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Emmy Award nominees in conversation
Mau is nominated for an Emmy for her performance in the hit Netflix series, making her the first transgender user to be nominated for an Emmy series.
By Maya Salam
Voting for the 76th Primetime Emmys is underway and this week we’re chatting with several first-time Emmy nominees. The awards will be presented on September 15 at ABC.
The experience of filming “Baby Reindeer” was so meaningful to Nava Mau, he said, that it would have been great if the film had never been released. But that’s what happened in April, and then the seven-episode mystery did what few may have predicted: It’s become a global phenomenon. The flagship TV series of the year so far, “Baby Reindeer,” is among the most-watched shows on Netflix.
Its good fortune is all the more unexpected given the intensity of its central themes: sexual assault, shame, harassment, and self-hatred. Based on the real-life accounts of its creator, writer and star, Richard Gadd, it follows a tale of woe. comedian named Donny who is traumatized by a predatory manufacturer and then harassed by an unhappy woman named Martha, played by Jessica Gunning. “Bathrough Reindeer” is one of Martha’s nicknames for Donny.
Mau played Teri, a successful therapist and lover of Donny, whom she met on a transgender dating site. Teri sees the world more obviously than the other characters, but she herself suffers from trauma. In July, Mau earned her first Emmy nomination, for Best Supporting Actress. in a Limited Series, one of 11 nominations for the series. She is the first transgender user to be nominated for a limited series at the Emmy Awards.
Mau, who was born in Mexico City and grew up in Texas and California, said the story resonated with audiences for the same reasons it resonated with her when she read the script.
“Richard has shown great courage in portraying those characters as honestly and magnificently as they could have been,” he said in an interview. “There’s so much ugliness in the story and so much pain, and yet the humanity of each character is never sacrificed. I think this kind of storytelling allows other people to let their defenses down and get involved in the issues and feelings that are presented to them.
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