By now, much has been made of Baby Reindeer's confessional nature. The series from Richard Gadd, which continues to hover around the top of the Netflix charts, recounts his experience of being stalked and sexually abused.
‘This is a true story’ types out at the start of the first episode, letting us know the people involved are all real, from the woman who relentlessly stalked him to the older male comedian who raped him and the trans woman he had a loving but doomed relationship with. In the series, that woman, Teri, is played by Nava Mau. “I was transfixed by the writing because I had never read anything like it before,” Mau tells GQ. “There's this character that almost felt like, in a parallel universe, someone was writing about me. It makes you almost jittery to see a character that speaks to you in that way."
Teri and Donny (Gadd's name in the series) meet on a trans dating site. While Donny is battling his own internalised homophobia and shame, Teri is wholly confident in herself. “Teri has no question about who she is,” says Mau. “She almost is not even going to entertain any sort of attack on that.” After roadblocks at the start of their relationship that stem from Donny concealing his real identity, the pair end up falling into a loving and patient relationship. But as Donny's stalker Martha (Jessica Gunning) ramps up her delusion and forcefulness, cracks begin to show and the pair start to fall apart, with Donny's own propensity for self-sabotage catalysing their breakdown.
Here, Mau chats with GQ about learning about the real Teri, Baby Reindeer's radical approach to trans characterisation and whether audiences should be trying to track down the real people involved in Gadd's story.
GQ: Teri is based on a real trans woman Richard had a relationship with. Did he talk to you at all about her?
Nava Mau: Richard shared a lot with me. Richard was very generous with sharing, you know, pieces of his own experience and the real-life relationship that inspired this. This relationship between Teri and Donny, I almost don't even know how to convey how incredible it is for an actor to be able to go to the writer and be like, ‘Hey, just tell me what it was like’.
How does Teri square up to the kinds of trans representation we usually see in mainstream TV and film?
Well, I think that everyone should watch the documentary Disclosure, directed by Sam Feder. It's required education for everyone and I think it does a fantastic job of laying out the way that, historically, trans people have been represented on screen from a place of imagination and conjecture. And we see how that imagined characterisation of trans people has often been violent and demeaning and dehumanising. What felt very different to me about Baby Reindeer is that Teri is a trans character who's written from a starting point of reality. She's based on a real person, Richard had a relationship with a trans woman that inspired the story and so I think that allowed for a level of nuance and intricacy that still feels groundbreaking.
Teri is so self-assured and she knows who she is, which is in such contrast to Donny's shame. How did it feel to portray that dynamic, especially as so much moral panic around gender identity is centred around this idea of confusion?
I had to work real hard to embody that self-assurance. I think that a lot of trans people, and a lot of women period, have just been taught over and over and over to swallow our emotions, to tamp down on our needs and consider the needs of others first. I think that that's been for safety, but it's also been to uphold patriarchal structures of power. And so Teri said, 'I'm not doing that'. Teri said ‘Why would I uphold the same structures that seek to break me apart?’.
Did playing her change you at all?
1000%. I really had to figure out what it is that keeps me from being so self-assured, and why do swallow my anger? And where does it go? She inspired me.
Martha's behaviour ends up shedding a light on every character's trauma, and for Teri that manifests in her fear over Donny's shame and whether the wider world recognises her gender. How was that for you to get into that headspace?
It was not difficult to get my head around it. I very intimately understand what it feels like to have the world's shame bearing down on you. What was difficult was the emotional place that it takes Teri, which is deep depression and her starting to spiral within herself. You do see the beginning of a breakdown of that self-assurance – it's not like she's infallible. So I had to just allow myself to break down a little bit and then build myself back up afterwards.
The way Donny and Teri's relationship ends is sad because it feels like it was an argument that could have been resolved, but the reality is that people often don't act in their own best interests. How did you feel about their break-up?
There actually was one more piece of Teri and Donny's relationship in the script, and I performed it. Teri leaves Donny a voicemail five months later. So I think, for me, I got closure because Teri did too. That's what gave me so much comfort, knowing that they found peace with regards to their relationship. Teri got her happy ending, you know? Teri found a new man, she didn't lose her friends, she didn't lose her job, she didn't lose her smile. She's good. And I think that is remarkable, because so often we've seen stories of trans people that end with them broken.
Richard has talked about the various advisors that were brought on board to make sure things were handled sensitively. How was that process for you?
I loved working with the intimacy coordinator, her name was Elle McAlpine. It's a very unique situation to be playing a love interest to a character that is based on someone's real life, played by the real person who is also the showrunner and the only writer on the project. So it was really helpful to have a third person in that dynamic. And an intimacy coordinator's job is not just about boundary work and consent and safety, it's also about believability. She had some great little tips for some of the intimate scenes on how to perform them in a way that felt true and connected.
How do you feel about people now trying to track down the real people this story is based on?
Richard has come out and asked people to stop trying to track down the real people who inspired the characters on the show, and I think for a very good reason. I think it is good to remind people that Richard really went through all of this – experiencing stalking and abuse from multiple people. It is very sensitive and there's a reason why Richard had to seek protection from his stalker, so let's not forget the stakes. I think for his safety, and also just out of respect for everyone, it makes sense to ask people to [stop].
