With Baby Reindeer still dominating the pop culture conversation a month after its release, cast member Nava Mau has spoken out about some of her more difficult days on set.
In the hit Netflix miniseries, Nava plays Teri, a therapist who protagonist Donny meets on a dating site for transgender women.
Teri and Donny’s relationship becomes a central story arc as Baby Reindeer unfolds, with one particularly hard-to-watch scene seeing Nava’s character being physically attacked by her boyfriend’s stalker, Martha, and bombarded with racist and transphobic insults.
In a new interview with Vulture, the Mexican actor admitted this attack sequence was something she found especially “painful and harrowing” to film, particularly due to the xenophobic rhetoric Martha was using”.
“I allowed myself to emotionally lose myself in the moment,” Nava explained. “I genuinely felt that kind of hate coming at me. I was surprised it affected me so much.
“I guess I have this idea that I’m, like, above it all, you know? Racism can’t touch me. Transphobia can’t touch me. But at that moment, you realise it doesn’t matter how strong you are. That violence is hurtful. It was the hardest thing I had to do for this role.”
Nava previously opened up about these scenes when Baby Reindeer first began streaming, revealing she found them especially triggering given her own history of violence.
“Even if I didn’t want to relive it, your body inevitably reactivates a certain physical memory,” she told Gay Times.
“You have to take care of yourself, before, during and after. That’s the only way through it, otherwise it can reopen wounds that you’ll need to deal with.”
“I had physical recall in my muscle memory from when I’ve been attacked like that,” she added to Glamour.
Meanwhile, Nava has also shared that one particular scene that gave her “closure” about the end of her character’s storyline never actually made it into the series.
Baby Reindeer is streaming on Netflix now, where it remains the platform’s number one show.