Mau is barefaced, wearing a blue smocked dress, and seated in front of an easel where a painting appears to be is in progress. (She lives with a “a very talented filmmaker and painter” in LA.) She has a relaxed, off-duty glow about her, even as our conversation zips between IPV and her go-to skincare products—the dichotomy of womanhood. When I apologize for the whiplash between questions, Mau laughs.
“Welcome to my brain,” she says.
Read our full conversation about Nava Mau’s work as well as her answers to Glamour’s Big Beauty Questions, below.
Glamour: I’m excited to chat with you about You and your guest spot in season 5. What was your experience working on You, and being in such an intense moment in the show?
Nava Mau: I just couldn’t believe that it happened, it was so fast. It was a week after I got the part that I went to New York and filmed, and so I felt like I got to come in and play. [My] episode is sort of contained, and I think it has a pretty unique structure to it compared to the rest of the series.
The main reason that I immediately said yes to the role was my excitement about working with Madeline Brewer. I saw her name on the cast list, and I was like, oh my God, what? And then, when I read the episode, I just couldn’t believe that I was going to get to work with her. She’s somebody that I’ve looked up to for a long time and I really, really admire her work. It was surreal to work with her.
Were you a fan of the show before landing the role?
I had seen a couple episodes. There’s so many things to watch, and I always meant to come back and finish it, but I didn’t keep watching.
Between You and Baby Reindeer, you’ve worked on shows that deal in different ways with the fall out of social media, and of people reading into things, and taking them to the extremes. Has working on these projects impacted your relationship to social media at all?
Well, I have been simultaneously addicted to social media and desperately hoping for a world without social media for so many years now, so that predates my experience with Baby Reindeer and You.
I have a real love-hate relationship with social media, so I think I’m definitely even more aware of the need for security and in thinking about privacy and what I share and what I don’t share. And I think we all could benefit from that. But mostly, I think social media is dangerous because of mental health.
There are almost too many different ways that social media can impact your mental health—is there one you’re talking about specifically?
All of them. But I think there’s something about being disconnected from your present physical reality. You open this tiny little screen, this tiny little machine, and it gives you access to communications and media from all over the world, from millions and billions of people’s lives, and I think that that inherently is disorienting and disruptive to being present. It’s hard enough to be present and happy and well in today’s world.