As the actor takes a turn in the Stan Original erotic thriller Watching You, Aisha Dee talks surveillance, entering her 30s, libraries and the power of delusion.

Aisha Dee is exciting because she speaks her mind. Not in a fist-shaking rant-incoming way. The actor is easy and generous with her thoughts and this transparency is a constant thread through her career.

Real ones will remember Dee from her debut in season three of The Saddle Club. Though many first encountered the Gold Coast-born, LA-based star as Kat Edison in The Bold Type. Over five seasons, Dee, along with her castmates Meghann Fahy and Katie Stevens, girl-bossed their way around Scarlet Magazine, a stand-in for Cosmopolitan, playing out culture’s enduring fantasy of working at a magazine in New York City. Naturally, we were all hooked.

When Kat, a Black, queer, activist was given a lobotomy by the writer’s room (see: began dating right-wing Republican Eva Rhodes in the show’s fourth season), Dee addressed what the audience could see but not explain. Chalking Kat’s out of character moment up to a lack of diversity behind the screen. Pre-Instagram, we would’ve called this authenticity. Some still might, if the word wasn’t carrying so much baggage of its own. In between Dee’s other projects, horror (Sissy 2022), drama (Safe Home), and a role in Netflix’s true crime series Apple Cider Vinegar based on ‘scamfluencer’ Belle Gibson, the actor has been drip-feeding songs and snippets from her life to her half a million followers. This year she learned to surf, is in recovery from endometriosis surgery, and on October 3, we’ll have a chance to see Dee lead as Lina in the sultry psychological thriller Watching You on Stan. Ahead of the release, Astrophe caught up with Dee to find out what’s holding her attention lately. Find our conversation below.

Jasmine Pirovic

How did you find the shoot

Aisha Dee

It was fun. I like doing stuff like that. I just kind of sit down and say, “do your worst”. I get to release any sense of control that I have and allow other people to do their creative thing. I like being a canvas for others.

JP

Do you see it as a performance like acting?

AD

In a way. I have friends that are actual models, and I'm definitely not that at all. I need lots of help to make my arms and hands not look awkward. But I try my best. It's a different world for me. It's not one that I am in as often. So I really enjoy relinquishing any sense of control that I have and being a part of someone else's vision.

JP

Do you ever watch yourself in old TV shows and films?

AD

I don't have a super hard time watching myself, mostly because I kind of move with a mentality that I'm not the best actor in the world, and I'm probably not the worst, so that means I'm somewhere in the middle.

JP

That sounds very healthy.

AD

It’s also so subjective. What is good and what's not is always up for debate. The main thing I hope is that whatever I'm a part of makes people feel something. All of my favorite things I’ve enjoyed since I was a kid have always been about the way that film is this medium for us to explore our humanity and to connect to other people that feel very similar to us, and also stories that feel completely foreign. Film is a beautiful connector.

JP

When did you first recognise that? Was there a specific movie or performance?

AD

I used to spend a lot of time in the library as a kid because my mum's an opera singer. She would be in the sheet music section going through different operas and also at the photocopier. I have a distinct memory of the smell of a photocopier—

JP

The warmth.

AD

Exactly, warm paper. My mum would be sorting through all of these operas and arias, printing them off and it would take so long, so I would just wander around the library. Usually I would find myself in the movie section and it was free to hire VHS from the library and take them home. So a lot of the first things I was exposed to were movies from the library.

The movie Sweet Charity with Shirley MacLaine where Sammy Davis Jr plays a cult leader and everyone calls him “daddy”. Now a lot of my friends call me daddy. Old Josephine Baker movies. I loved Porgy and Bess, the Gershwin opera. Sex and the Single Girl with the actor who died on a boat…Natalie Wood. West Side Story too.

The library is a very sacred place to me.

JP

Watching You, the Stan Originals series you star in, focuses on surveillance. As someone with a platform, I was wondering if acting in the show reshaped your idea of surveillance and privacy?

AD

I think it's something that we're all grappling with at the moment. On the one hand, it's nice to feel connected. I have a select few friends who have my location and that makes me feel safe, but then Apple also has my location and I don't know how I feel about that. I love that the show explores that and prompts us to ask these questions. I guess it's this paradox in that it can make us feel safer and more connected, and it can also be really isolating and scary.

