‘I’m not afraid of who I am any more, thanks to Teri.’
Looking squarely down the lens of the camera, Nava Mau throws her head back and laughs, luminous in the flashbulbs. It’s like a scene from an old Hollywood movie, aside from the sounds of Tyla and Charli XCX pumping out of the studio stereo.
Last year, Mau wowed in Baby Reindeer, Netflix’s hit thriller about a struggling comedian named Donny (played by the show’s creator, Richard Gadd) and his warped relationship with a stalker named Martha (Jessica Gunning). Although the series landed with barely any fanfare, it quickly became a global phenomenon. Not only did it climb its way into Netflix’s top 10 most popular English-language series of all time, but Mau made history as the first trans Latina to be nominated in the category for best supporting actress in a limited or anthology series or movie at the 2024 Emmys for her captivating portrayal of Teri, a self-assured transgender therapist who also plays Donny’s love interest. But the role has deeply impacted Mau on a personal level, too. ‘I feel like I unlocked a channel within me that is not afraid of who I am.’
Born in 1992, Mau was raised in Mexico City and San Antonio, Texas, and grew up ‘binational, bilingual and bicultural’. She describes her younger self as a ‘gender non-conforming child without knowing it, without having a term for it, or anyone really acknowledging it’, in large part thanks to her loving and supportive family, who encouraged confident self-expression. She didn’t realise her difference until she moved to the US at the age of eight and started getting bullied. ‘It was so bewildering, because my family in Mexico had all been so accepting and loving of who I am,’ she says softly. ‘The boys would say that I was a girl, or that I act like a girl, talk like a girl. They would use slurs against me. And it really was a surprise, honestly.’
Despite being ostracised, she didn’t feel like an outsider. ‘I think when you’re eight, you don’t have a sociological vocabulary, and you can’t really zoom out to see yourself,’ says Mau. What she did have trouble with, however, was figuring out her path. ‘It was like the world was telling me that there is a right and a wrong way to be,’ she muses. ‘But what happens when what people are expecting of me feels so wrong in my body and in my spirit, and feels like it’s taking me on the wrong path? To have to contend with that misalignment as a child is very overwhelming.’
The pressure took its toll on Mau and, at the age of 19, she took a medical leave of absence from college and went into treatment for an eating disorder. ‘I’d been struggling with anorexia for several years at that point, because I think so much of my trying to force myself to be accepted by society was turned into a hate for my body and wanting to control it, and so I had to withdraw from school,’ says Mau. She entered a rehab programme, Monday to Friday, and spent weekends at home with her parents. ‘It saved my life,’ she says simply. ‘Anorexia is the deadliest mental health disorder, and I learned, in a way that I can never unlearn, how to truly love myself, and how to practise acceptance and mindfulness. It built a foundation of self-love and trust in myself that I think allowed my intuition to blossom.’
A new beginning
After college, Mau decided she wanted to study television writing and become a showrunner, and moved to Los Angeles. But her mental health suffered. ‘I could barely get out of bed,’ she recalls. ‘I had never fallen so deep into a depression. And it makes total sense. When you graduate from college, your whole social system disappears, your whole structure of where you’re supposed to show up and spend your time, and what you’re supposed to be striving for, is gone.’ Although she was identifying as genderqueer, looking back, she sees that her struggle was inherently linked to her efforts to fit into a binary world. ‘I think that more than anything, it was that I hadn’t transitioned,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘It was the most all-consuming effort that I was making to try to fit myself into a world that was not built for me. Trying to enter the workforce as a trans person can be soul crushing, and I was very young, so I kind of crumbled.’
Mau’s father came to collect her, and they drove back to Texas. While home, a generous friend offered Mau the means of a fresh start. ‘They said, “You should move to Oakland, I think you’d really thrive there.”’ Alongside these words of encouragement, they lent her $2,000. ‘That was the only way I was able to then get in that car – that little red Toyota,’ she laughs in a sing-song voice, ‘and drive.’ In the Bay Area, Mau began to reinvent herself. She gained her first full-time job as a legal assistant working with immigrant survivors of violence, then as a peer counsellor and advocate for LGBTQ+ survivors of violence; work that she feels ‘forever indebted to’. ‘I felt safe,’ she recalls.
