If there’s one thing that Baby Reindeer has made more mincemeat of than Netflix’s viewership charts, it’s the tear ducts of all those viewers who helped make those numbers what they were. Indeed, Richard Gadd’s uncompromising adaptation of his autobiographical one-man show is poignant, devastating, intellectually compassionate, and, above all, brilliant; here’s hoping it proves to be a hearty springboard as Gadd and his collaborators continue their creative careers.
One such collaborator was Nava Mau, who portrayed the character Teri in the show; a character who was absolutely pivotal in allowing Donny — and, by extension, the audience — to both knowingly and unknowingly examine, intensify, and subsequently relax the grip that the main character’s profoundly woven trauma had on him.
Who is Teri in Baby Reindeer?
Teri is the name of the trans woman that Donny begins dating in private as the Martha situation begins to fan its flames. Their relationship over the course of the show is a tumultuous one, given that Donny initially gave her a fake name for himself, confides in her about the aforementioned Martha situation (which Teri gets dangerously roped into), and generally finds himself grappling with both his love for Teri, and the external shame and trauma that renders him unable to love her the way she needs and deserves. By the end of the show, Teri has broken up with Donny completely, and has moved on.
But here’s the kicker: Teri, a trans character, is actually a fully-fleshed out character; she’s sarcastic, confident, and hilarious, and also has trauma of her own that greatly conflicts with the way Donny treats her throughout the show; trauma that she isn’t afraid to acknowledge.
Herein lies the artistic prowess of Baby Reindeer‘s handling of a trans character; it neither haphazardly tosses Teri into the mix as a solitary object of Donny’s reluctant affection, nor does it meekly exclude Teri’s transness from its very real role in the show’s subject matter. Teri is attacked and told she looks like a man by Martha, and sends Donny running when she asks to be kissed in public, but at no point is Teri ever portrayed as an object of pity or the butt of a joke; we see and hear very clearly the harm that these things cause to Teri, and we empathize with her. And because of those experiences and what has no doubt been a long, difficult road for Teri over the course of her life, she of course assumes that Donny’s inability to make love to her is rooted in her transness rather than Donny’s own sexual trauma; a mistake on her part, perhaps, but also one that she was more or less forced to make given Donny’s silence on the matter. Toss in the fact that Donny specifically sought out a trans partner because of his unexamined shame only to meet the most singular woman of his dreams (who, again, he was unable to love properly because of his trauma), and it’s clear long before Donny’s episode six monologue that Teri offered perhaps the single most crucial push for Donny’s ultimate confrontation of his demons.
In other words, Teri is the trans woman character in Baby Reindeerand she just might be one of the best there ever was.
Baby Reindeer is now streaming in full on Netflix.