Mau is up for an Emmy for her performance in the hit Netflix series, making her the first transgender person to be nominated for a limited series acting Emmy.
Voting is underway for the 76th Primetime 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 among Netflix’s most watched shows ever.
Its success is even more surprising given the intensity of its central themes: sexual assault, 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.”
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Source: Television - nytimes.com
