‘Baby Reindeer’ Actress Nava Mau Found Herself in Oakland

Before Nava Mau found breakout success as Teri, a transgender therapist, in the hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer, she was close to giving up on acting. But she credits her four years in the Bay Area as a transformative period in her life that gave her the confidence to make it in a notoriously difficult industry.

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Mau attempted to make it as an actress in Los Angeles after college. But she struggled with feelings of failure and depression, and eventually moved back to her Texas hometown. That was when she got the idea to come to the Bay.

“A good friend told me, ‘I think you’d really like it in Oakland,’” Mau recalls, “and she lent me $2,000.”

In February 2015, Mau drove to Oakland and started an entirely new chapter. In her four years there, she would undertake her gender transition, discover one of her callings as an LGBTQ+ peer counselor and find a community that transformed her.

“I was lucky to be embraced by a community of Black and brown queer and trans people,” she says. “I was shown what it can be like when other people uplift each other. My whole life became about being a part of this community.”

After rediscovering herself in Oakland, Mau gave herself five years to make it in Hollywood. She found it quite difficult to break into the scene, particularly as a brown trans woman, but eventually made peace with the uncontrollable nature of the Hollywood beast. Then Baby Reindeer came into her life.

The show debuted in April of this year, just two months before Mau’s five years were set to expire, and became an incredible surprise success. According to Variety, it is the 10th most popular English-language Netflix series ever. Baby Reindeer received 11 Emmy nominations, and Mau is up for Best Supporting Actress at the upcoming Emmy Awards on Sept. 15. (That makes her the first transgender person to be nominated for a limited series acting Emmy.)

Baby Reindeer tells the story of Donny Dunn (played by series creator Richard Gadd), a struggling Scottish comedian with an obsessive stalker, Martha (Jessica Gunning). Mau’s character, Teri, is Donny’s main love interest, and she gets dragged into a strange and dangerous love triangle. By demanding that Donny show her the respect she deserves, and deal with his unfinished business, Teri becomes the moral center of the show, offering a vision of a healed and resilient individual.

Baby Reindeer is refreshing because it doesn’t fixate on Teri’s struggles as a trans woman, nor does it condescendingly use her journey to teach Donny life lessons. Rather, she comes across as a fully formed woman whose life meaningfully intersects with Donny’s. Where her trans history is relevant, the script treats it in ways that are subtle, complex and authentic. The show is sensitive to the fact that Teri carries scars from being a trans woman in this world, and lets them slip delicately into the plot as would the details of any complex individual’s life.

“In many shows, trans people’s function is almost to be the safer trauma and the subject of pity,” Mau says. “It really felt like [Gadd] wanted to honor Teri’s power and all the ways that she pierces through Donny’s hiding. As a writer, Richard imbued a lot of gratitude for her. I needed to bring that into my performance.”

In my view, Teri’s placement in a supporting role — instead of a lead — helps liberate her from many clichés of trans representation. By not having to carry the entire plot, she can be more herself, an independent person rather than a subject of scrutiny.

Mau shared her thoughts on that idea. “Teri being a supporting character allows for Donny and the audience to see the best in her,” she tells me. “She can see right through all the walls that Donny has built around himself. The only way the story can present that is by having Teri be this third person in the plot.”

“I always say Teri is on her own show, Teri is having a different narrative,” Mau adds. “That dynamic created a lot of intrigue for this character. It’s a gift that a trans woman got to be put into that kind of position. It’s a first.”

Following the smash success of Baby Reindeer, Mau has had a great summer. In addition to the Emmy nomination, she also announced her new role on the fifth season of the popular Netflix thriller You, as a character named Detective Marquez. Beyond that, her lips are sealed. “I’m pretty sure I would be hunted down if I say anything about it,” she laughed, “but I am very excited about it. I can’t wait to see it.”

Looking back, Mau now sees her four years in the Bay Area as her coming of age, and her work as a peer counselor set the stage for her Hollywood success. In empathizing with clients and providing a space for exploration, she learned a lot about her own development as a person and built confidence.

“To me, peer counseling always felt so generative, it was the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done,” she reflects. “And it was so integral to my transition — I literally started the job as a counselor the month I started my medical transition.”

Mau also credits peer counseling with helping her gain a nuanced understanding of how race, gender, class and ability play into various situations and relationships — essential knowledge for the roles she plays. “The model of peer counseling has informed the dynamics of power I think about when acting.”

When inhabiting the role of Teri, Mau sometimes found it challenging to get out of her own personal experience, and had to work to build out a backstory for her character. “I came up in community and community-oriented work, and Teri came up in the clubs,” she said. “I had to really imagine that the Bay was not part of Teri’s story.”

But she also sees parallels between her time as a peer counselor and how Teri relates to Donny. “I really understood what it is to create safety for another person, and then encourage someone to open up and reflect, which we see Teri do multiple times,” she says. “Asking the right questions and creating the space — isn’t that the counseling superpower?”

Mau hopes to really change the ways lives are told on screen — not just for trans people but also for Black and brown individuals. Whether or not she wins the Emmy, she wants to use her notoriety to keep telling stories that really matter to people in her community.

“Being nominated by fellow actors means the world to me, and it also means that I’m going to keep doing the work that really means something, to continue on to the next chapter of telling stories that come from the heart and have some kind of cultural meaning,” she says. “I can’t wait to see what comes next.”