NEED TO KNOW
- Tommy Dorfman revealed the advice she would give her younger self about navigating fame after her breakthrough role in Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why
- The actress played high school student Ryan Shaver on the series, which ran from 2017 to 2020
- “Just don’t take it so seriously,” she tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview
Tommy Dorfman has wisdom to share.
The actress, 33, revealed the advice she would give her younger self about navigating fame after her breakthrough role in Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why.
“Just don’t take it so seriously,” she tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. “It’s not real. It’s seasonal. It comes in waves. It ebbs and flows.”
Looking back on those years, Dorfman recalls feeling “scared for a million different reasons” after the release of the hit series. “I had no media training. I had no idea what was going on,” she says.
The actress also felt ill-prepared for how successful the show, based on the 2007 novel by Jay Asher, would become. “Nobody told us that they thought the show would be as successful as it was,” she explains. “Nobody could have predicted how successful that show was.”
Experiencing instant fame was not the best experience for Dorfman. “It’s such a scary thing to be thrown into,” she says. “A lot of people in my industry can relate to that experience.”
But knowing what she knows now, the actress feels less jaded. “I wish I could have told her that it’s temporary,” she shares, speaking about her past self. “I thought that was gonna be my life forever. That’s where the fear came from, and it’s so not true, thank God!”
Dorfman’s debut memoir, Maybe This Will Save Me, includes details about how 13 Reasons Why changed her life, amid other stories from her childhood and young adulthood. The show aired for four seasons from 2017 to 2020, and followed a group of high school students in the aftermath of a classmate’s death by suicide. The actress was 24 years old when she landed the role of student Ryan Shaver.
Dorfman had a recurring role in the show for its first two seasons. She later returned in a guest spot for the fourth and final season.
The actress wrote that being recognized in public, at the time, made her feel uncomfortable. She described an incident in which she was swarmed by a group of teenagers on a subway train in New York City. “When I got home, I locked myself in my apartment for a few days,” she wrote. “Sure, I’d dream of a moment like that for my whole life. Only now that it’d come, I was utterly terrified, f—— ashamed even, because I didn’t feel deserving, like my work hasn’t qualified me for that attention.”
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Dorfman continued to describe the situation, writing, “And, on that train, it felt like a violation, as if the comforting cloak of anonymity had been stripped off my back and thrown to the ground.”
These days, the actress has a different approach to public attention. “I will hug anyone,” she tells PEOPLE. “I’ll take any photo somebody wants me to take. I have no problem with any of that. I think it’s so cool now, I’m not scared of it. I’m like, ‘Wow! How cool is it that I get to meet this kid or adult who is impacted in this way?’ What a gift that is.”
Dorfman also says that she’d tell her younger self “to not take it all so seriously … Have fun with it and don’t get too caught up in what other people are doing.”
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Dorfman publicly came out as transgender after the release of the series. She shared her experience revisiting the show in her book, and wrote that she “so clearly saw a girl trapped” in her character.
The actress has gone on to star in works on screen and onstage. She made her Broadway debut in 2024’s Romeo and Juliet and appeared in Lena Dunham’s 2022 comedy drama Sharp Stick.
“I love my career right now,” Dorfman says. “I’m in no rush to do anything. I do a lot. I work a lot. I have a lot that I develop and produce. And there are gonna be a good amount of announcements over the next few months about a lot of projects that have been in the pipeline.”
“My career feels exactly where it’s supposed to be right now,” she shares. “I know what I’m doing for the next 12 months. That’s the gift of all gifts. It’s very rare that I get to have that.”
Maybe This Will Save Me is out now, wherever books are sold.
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