‘I felt like, “Oh, wow! We’re all moving towards this common goal of true safety.” And what does that even look like? How do we build that? How do we take the rubble of what has to be dismantled and create something that makes space for all of us to thrive within? For me to be in that kind of generative, healing and radically imaginative space in my 20s, it just freed me.’ The community-orientated work also helped rejuvenate her passion for writing, directing and acting. ‘It became clear that it was possible to align my purpose with my values. I found the permission to pursue creative work and feel like there was a purpose behind it,’ says Mau.
Her big break
Instead of attempting to break down the doors of Hollywood, Mau decided to give herself time to develop her craft. She took part in Peacock Rebellion’s Brouhaha, a comedy storytelling programme for trans women of colour, which made her realise that she was a born performer. The following spring, she wrote, directed, starred in and produced her first short film called Waking Hour. She never got the memo that it was tough to crack the acting world, and counts the fact that she didn’t attend drama school as her silver lining. ‘I never considered that it would be hard to get inside,’ she muses. ‘My level of ignorance about the industry protected my passion.’ She continued making her short films, even on shoestring budgets. ‘All of it felt grand,’ says Mau. ‘All of it felt like, this is what I’m supposed to be doing!’
Mau did have another source of inspiration, though. ‘Honestly,’ she giggles, ‘I think I have to credit Lady Gaga for entering my subconscious, because I grew up watching her interviews, and there was a very consistent message that she always knew she was going to be who we all know her to be today. And even though I’ve had so much self-doubt and so many detours on my journey, I do think that, on some level, the conviction has always been there that I’m going to get to do this work.’
By 2018, she was working as a production fellow on the groundbreaking documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives On Screen, and had the chance to watch trans icons, such as Laverne Cox, Lilly Wachowski and Candis Cayne, talking about their stories. It was, she recalls, a ‘spiritual’ experience. ‘It encouraged me to dream bigger than I thought I could. I felt so connected to a legacy of trans people fighting for survival, for dignity.’
Then, in the summer of 2019, Mau finally got her break when she was cast on the HBO Max series Genera+ion, a queer dramedy about a group of high schoolers exploring their sexualities from within the confines of their conservative Orange County community. But after just one season, the streaming service announced Genera+ion’s cancellation. Mau was crushed. ‘After that show came out, there was 18 months of immense doubt and moments of hopelessness and no traction,’ says Mau. She had a ‘crash landing’ into the world of auditioning and learned for the first time what it meant to face ‘consistent, silent rejection’. Her anxieties around finding work were exacerbated by the onset of the pandemic. ‘That was a long period of waiting to see if there would ever be another role for me,’ she says. Still, she refused to waste time being fearful, and travelled to Mexico to begin writing again. It was there, while she was rediscovering her passion, that an audition came through for a series by the name of Baby Reindeer.
In the spotlight
The beginning of Mau’s journey with Baby Reindeer was anything but glamorous. In fact, it started off like every other acting job: with a self-tape in the corner of her bedroom in June 2022. A few weeks later, she had a call with Richard Gadd and director Weronika Tofilska, and did an additional scene. Then came six weeks of radio silence. ‘I have never mourned a role like I mourned the loss – what felt like the loss – of Teri and Baby Reindeer,’ she recalls.
While waiting to hear whether she’d got the part, she saw someone on X (formerly known as Twitter) post emojis of a baby and a reindeer, and assumed they’d got it instead. ‘I was like, “What else could it be?” I’ve never heard the words baby reindeer next to each other. And I was like, “You know what? She fits the bill. She really could play Teri! Good for her.”’ She called her manager to ‘break the news’, then made peace with it. Shortly after, she got the call that the team wanted to fly her to London for a chemistry read in August. One month later, the cameras started rolling.
