Tommy Dorfman ‘used to be so mean’ before coming out as trans: ‘I was so f**king unhappy’
Tommy Dorfman. (Getty)
13 Reasons Why star Tommy Dorfman has said she is much happier since coming out as trans.
Dorfman confirmed she is a trans woman in a July interview in Time magazine, revealing that she had been “privately identifying and living as a woman” for almost a year.
She told Time: “Coming out is always viewed as this grand reveal, but I was never not out. Today is about clarity: I am a trans woman. My pronouns are she/her. My name is Tommy.”
It was Dorfman’s first time speaking explicitly about her gender identity in public, though she had been chronicling her journey on Instagram for the past year, calling it a “diaristic time capsule”.
In a new interview with InStyle, Dorfman admitted that she was “never genuinely happy” before she began her transition.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been genuinely happy until this past year,” she said. “I look at the internet chronicle of photos of me since I started working, and I can see how f***ing unhappy I was in every photo. It’s wild.”
Dorfman added: “I just switched my hormones, and I’ve never felt better in my life. I spent 28 years of my life suicidal and depressed and recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction.”
Dorfman shared a story of running into a friend who she hadn’t seen in a while because of the pandemic, who told her: “You used to be so mean. You used to be such a bitch. You’re so nice now.”
“That’s really funny,” Dorfman said. “I don’t think I was a bitch, I was just really uncomfortable.”
Speaking about the positive change her transition has brought about, Dorfman explained: “Two weeks into having oestrogen in my body, I was like ‘oh’. It felt like I sank into the earth and was grounded. I can sleep now. I wake up moderately happy.”
“I felt it hit and I was like ‘let’s ride’. And as the testosterone leaves my body, I feel so much better. I’m more energised. I feel how I think I was always supposed to feel.”
Despite this beautiful feeling, Dorfman noted that her “second puberty” is both “body-aching and emotionally wonky”.
Dorfman has appeared as Ryan Shaver in 13 Reasons Why, as well as appearing in Jane The Virgin, Insatiable, Love Victor, Love in the Time of Corona.
She will next be seen in Lena Dunham’s upcoming film Sharp Stick, which will be her first role as a woman.
