Emmys FYC: Nava Mau for Netflix’s ‘Baby Reindeer’

Baby Reindeer is a show about two pretty unbearable people who somehow manage not to be entirely unsympathetic. Show creator and lead Richard Gadd plays Donny, a bartender with the goal of being a prop comic who is suffering from PTSD and a sexual identity crisis.  His counterpart is Martha (an extraordinary Jessica Gunning), a completely mental stalker who had something break in her a long time ago that can never be put back together. What makes the show so compelling is that this isn’t just a show about a stalker who fixates on a certain individual, it’s also a show where that individual (Donny) fixates back. 

This is an almost impossible series to classify. The rhythms of the show are often comedic, but Baby Reindeer, if it is a comedy (good luck classifying it as such, Academy), is one of the most painfully grim versions of the classification to ever be produced. 

Neither lead character is someone you’d want to spend a lot of time around unless you were paid to. And I’m assuming if you were paid to it’s because you are wearing a long, white lab coat, because these are people who need to be studied.

At times, the succession of bad decisions both characters make are so intolerable that trying to hold on to sympathy for them is a Herculean effort. The magic of the show is that even at their worst, you do hold onto that shred of concern, if only just. It’s a bold move to make a show about people you wouldn’t want to spend any extended time with in real life (if any time at all). But the show’s deep understanding of abuse, trauma, and the bad (even horrendous) decisions that self-loathing victims make (together and separately), are often fascinating to watch play out. 

Still, Baby Reindeer can be a grueling (if worthy) test of one’s viewership. If nothing else, I’ve never seen anything like it. That’s something on its own.  But few series have ever shown the self-destructive impulses that come with PTSD and mental illness so painfully. 

Even so, it’s a true relief every time Nava Mau shows up on screen. As Teri, a trans woman who Donny meets through a dating site is, as he puts it, “everything he’s not.” And as Donny introduces himself to Teri, he’s not a lot of things—in particular, honest. He tells her his name is Tony and that he works in construction. Because of some very understandable sexual hang ups, Donny is not only afraid to fully commit to her emotionally and physically, but also ashamed to admit that he’s in a relationship with a trans woman, which leads to a lot of in-door dating. Something Teri, a person who struggled to come out into the light and be her own self, grows resentful of.

What’s remarkable about Mau’s performance as Teri is that she convinces us that after Donny comes clean about being stalked by Martha, reveals his true name and occupation, and even after being attacked by Martha, that Teri sees something in Donny that is worth fighting for. It shouldn’t work. In fact, it barely makes sense, as Teri is a reasonable human being who has won a hard fought battle to accept herself for who she is. It’s only when Donny’s inability to walk away from his own stalker becomes too obvious to ignore that Teri turns away from Donny. 

How Mau accomplishes this is the kind of thing that makes writers crazy. Because the center should not hold. But Mau’s performance does not move in a straight line. While she is far and away the most relatable and mentally healthy character in the series, she has her own vulnerabilities. Her journey to self acceptance may be complete to a degree, but it’s not without fragility. 

For Teri, who has the spunk and eccentricity to see Donny not only for who he is but also for his potential—if she can get him to move forward with her and, in effect,  his own life. For all the awful decisions and lies Donny tells Teri, he’s not a simply terrible person. He’s a deeply fucked up person doing fucked up things. The mistake Teri, a therapist herself, makes is one that many women and men make in new relationships: they think they can fix the broken one. Teri cannot fix Donny. Not even with her skill set. 

Mau plays Teri with warmth, wit, charm, strength, and just enough softness to help you understand how she might believe in Donny, but also, how in the end, she must protect herself from Donny’s toxic addiction to drama and personal disgust that borders on self-immolation. In a show that most might think of as a two-hander between Donny and Martha, Teri is the outsider who allows us, the audience, a way into a show about two people whose behavior is so remarkably unpleasant and even vile, that we should be repelled. 

Teri is the ballast that makes Donny’s uneven journey to what might be a healthier place worth watching. Mau is giving the very definition of support to a show that desperately needs it. She sneaks up on you. She becomes the one you care about most. And when she and Donny part, it’s both heartbreaking and a relief. Because Teri deserves better. She knows she does, and so she makes the choice to be done with Donny. The scene itself is masterfully played by Mau as she calls Donny out on all his bullshit. How he likes the attention he gets from Martha. How it upgrades his ego. How he is obsessed with his own stalker. And as the scene closes Teri now is free to hope that she finds what she deserves, and we hope with her. 

I had never heard of Nava Mau before seeing her in Baby Reindeer. After finishing the series, I find myself believing I will never forget her. I hope for her the same things I hope for Teri. A good life full of good parts, and a long satisfying career. 

I’m thinking an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress might be a quality boost for Mau and hopefully make all those wishes I have for her come true.