While much of Baby Reindeer’s distinctive appeal comes from the show’s powerfully authentic depiction of trauma and mental illness, its nuanced depiction of a relationship between Donny, a cisgender man, and Teri, a trans woman, is a rarity in the TV landscape. Based on Gadd’s award-winning 2019 one-man stage show of the same name, the storyline of Donny and Teri’s relationship drew on his own experience of dating a trans woman – something Mau says she could immediately tell when reading the script. ‘It was undeniable,’ she says, tears forming in her eyes. ‘It makes me emotional still. I just remember there was a moment reading the script for the first time, and I was like, “Oh, he really loved her.”’ What makes the relationship remarkable, she asserts, is Donny’s ‘free and expansive’ love. ‘Donny’s love for Teri is in the form of awe, and I had never seen a trans woman represented quite in that way,’ says Mau. Reading Gadd’s characterisation of a confident, beautiful trans woman, also liberated her from her own shame. ‘It was this weird, transcendental experience of it being what I needed to see, and what it did to heal my own wounds,’ she says.
Baby Reindeer’s examination of the shame society creates around Donny and Teri’s relationship is also radical given the moral panic around gender identity in the media. ‘There is such a fixation in society and in the media on trans people and who is dating us, and who is attracted to us, and who is even consorting with us,’ Mau observes. ‘It’s strange, because that fixation presupposes that trans people should be responsible for explaining and answering any questions and curiosities that cis people have, but it also presupposes that trans people must also have this fixation.’ She laughs. ‘But it’s like, I’m not a curiosity to myself.’ Contrary to what is represented in the media, she continues, there is nothing ‘grotesque or mysterious’ about trans relationships. ‘We’re just living full lives, real lives, just like everyone else,’ says Mau. Being cast in a major production as a trans woman, and playing a prominent character, she explains, is culture change in action. ‘That is destigmatising and demystifying the narrative of who trans people are.’
I put it to Mau that, as a standout character who has generated such profound, formative empathy, Teri should definitely have her own spin-off. ‘I’m moments away from texting Richard to just tell him!’ she giggles, grabbing her phone. Just as Laverne Cox did with her groundbreaking role as Sophia Burset in the Netflix drama Orange Is The New Black (for which she became the first openly trans person nominated for an acting Emmy in 2014), Teri created a global dialogue, driving awareness and discussion of transgender issues. On the 2024 Emmy Awards red carpet, Mau shared an emotional moment with Cox as they celebrated her historic nomination. ‘I’m so grateful to Laverne, because she’s so real, you know? I think that’s what has been the core of her role in shifting culture, is that no one can deny that Laverne Cox is real, and I mean that in so many senses of the word,’ says Mau.
Although the popularity of Baby Reindeer brought a ‘tide of excitement and opportunity’, the sudden fame hasn’t been easy. The first few months after the show came out, Mau recalls, were ‘so overwhelming’. Her college reunion turned into a ‘meet and greet’, where she was besieged by strangers wanting to talk to her and take photos. She was recognised at FKA twigs’ Met Gala afterparty, and at San Francisco Pride, she had to leave a club because of a ‘frenzy’ of people. On a visit to the doctors for a check-up, she was informed that her heart rate was unusually elevated. ‘We realised that I was in literal, physical shock, because it was undeniable that my life had changed,’ says Mau.
While Baby Reindeer centres a trans character with refreshing nuance, trans representation in Hollywood remains pitifully low. According to a recent report from GLAAD, there were only 24 trans characters (5.1%) in primetime scripted series during the 2023-24 television season. ‘I think there are some people who have this imagined belief that there’s a trans takeover,’ says Mau. ‘And it’s like, we’re such a small population – a tiny fraction of the world’s population – and we’re barely getting to make headway into the kinds of roles that are available to us.’ For Mau, the route to authentic storytelling simply means giving trans people opportunities. ‘Trans people should be considered and invited to be a part of projects that do not revolve around a trans narrative, and that’s because trans people are so much more than our gender identity,’ she says. ‘It’s a matter of seeing trans people as human, and valuing us for our humanity, and not as a token simply because we are trans.’
