In this week’s episode of The Envelope video podcast , “Baby Reindeer” breakout Nava Mau opens up about drawing courage from Netflix’s viral hit and “Shōgun” star Hiroyuki Sanada describes how becoming a producer remade him as an actor. Yvonne Villarreal: Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Envelope podcast. My name is Yvonne Villarreal and I’m joined here today by my colleagues.
Mark Olsen: Mark Olsen. Shawn Finnie: And Shawn Finnie. Villarreal: And today we have two guests that were part of these shows that were epic in scope and also epic in the cultural conversation that they ignited.
Mark, why don’t you tell us who you spoke with. Olsen: I spoke to Nava Mau from the show “Baby Reindeer.” And, you know, I think when that show came on to Netflix, when it went live on the site, it wasn’t with a lot of fanfare or expectation.
Yvonne, you can probably speak to the power of the Netflix recommendation engine, but it seemed like, in an organic way people really did just discover this show and built it to be one of the most-watched series in the life of Netflix. It was created by, written by and stars Richard Gadd. It’s based on sort of real-life events that happened to him.
It’s about a struggling comedian in London who begins to be stalked by this woman who comes in the bar where he works, and it brings up a lot of issues from his past. And kind of parallel to that, he’s also launching into this new relationship with a trans therapis.