Since graduating from Pomona, Nava Mau ’14 has achieved stunning success as an actress and filmmaker.
Acclaimed for her representations of trans women of color, she is best known for her Emmy-nominated role in the Netflix smash Baby Reindeer (2024) and for portraying Ana in the HBO teen ensemble series Genera+ion.
She visited campus recently to chat with The Humanities Studio’s Tomás F. Summers Sandoval Jr. We caught up with Mau before the event to ask her some of our own questions.
When did you first consider working in Hollywood?
I knew my senior year that I wanted to pursue TV writing and work in the industry, which was a pretty significant departure from my linguistics major. But what was so incredible about Pomona is that I got to make a U-turn my senior year.
My spring semester, I pretty much just focused on TV writing. I did an independent study with Professor Val Thomas. Thank God there was someone in the English Department who I loved so much already—from having taken her class, Literature of Incarceration—who also had an MFA in screenwriting. Because Pomona prioritizes such a comprehensive education and holistic approach to learning, I was able to still get what I needed in the midnight hour.
What was your path after Pomona to where you are now?
I knew that I was looking to get into TV, but I could not get a job in L.A. I took the advice of a writer I had seen speak at a panel here at Pomona, whose advice to aspiring writers was to not have their only adult life experience be trying to make it in Hollywood. He said, “Go live somewhere else. Go live a different life. Be someone else, and then you’ll have something to write about.”
That stuck with me, and I also knew that I had to get my mental health in order. I had to take care of myself first, figure out how to get my bearings in the world, especially being a trans woman and not having embarked on my transition yet. I knew I needed some time, so I moved to Oakland. I worked at an immigration law firm first and then started working as a counselor to survivors of violence.
I did a couple programs with Peacock Rebellion. They had this program for trans women of color pursuing comedy storytelling. I learned how to do stand up, and I did stand up for a crowd of 600. I realized, “Oh, I forgot that I have this other part of me that’s a performer.” I feel at home on stage, and something woke up in me that I had put away. Then I made my short film, and that took off.
Acting was the last piece of the puzzle. It sort of just happened.
You’ve talked about the lack of a path for you in the entertainment industry in the past. Can you expand on that?
For somebody who was not meeting the mold of being a white, thin, cisgender, conventionally attractive person, the opportunities in acting were not even in existence. Hollywood used to function in a way where exclusion was commonplace and mandatory. It’s not like you just had to work hard enough and you could make it, if you had any kind of identity that was outside the norm or actively excluded in Hollywood.
We’ve seen several waves of activism and people trying to create change in Hollywood, such as getting more opportunities for actors of color and the Time’s Up movement after Me Too, where women were reclaiming power and wanting to recreate structures to create more opportunity for women. We saw the LGBTQ community gain better representation in Hollywood, and then at the end of that wave was trans people. That didn’t happen until toward the end of Obama’s presidency, just for context.
You’re a self-professed nerd.
I absolutely see myself as a nerd. Always have been. Always will be. I cannot help it. I’m always trying to figure out, “Okay, I guess this is what cool people do.” Really, I just want to talk about phonology, the evolution of dinosaurs, how cool it was that they wrote that bottle episode in season seven of whatever show.
I loved school my whole life. I loved learning. I loved helping other people learn. I loved witnessing the way that other people’s brains work. I don’t know any other way.
How did Pomona shape you?
The classes where we were encouraged to explore our thinking process without needing to have any answers really shaped the way that I think today and the way that I work with other people. Everything is a process. The educational culture at Pomona was about process, and that’s an invaluable framework that I’ve leaned on time and time again.