‘Baby Reindeer’ star Nava Mau opens up about the series’ wild success

I have always been acting since I was a child, but then also never thought that I could pursue acting as a career until I was an adult. So it’s been a journey (laughs)

The role came in as an audition. I could tell pretty immediately that it was different. There was such care put into how the audition was packaged. I could feel that there was a lot of heart behind the project. I think it made it so that I had to put my whole heart into it too.

Definitely. I always like to think about the posture and the gait of a character as well as their accent and how they speak. One of the things that I tried to make sure Teri did was to speak more from her chest than her throat. And then of course in London, I was very fortunate to have the support of production in stunt training and ballet training just for that one scene where Terry reveals that she did ballet as a child. You know, I had to look like I had to have done 10 years in ballet, so I had to learn (laughs). It was so much fun.

I feel like, as a trans woman and as a Latina woman, there’s like two or three roles a year that are for us, and only one of them is good. So when an opportunity like this comes around I never take it for granted. I think I just cherish the gift of getting to act and collaborate creatively with a set of talented technicians and artists. I just poured myself completely into it. So often I think trans people are not afforded the opportunity to pour ourselves into our work because we have to be fighting to simply have basic rights like healthcare, housing, and the right to exist in public life. I just am so grateful that in this instance I was able to simply be an artist and that the fact that Teri is trans was a part of that, but was not the totality of it.

No (laughs). Absolutely not. It has been just the most incredible gift to see that so many people have responded the way they have to the series and to the characters. I know that for us or for me, it changed me to work on it and I got everything I needed from just that experience of when it was just ours. So all of this that has happened afterward is an added bonus, honestly.

So many (laughs). I don’t know why what comes to mind right now is how much I enjoyed working with the hair and makeup department, Fiona and Becks. I learned so much from them about British culture and history, and British humor and politics, health, social relations, which is something that maybe people don’t always know about acting. Sometimes the people you spend the most time with are actually the hair and makeup people and the costume department. I really cherish those relationships. I cried on my last day because I don’t live in London, you know? It was a tearful goodbye.

The whole shoot was like five or six months, but I filmed in chunks. So I went in on four different trips of different lengths over the course of four months.

I think that we need to continue to see trans people on screen as fully-formed characters with a purpose that is integral to the plot. And that can take many different forms. I think it will be so beautiful to see trans people in all different genres. Horror, comedy, sci-fi, romance, historical drama, because we exist everywhere. And to deny that is to deny reality.

I am, in so many ways, inspired by musicians. I think that the relationship to their craft is one that I admire. There’s this direct channel between them and their music that I aspire to tap into when it comes to writing, directing, and acting. For some reason, I’m thinking of Kella right now. I went to her concert in the Bay Area when I lived there and I felt like I saw all of the dots connect. Having listened to her music hundreds of times on repeat and knowing that she’s so hands-on in making her music, and then to be in the concert witnessing her talent… She came out into the crowd and was standing face-to-face with me. That connection is magic. That inspires me to create that kind of connection in my work.

I wanna be in sci-fi. I would love to create sci-fi. I know that there’s a long road ahead (laughs) but that has always been my North Star. And I’ve been working towards that from the very beginning.

I’m trying to be in space, alright? I’m trying to be in the future (laughs). I’m really fascinated with tech.

I also have this like… I don’t know, it’s almost like a past life or something where I feel like I need to play a princess (laughs). She’s on the verge of becoming a queen, you know, like a coming-of-age royalty film. And when I say a princess, I mean like a grown woman, like a real grounded story about a royal woman at the height of her power, and all of the politics. There’s something there!

Yeah, I was very lucky to spend all of last year directing and acting in a short film called “All The Words But The One” that’s now in the festival circuit. I’m very excited for people to see it. It’s executive produced by Lily Wachowski and it has an incredible cast. It really means a lot to me because it tells a story that makes us question assumptions that we might have about how survivors of violence should respond to violence, and what our healing process is supposed to look like. The truth is that we don’t get to control the healing process. We simply have to make space for it.

The movie will be at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in Toronto, and then at the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival. More will be announced, so people can stay tuned on my Instagram and the film’s Instagram.