Australian actor Aisha Dee: ‘I love my thick thighs’
With an Australian mum and an American dad, The Bold Type actor grew up not knowing where she really belonged. But the older she gets, the more she embraces her “chubby cheeks and crazy hair.”
Stellar
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Sitting cross-legged on the floor watching Sesame Street as a child, Aisha Dee had an epiphany.
Like many other Aussie kids, she was a staunch fan of the show. But for her, the significance went deeper, and sparked a profound realisation: it was the first time she’d ever seen someone on TV that looked like her.
“As a kid, I kind of felt that I didn’t really belong anywhere,” Dee tells Stellar. “My mum is Australian and my dad is American. Nobody looked like me in the entire school, and that’s a tough thing to reckon with as a child.
“I had one foot in each continent, navigating what it is to be a little blended kid not quite sure where she belongs.”
That moment drove the decision that would define the rest of Dee’s life: she just had to end up on television herself.
But 25-year-old Dee, who grew up on the Gold Coast, was content in the knowledge she’d have to wait a while for her dream to become reality.
“I would always talk about the fact that I was an actress, but I’d never read a script or been to a drama class,” she explains.
“Those just weren’t things I had access to as a child. It was just me and my single mother, who was not going to be like, ‘You know what, instead of eating dinner tonight, you can go to an acting class!’”
Turns out she didn’t need any expensive tutelage to land herself a role. In 2008, Dee was cast as Desiree Biggins on teen TV series The Saddle Club. While she appeared on the show for just over a year, it helped cement her career aspirations.
“I grew up on that show — unfortunately for me, people did literally watch me go through puberty on their TV screens,” she says, laughing.
“But it was really special and taught me everything I know. Feminism wasn’t as much of a buzzword at the time, but our producers really were all about empowering women; they wanted there to be an open dialogue and for us to feel [we could] contribute creatively. I got some lifelong friends out of it, too.”
But after the job ended, she struggled to find roles in Australia, prompting a pilgrimage to the US at age 16.
“Especially at the time, there wasn’t much diversity in film and TV,” she explains.
“I ended up staying [in the US], testing for a few Disney Channel movies I didn’t end up getting, but which connected me with some amazing people. Since then it has been a domino effect.”
Bit parts in teen series like I Hate My Teenage Daughter, alongside Jaime Pressly, and MTV’s Sweet/Vicious followed, but both shows failed to make it past season one.
“I’ve been on a lot of cancelled shows,” she admits. “But it’s given me a thick skin, knowing that if this one didn’t work out, there would always be something else.”
So Dee barely batted an eyelid when a script for a new show called The Bold Type landed on her desk a few years ago.
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“When I was initially pitched the idea, I said, ‘I feel like the whole three-girls-trying-to-make-it-in-New-York idea has already been played out.’ Been there, done that. I didn’t even want to read the script. But of course I did read it — and was pleasantly surprised.”
The series, which could be described as an amalgamation of Sex And The City, Younger and The Devil Wears Prada for the “woke” generation, was co-executive produced by a former Cosmopolitan magazine editor, and tackles subjects that are usually off limits for the frothy girl-power dramedy genre.
Dee’s character Kat is outspoken, feisty and flawed, and much of her storyline centres on both coming to terms with her sexuality and falling in love with a Muslim woman.
“I have always been attracted to material that showcases strong women,” she says.
“I realised later in life that art can be a form of protest [and] activism just in itself. Kat is a woman of colour centred in her own narrative, not just facilitating another story of a white hetero character.
“It’s fine to have a group of diverse actors on the surface, but in order to tell diverse stories, you need diverse people in the writers’ room, and diverse producers. There’s more work to be done and we can always be more inclusive, but I hope we’re headed in the right direction.
“In terms of The Bold Type, we’re doing our best and we’re not perfect, but I’m proud to be part of something striving for that.”
Despite her suddenly swift rise to notice and the show’s glamorous trappings, Dee herself says she lives a “super low-key” existence — she jokes that “now that I’ve gotten a washer/dryer in my apartment, I feel like I’ve reached the top of my game”.
Still, one crucial aspect of her life has changed. “The older I get, the more I look at my thighs, and they’re bigger than all my white friends’, and I’m like, ‘You know what? I love my thick thighs. And I love my chubby cheeks and my crazy hair.’
“All these things that used to make me feel insecure, and that people used to tease me about, I’ve grown to love. They become your strengths. I think people are finally embracing the fact that none of us fit into any of these boxes that we’ve created for ourselves. So you might as well just be yourself.”
The Bold Type Season 3 premieres on Stan on Wednesday, April 10.