JP

Watching You builds on the legacy of the 90s erotic thriller. You also recently starred in a new 90s comedy One More Shot. Is there something from the 90s that you think people did better then than they do now?

AD

The erotic thriller aspect is part of what really drew me to Watching You in the beginning. But in terms of what was better about the 90s, so many things really. It’s kind of annoying because I threw out all my clothes from back then.

Actually, one thing in particular that my little sister has stolen. I have a 17-year-old sister and she started using my old digi cam for photo shoots with her friends. Last year when I came home, she showed it to me and the chaos monster in me wanted to be like, “give it back, that's mine”. Then I remembered I’m in my 30s now and I should probably just let her enjoy it, you know.

I'm jealous of how cool my 17-year-old sister is. It's really annoying.

JP

It’s interesting that she's 17. Isn't that the age you were when you left Sydney for LA?

AD

I left Australia at 17 to go and film a TV show in LA. And, I mean, she's my little sister, I'm not her mother, but I would not let her do that. [Laughs]. Not in a million years. But we're very different. I had this maybe misguided confidence when I was a teenager. I had a delusional idea of what I thought I was capable of. I'm envious of how optimistic I was at that age.

JP

Well, not delusional, because you’ve built a career based off of that move.

AD

Well, delulu is the solulu.

JP

Precisely.

You turned 32 recently. How did you celebrate?

AD

I chilled out. I meditated, journaled and did some yoga. Then I went to the park with my friends. Oh, and I made everyone watch one of my favorite movies, The Fighting Temptations.

JP

Why this specific film?

AD
Let's get into it. This is the second film Beyonce did after Carmen: A Hip Hopera, which was a MTV movie of the week and another favourite of mine. The Fighting Temptations is arguably a little low brow, but I think it's absolutely brilliant. It has a stacked cast: Mike Epps is in it, a baby Chloe Bailey too. It’s just a great movie. The music is incredible, it’s so silly and it’s such a feel-good movie. I think I know every single line. I cry every time I watch it.

JP

How have you found your 30s so far?

AD

I like them, you know? With every year that passes I become a little more settled in myself. I feel like the older I get, the more comfortable I am occupying all of the different parts of my identity I previously thought I had to pick between. It was hard to be Black and Australian and queer and a woman. It was hard to embrace my femininity as well as my masculinity and my sexuality and my gender feeling kind of fluid. Now I just feel a little more comfortable existing in all of those spaces at once.

I don't really think it matters who you are. The world is constantly trying to make us fit into something that makes sense. I am a lot of things, but I don't think I make very much sense on paper.

When I look back, I realise that I'm not sure if I really was capable of showing up authentically for my early adulthood. I found it scary to show up in a way that felt truthful. I was constantly assessing and trying to figure out who it was that somebody else thought I should be, and then I would try my best to become that thing, instead of showing up as who I am. I'd rather be authentically myself and have some people not fuck with me than try to be everyone's friend all the time.

JP

I want to talk to you about music for a moment. Before you mentioned your mum was an opera singer. Do you think that rubbed off on you in any way? Because you obviously write and share your own music.

AD

I've always loved music. It’s always been very present in my life. We didn't always have a TV growing up, but we always had a record player. At the time, I felt really resentful because I wasn't allowed to listen to Britney Spears or The Backstreet Boys and all of the cool music that everyone else was hearing. The Spice Girls weren't allowed in the house. My mum had very strong opinions on what she thought was good. So I was allowed Whitney, Mariah, George Benson, Sam Cooke and Jagged Edge. Also the classic arias, Fela Kuti, lots of Ethiopian jazz. My childhood was full of music. Now as an adult, I always have music on.

It feels like a really important part of the process when it comes to approaching a role. My own music has become this outlet for me to share creatively in a way that feels completely free of any entity outside of myself. I make it on my laptop, usually on the floor of a hotel room where I am right now. I splice up a sample, make a beat and then say something silly over the top of it, and it feels nice to have that freedom. I'm actually going to release a song tomorrow.

