’13 Reasons Why’ Star Tommy Dorfman Reveals She Is Transitioning

13 Reasons Why star Tommy Dorfman, who played Ryan Shaver on the Netflix show, came out as a transgender woman.

“It’s funny to think about coming out, because I haven’t gone anywhere. I view today as a reintroduction to me as a woman, having made a transition medically,” Dorfman told novelist Torrey Peters in 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.”

The magazine has previously covered stories about LGBTQ celebrities, such as Ellen DeGeneres, Laverne Cox, Josie Totah and Elliot Page.

“My intervention is evolution – I’m just another person transitioning. I’m showing gender fluidity; how fast and dynamic and vulnerable it can be, how it’s an ongoing thing,” she said.

Dorfman has been sharing her journey on Instagram. Time‘s interview, however, is the first time she openly spoke about transitioning. She referred to her Instagram account as “a diaristic time capsule.”

“I’ve been living in this other version of coming out where I don’t feel safe enough to talk about it, so I just do it,” she explained. “But I recognize that transitioning is beautiful. Why not let the world see what that looks like?”

Dorfman decided to keep her name because she was named after her uncle who passed away after she was born.

“I feel very connected to that name, to an uncle who held me as he was dying,” she said. “This is an evolution of Tommy. I’m becoming more Tommy.”