Nava Mau Joins Mariel Hemingway in Deborah Kampmeier's Indie Drama 'Holy Whore'
Nava Mau, the breakout of Netflix's Baby Reindeer, has landed her next film role. She will star opposite Mariel Hemingway and Sophia Adler in Holy Whore, an independent drama written and directed by Deborah Kampmeier, according to Deadline.
The film tells the true story of Carmene — a modern-day courtesan who moves through prostitution and drug addiction into a healing journey, eventually becoming a sex therapist and reclaiming her vocation as a sex worker. Hemingway plays Carmene in the present day; Adler takes the younger version. Mau steps in as Alex, a dominatrix and heroin addict who becomes best friends and roommates with the young Carmene and ends up in rehab alongside her.
Mau's casting carries real momentum. She won the Independent Spirit Award and picked up Emmy and BAFTA nominations for her turn as Teri in Baby Reindeer, Richard Gadd's sleeper-hit limited series for Netflix. Her other credits include HBO Max's Generation and Netflix's You. She is represented by Innovative Artists, IKIGAI Management & Media, and Gang, Tyre.
For Kampmeier, Holy Whore marks her first feature film in six years. Her previous work includes Hounddog, which played Sundance, and Virgin, an Indie Spirit nominee starring Elisabeth Moss. More recently she has been working in television, with credits on HBO's The Gilded Age.
The production is a collaboration between two independent outfits. Deborah Kampmeier, Iris Torres and Raye Dowell produce for Full Moon Films, with Vicky Mara Story producing for Sunshine in South Central. Filming was due to get underway in Mexico in late summer.
What makes the project sit up and demand attention is the trio at its centre. Hemingway, an Oscar nominee for Personal Best (1982) whose career spans five decades, pairing with Mau — an actress still in the first wave of her breakthrough — gives Kampmeier a cast that bridges generations of American independent cinema. Adler, the younger Carmene, rounds out the three-hander.
The role of Alex also gives Mau material that sits in the dramatic register she has already proven she can handle. In Baby Reindeer, her character navigated questions of identity and survival with a restraint that caught the industry's eye; Alex, a dominatrix battling addiction alongside her closest friend, offers a different set of demands — rougher edges, higher stakes, no safety net of comedy.
Independent film, the world outside the major studios where films are financed and produced by smaller companies, has long been the space where stories like Carmene's get told. Whether Holy Whore finds a path to wide release will depend on the buyers who circulate at festivals — but the ingredients, from an award-winning cast to a director returning to features, are in place.