JP

What’s the song? If you can say anything…

AD

Oh, I don’t care! No one cares. It’s not like I can’t say. It’s literally just me on my laptop. Last week, I crashed out before I got my period and I was like, “What am I doing?” I've had these songs finished for so long sitting on my computer. I might as well just put it on the internet and stop being such a precious little bitch about it. So I just decided to upload it. The platform I use usually takes a week to upload, so I think it's either tomorrow or the next day. I should probably know…

JP

Would you like to explore music more seriously?

AD

I mean I would like to do that, but music is so important and it feels so sacred to me that I would like to be able to do that and still maintain the sense of autonomy that I feel with it. It's kind of the opposite of acting for me, in that I have total control, which is why it sometimes takes me a while to put something out because there's no one breathing down my neck telling me you have to do this. The ball’s in my court. I would like to though. It’s just a process of getting braver and moving past the procrastinator in me that’s scared of rejection or the thought that people might make fun of me or that nobody even asked for music in the first place.

JP

You’re in Australia at the moment to promote Watching You. How do you split your time between the Gold Coast and LA?

AD

I'm trying to cultivate a healthy balance between the two. I love my life over there, and at this point I've been in the United States for 15 years, so my life is there. But it has felt really nice over the last few years to split my time a little bit more to be closer to family. After this week, I have a little bit of downtime, so I'm gonna go back to see my family and just hang out in the suburbs with my mum and my nana and my great nana, my aunties and my sister.

My mum’s probably going to make me wear a fluffy pink dressing gown. And I’ll do it willfully. I’m very grateful to have that place to go back to and ground myself.

JP

What’s it like being in Australia as an adult?

AD

I don't think I realised until I left how beautiful this place is. There’s something about the water here. I landed a few days ago and as soon as I got to the hotel, I put my togs on and went to the beach and just floated for a while. The sand feels like gold and the water feels like floating around in like glittery silver. It's magic. I've been all over the world and I don't think there's anywhere quite like here. I had a hard time in my teenage years feeling like I had a place here. I think it was necessary to go away to become more settled in who I am, to then be able to come back.

One of my big lessons this year has been learning how to slow down. I love to be busy. I think I have spent a lot of my life using busyness to avoid taking responsibility for the internal work I needed to do. This year has been really beautiful because it's maybe the first time I was forced to slow down. I had surgery four months ago for endometriosis. Before it, my surgeon gave me six weeks to down-regulate my nervous system otherwise he would refuse to operate. He’s like a woo-woo holistic surgeon who only operates if you’re calm. The Virgo in me made it my mission to meet that challenge. I was forced to start saying no to projects that I wanted to do, but for health reasons, I needed to say no to. I would’ve loved to stay busy with meetings, running, moving and achieving goals but I was forced to slow down. I would wake up in the morning and make breakfast really slowly. It’s been a beautiful lesson for me because I have more balance in my life now. I've been able to drop into my life and not just use the excuse of productivity as some kind of virtue to run from myself.

Even in the middle of the shoot today we broke for lunch and part of me wanted to rush back in and get it done. But I knew I needed to take a breath, so I walked around the block two times and took in the air, as they say. I don’t know that I would’ve had the courage to say that I needed that. It’s a new experience being able to ask for what I need or even just knowing how to check in with my body enough to know what my needs are.

You can stream the sultry psychological thriller Watching You on Stan now / See more from Aisha Dee here

Aisha Dee photographed by Richmond Kobla Dido
Assisted by Hameed Akinwande
Styled by Kelly Harty
Make-up by Cherry Cheung
Hair by Moji Odeleye
Creative direction by Simone Taylor
Words by Jasmine Pirovic

Dress: Nicol and Ford, Earrings: Temple of the Sun, Ring: Agmes, Shoes": Jimmy Choo / Breastplate: J.R Harvey, Dress: Bear Park, Rings: Cushla Whiting, Cuff: Cushla Whiting, Shoes: Jimmy Choo / Dress: Youkhana, Earrings: Agmes, Ring: Cushla Whiting, Cuffs: Cushla Whiting, Shoes: Christian Louboutin / Top: Wynn Hamlynn, Skirt: Youkhana, Necklaces as belt: Sener Besim, Temple of the Sun, Cuff Cushla Whiting, Ring: Cushla Whiting, Shoes: Ferragamo / Dress: Tods, Earrings: Zimmerman, Necklace: Zimmerman, Shoes: Jimmy Choo