Bold new role

The Bold Type star Aisha Dee came home for a gritty domestic violence drama.

There’s a scene in Safe Home when Aisha Dee’s character’s eyes widen in fear as a businessman she’d been joking with moments earlier breaks through a door and smashes on a glass window, hell-bent on harming his wife. “There are two types of people in this world. Those who think family violence would never happen to them. And those who know it can happen to anyone,” she says, summarising the premise of the thriller she returned home to film.

“In reading it initially, it almost felt like the script was gaslighting me,” she says.

She had never read anything so real.

The role is a sharp departure for

Aisha, who made a name for herself as the effervescent Kat in the hit US drama, The Bold Type. That role was a dream, she says, but shifting gear offered a chance to do something that scared her. “I want to exist in all of the places,” she says.

Since growing up on the Gold Coast,

Aisha has wanted to act. “My mum’s an opera singer so we’d spend a lot of time in the library,” she says. While her mum, Donna, was photocopying sheet music,

Aisha would be in the classic movie section. This time in the company of Golden Era stars fostered in her a belief that anything was possible. She filmed a few commercials then booked a role on ABC Kids’ hit, The

Saddle Club. At age 17, she moved to the US. Initially she thought someone else would be better suited to play Kat in The Bold Type. “But I’m glad it worked out the way it did, because that show was a transformative experience.” All episodes of Safe Home are available on SBS On Demand.