Tommy Dorfman Says She's 'Never Felt Better' After Reintroducing Herself as a Woman 

Tommy Dorfman is reflecting on how her life has changed since reintroducing herself to the world as a woman.

The 13 Reasons Why star, 29, publicly discussed her transition for the first time in an interview for Time last month, and is now looking back on how things have changed for her over the past year.

In a recent Q&A with InStyle, Dorfman said that she "always" saw herself as a woman, but previously thought that her transition would maybe not happen until she was in her 40s. However, she said support from people in the trans community, as well as the COVID-19 shutdowns, helped her get there.

"A trans elder asked me what I see myself as when I'm older, when I'm 60, 70, 90. It was so clear, I just saw Cate Blanchett," she said. "But I really couldn't imagine not being a mother or a grandmother. My spirit was so attuned to whatever it means to be a woman. I've walked in the privilege of a male body, but [being a woman] is all I've known on the inside. Trans women would clock me all the time and be like, 'Hey, girl, what's up?' because it's sort of a thing you recognize."

Dorfman, who is set to play a female character for the first time in the upcoming film Sharp Stick, shared that starting hormones has left her feeling better than ever.

"I just switched my hormones, and I've never felt better in my life," she said. "I spent 28 years of my life suicidal and depressed and recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction. I don't think I've ever been genuinely happy until this past year. I look at the Internet chronicle of photos of me since I started working, and I can see how f------ unhappy I was in every photo. It's wild."

She continued, "Two weeks into having estrogen 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 energized. I feel how I think I was always supposed to feel."

Dorfman added that her transition has been difficult at times, noting that the hormones make it akin to "puberty as an adult."

"It's a second puberty, and I think you're supposed to go through puberty at an age when you don't remember it because it hurts," she said. "It's body-aching and emotionally wonky. But I had an opportunity to be of service. And for the most part, putting it into my work."

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She also reflected on her relationship with her parents, noting that she "wore girls' clothes" her whole childhood. After coming out, her mom sent her her own "hand-me-downs" that Dorfman had actually picked out for her.

"So now at 29, I have a collection of dresses, skirts, tops, and jackets that I picked out when I was in high school," she shared.

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After the Time story broke, Dorfman said her parents were immediately fielding calls from supportive people back home in Atlanta.

"There are some people that I grew up with in the South who I thought I was never going to see again," she said. "So it was nice to get text messages and calls from people I grew up going to NASCAR with or who you would expect to be incredibly conservative and not accepting. But to see me, someone they knew as a child, stepping into this space in a public way helped them wrap their heads around it."

She continued, "Even if it's just two people or 20 people or 50 people who are more compassionate, empathetic, and understanding to the trans experience, then that's progress. Because then they talk to their neighbor, to their kid, to their spouse. It's little by little, in the same way that generations of trans women have allowed me to step into my own power in a world that is still incredibly unsafe for trans people. The life expectancy for a trans woman is in her 30s. So, we still have an incredible amount of work to do."

Dorfman also said that it's "a gift" to be able to help younger people who are embarking on their own gender identity journeys.

"Ultimately, I think this isn't just a trans responsibility but a human responsibility to be of service to the next generation," she said. "Now I have trans and nonbinary cousins who are younger than me, but growing up, I only had one queer cousin who was older than me."