If Mau’s name is already a byword for progressive storytelling, she’s only just getting started. Days after we speak, she’s named in Bafta Breakthrough’s 2025 cohort, an initiative that recognises emerging talent across creative industries. She is ‘speechless’ to have received the honour, but also recognises how important the programme is in an industry that isn’t willingly making space for her. ‘My path forwards to be able to have a livelihood, let alone live out any more of my dreams as an actor and as a filmmaker, requires allies. It requires strong support. It requires doors to be opened for me that I can’t open on my own.’
But Mau’s feet remain firmly on the ground. Whenever she has a rare moment of downtime, she unplugs from social media and goes hiking. ‘I love anything that grounds me in my body, and also grounds me in something much bigger than myself.’ She has had the same friendship group for years – ‘found family’, she affectionately calls them – who she spends holidays with, and look after her when she’s sick. ‘It’s really my girls, whether that’s girl or gurl, that are in my life. I think that we live in a time where so many of us are not having children, so many of us are not finding partnership, or not choosing partnership, and so we’re choosing each other. Not everyone takes that seriously, but to me, that’s a very queer perspective on family.’
So, what comes next? She’s set to star in The Dregs, a comedic thriller about a friends’ trip to Tuscany that gets derailed by a cursed bottle of wine, and is excited to release her second short film, All The Words But The One, online. But first, she’s gearing up for the fifth and final season of Netflix’s hit thriller You, in which she guest stars as Detective Marquez. Like many of the pinch-me moments that she’s experienced since becoming famous, she was taken aback when her agent called at 9pm on a Friday night with the news, and immediately assumed something was wrong. ‘At first I was kind of like, “Uh-oh. Like, did something happen?”’ she laughs. The opposite was true: he was calling with the good news that she’d been offered a part in the final season. Soon after, Mau received a ‘beautifully written’ letter from showrunners Michael Foley and Justin W Lo, explaining why they wanted her to play Marquez. ‘They described her as the emotional anchor of this narrative discovery and so I really felt the responsibility,’ she says. ‘They had seen Baby Reindeer and they felt that I could handle the weight that this character has to carry, the intensity and compassion.’
And while it remains to be seen how Marquez will fare with Penn Badgley’s delusional and obsessive serial killer Joe Goldberg, it seems unlikely that she’ll become another victim. ‘All I can say is that she did not come to play,’ says Mau. And, based on our conversation today, neither has Mau.
Netflix’s You returns late spring
You can contact Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, at 0808 801 0677 or beateatingdisorders.org.uk. Trans-led charity Gendered Intelligence offers support at 0800 640 8046 and genderedintelligence.co.uk. Or try Switchboard’s LGBTQIA+ support line at 0800 0119 100 or switchboard.lgbt
Lead image: Jacket, vintage Levi’s at Rokit. Earrings, Bea Bongiasca. Necklace, Missoma. Rings, all Lié Studio. Shoes, Aeyde. Briefs (just seen), Giambattista Valli.
Cover look: Cardigan, Fifi Chachnil. Bra, Scarlett Gasque. Briefs, Elissa Poppy. Heels, Malone Souliers. Earrings, Swarovski. Rings (left hand): middle finger, Dinosaur Designs; ring finger, Bea Bongiasca; (right hand): index finger, Dinosaur Designs; ring finger, Ninfa.
Photographer: Florence Mann, Fashion Editor: Maddy Alford, Hair stylist: Stefan Bertin, Make up artist: Charlie Fitzjohn, Manicurist: Ami Streets, Entertainment Editor: Christobel Hastings, Editor in Chief: Claire Hodgson, Art Director: Alex Hambis, Video lead: Megan Beattie, Bookings Director: Sophie Leen, Photo Assistant: Georgia Fay Williams, Fashion Assistants: Angel Cordova-Todd, Imy Moore.
