private. Then It Blew Up.

Voting is underway for the 76th ********** Emmys, and this week we are talking to several first-time Emmy nominees. The awards will be presented Sept. 15 on ABC.

The experience of filming “Baby Reindeer” was so meaningful for Nava Mau, she said, that she would have been fine if it had never come out. But it did in April, and then the seven-episode thriller did what few could have predicted: It became a global phenomenon. The breakout television series of the year so far, “Baby Reindeer” is

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Its success is even more surprising given the intensity of its central themes: ******* ********, shame, stalking and self-loathing. Based on the real experiences of its creator, writer and star, Richard Gadd, it follows a struggling comedian named Donny who is traumatized by a predatory producer and later stalked by a sad woman named Martha, played by Jessica Gunning. “Baby Reindeer” is one of Martha’s nicknames for Donny.

Mau played Teri, a successful therapist and the love interest for Donny, whom she met on a transgender dating site. Teri sees the world more clearly than the other characters but experiences trauma of her own. In July, Mau received her first Emmy nomination, for best supporting actress in a limited series, one of 11 nods for the show. She is the first transgender person to be nominated for a limited series acting Emmy.

Mau, who was born in Mexico City and raised in Texas and California, said the story resonated with audiences for the same reasons it resonated with her when she read the script.

“Richard demonstrated such courage in portraying these characters as truthfully and beautifully as they possibly could have been,” she said in an interview. “There’s such ugliness in the story and such pain, and yet the humanity of every character is never sacrificed. I think that kind of storytelling allows for people to lower their defenses and really engage with the themes and the emotions that are being presented to them.”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

You said you had a strong reaction when you first read the screenplay. What made it so powerful?

I felt as if Richard was talking to me through the script. It’s written that way through the voice-over to kind of feel like you’re reading a diary or getting this sort of stream of consciousness, an invitation into his mind. I am a ****** person; I am a trans woman; and I am a survivor. So as much as I saw Teri and related to Teri, I also deeply related to Donny, and that was unexpected. It allowed this other entry point to Teri, to really being able to see him, feel his pain and want to help him overcome it. It just all made sense to me, and it felt familiar.

Where did you look for inspiration for this performance?

First, I had to look within from my own life experiences and my connection to the character and the story — which was profound. There was a lot to connect with. I started journaling as Teri during the audition process, and it was really working for me, so I kept going down that path. Richard is the writer and the executive producer but also my scene partner, and it’s a romantic story line. So it kind of worked that I didn’t know him that well, and that we were kind of discovering each other as the characters when we were filming. That is what got documented on camera.

You have previously worked as a counselor for L.G.B.T.Q. and immigrant survivors of *********. With Teri being a therapist, did you tap into any of that experience?

I definitely had to figure out what kind of therapist she is and draw on some of those skills. I feel almost a little embarrassed to admit that a counselor is employing certain methods and strategies, and isn’t just sitting there listening very kindly. We are trained to talk to people and encourage people to open up and be honest with themselves. So absolutely I did draw on some of my training as a counselor in thinking about how Teri would be talking to Donny.

There was a moment near the end when it seemed that Teri and Donny might get a happy ending after all. Why was it important for the story that they not end up together?

We learn from our mistakes, and I think really the only way that happens is when we’ve suffered a loss as a result of our mistakes. We have to know what it costs to let shame get in our way, and in order to move past it in the future. For Teri, she learned that she does not need to take on somebody else’s weight just to feel a sense of belonging. It made her stronger to go through this relationship and at a certain point be completely broken down by it. She was able to recognize that she had some vulnerabilities that she maybe wasn’t aware of. So when she rebuilt herself, she rebuilt herself stronger.

L.G.B.T.Q. representation onscreen continues to ebb and flow — GLAAD has reported that the number of L.G.B.T.Q. characters on TV has actually

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in the

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. What are you hopeful about and what are you worried about, particularly after playing a transgender character on such a high-profile show?

On a personal level, I’m worried that I’ll never feel this way again about a character or a story. But I think that despite the fact that we’ve seen time and time again that audiences receive trans characters with elation and that trans characters can carry the story, for some reason the business people who make decisions in the industry continue to have hesitation and deny that trans people can be in lead roles. It’s a wall that the studios just refuse to even look around. Take a peek and see what’s on the other side, y’all.

Do you know the amount of straight, cis white men who have come up to me, emotional, and told me how much my performance affected them and how grateful they are to have been connected in that way? We have to realize that when we’re all human and when we’re allowed to showcase our full humanity, it encourages other people to see their own full humanity.

In one scene Teri and Martha have a violent confrontation. Initially Teri hopes that they can connect, but then Martha attacks Teri physically and verbally, hurling transphobic and ******* insults. It’s brutal to watch — how was it to film?

The first time that somebody else read the lines out to me that Martha was going to say, I was like, Oh, I was not expecting to feel it. The acting challenge then became to keep going back to the point before the ******* has happened — where Teri’s not expecting what’s to come. Because there’s something about hate speech that burns and keeps throbbing for an extended ******* of time. So I had to turn off the throbbing from the ***** to then feel it again.

There has been controversy regarding how “true” the story really is, and whether it violates the privacy of people who inspired it. A woman who said she was the basis for Martha has sued

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. Were you surprised by the fallout?

None of that occurred to me. I was so immersed in the story and in the character, and so was everybody else. It felt like such a small, private, personal thing, and it really would have been enough for me if we had all gone through the process of filming this series and it never even came out. It changed my life. I wasn’t thinking about what would happen when it came out, and then how many people would see it, none of that. I don’t think we ever could have expected that this many people would have seen it.

In June, the Critics Choice Association gave you an award at its inaugural Celebration of LGBTQ+ Cinema & Television. You gave a moving speech about how you had given yourself five years in Los Angeles to pursue acting and make a breakthrough, and that this role came in the nick of time. What did setting that deadline do for you?

June was the exact five-year mark. I was up on that stage and my life was changing and things felt possible, and I felt happy. All the moments where I felt like maybe it was a fluke that I was cast on

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and maybe it was silly to think that someone like me could have a career in this industry, and what am I supposed to do about health insurance?

All the moments that I felt like giving up and that I had ruined my life by deciding to try it to be an actor, I said, “Just hold on a little longer.” And honestly, in January, I said, “We’re just going to do the next six months and then you can go on into something else.” It’s like this weird, karmic thing, I guess, that I made peace with the uncertainty and allowed myself to discover what it led to.

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#Nava #Mau #Baby #Reindeer #Felt #Private #Blew

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