When Nava Mau received the audition material for the role of Teri in Baby reindeershe felt a connection to the character. But she had no idea that this audition would lead to her first-ever Emmy nomination.

Teri is the warm, confident girlfriend of the series’ main character, Donny, who is pursued by an unstable woman.

Baby reindeer shows how Donny and Teri fall in love, but also how Donny hides his queerness and his relationship with Teri, a trans woman. This is something that Mau, as a trans woman herself, could identify with.

“How could anyone else write a character where it feels like we may have lived similar lives, if not the same life at times, maybe in a different timeline or universe?” she says in an interview with Q Guest moderator Talia Schlanger.

However, it wasn’t necessarily easy for Mau to play Teri, who is confident and knows when to raise her voice. Mau describes herself as soft-spoken, so she practiced breathing exercises and trained her voice for the role.

“She never runs away from herself, so I felt I had to face that challenge to portray her,” Mau says of her character. “I had never yelled at anyone before.”

Her hard work paid off. Mau’s portrayal of Teri earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress, making her one of the few trans women to receive this honor.

We exist all over the world, so we should exist in every genre.– Nava Mau Region

When Mau was growing up in Mexico City, she didn’t see many Latina women – and certainly not trans women – on screen. She remembers how excited she was when she saw Eva Longoria in Desperate Housewives and Sara Ramirez in Grey’s Anatomy. Then she started seeing more trans women on television, like Laverne Cox on Orange is the new black and the leading women of pose.

WATCH | Official Trailer for Baby Reindeer:

She says it took decades for her to even consider that there was a place for her in Hollywood.

Mau had her big break in the high school drama generationwhich premiered in 2021. She tried to get jobs and an agent, but she didn’t get a role for 18 months. She thought maybe generation Role was a “coincidence”.

“(In) 2022, I decided: No, I’m going to enjoy my life,” she says. “Work will find me.”

She returned to Mexico, kept a few diaries and wrote a series. She refused to chase work, and then came the Baby reindeer It came to her audition.

Now Mau has her Emmy nomination and is in the fifth and final season of YouShe is happy that transgender characters are being represented more on screen – and hopes to see more of them.

“Audiences embrace transgender characters on screen with joy, love, admiration and a shared understanding of our humanity,” she says. “I’m happy to see transgender people in romantic comedies, in science fiction, in historical novels… We live all over the world, so we should exist in every genre.”

The full interview with Nava Mau is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Nava Mau produced by Lise Hosein.