SCENE STEALER: Aisha Dee [The Bold Type, S1]

‘The Bold Type’ has spoiled us with a centric trio that simply doesn’t work if one’s missing—so picking a star out was both a privilege and impossible. We did it, though, because we’re brilliant.

Hands up: how many of you want to be half as badass as Kat Edison from ‘The Bold Type’?

Over the raucous talent shoved righteously into the air, we at TV After Dark struggled to pick just one star. Alas, hard choices had to be made, and we daresay we’re happy with ours. Aisha Dee’s portrayal of the fierce, cheeky, open-minded and downright fantastic Kat Edison has shone the brightest light on television since that Thomas Edison bloke.

Week in and week out, Dee’s steadily funny and touching performance as Kat has been possibly the most charming journey. Pitched to us from the beginning, Dee’s Kat is the trend-setter of the trio. She’s ballsy, and she will fight (literally) for what she believes in. Yet the higher Kat is on the ladder, the greater the fall. Whilst we’ll whoop at our television as Kat decks a racist douche in the face, we find ourselves inexplicably with tears streaming down our face as we watch her triumph at a spin class. We feel your pain, Kat.

What Dee’s accomplished with this rollercoaster of a character should not be ignored. It’s easy to give grace to some of the bigger, brighter shows of the season, but Kat’s presence has been a sturdy rock even as her inner strength quavers. Juggling work drama, nipple pictures, online bullying, racial profiling, the Lesbian-Muslim rathole, a really excellent check blazer—Aisha Dee rocks it. Oh, and the American accent. The Aussies have us every time.

To put it frankly: you touched us here, Aisha Dee. (We’re pointing at our hearts).

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Aisha Dee’s chemistry with Katie Stevens and Meghann Fahy is the key to success in this show.

Undeniably, the best part of the show belongs to the superb friendship between Stevens’ Jane Sloan, Fahy’s Sutton Brady, and Dee’s Kat Edison. With different ranks (they are writers, assistants and social media directors respectively), they have very different trials and tribulations when it comes to working at Scarlet magazine. Fahy’s Sutton is perhaps the hardest-working of them all (a particularly entertaining scenario was losing a priceless bracelet in a New York City cab). But Dee’s nuanced approach to a character that could simply be a one-dimensional, confrontational douche is subtly done. As the most confident of the trio, Kat’s bull-head approach could toe the line of unlikeable. But Dee makes her so ridiculously empathetic that it’s impossible to even think such a thing.

As Jane and Sutton fight their way to the top, you get the sense that Kat is perhaps fighting with herself. She’s already got a relatively secure job, having climbed the ranking ladder quickly in her few years at Scarlet magazine. Perpetually seen with her phone, the social media director is unapologetically brash. It lands her in hot water most of the time, and you’d think she’d learn from the scald. Sometimes she does. Entertainingly, at other times, she doesn’t.

But when she does, it brings out the best in Dee. In episode six, upon Jacqueline’s (Melora Hardin) nudge, she learns from her insensitivity regarding Jane and her breast cancer concerns. She instantly drops the social justice campaign to offer her shoulder of support to her best friend. Frequently, she’s caught on the back-foot. Memorably, this happened during her SoulCycle session, which should have been immensely cringey if it hadn’t been for Dee’s exhausted breakdown.

And we’re saving a paragraph for Kat and Adena. There’s way too much juice, man.

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Looking at the supporting cast, it’s to be noted that literally anyone could have been our scene-stealer (and arguably should have), but Dee pushes that extra mile with consistently steady performances.

As we’ve mentioned, chemistry is the key to success in this show. Outside of Dee, we have Sutton’s heart-warming romance with Sam Page’s Richard. There’s also Melora Hardin, the effective mentor of these three twentysomethings. It’s their messy lives she oversees like a mother, and she lets them. She lets them pop open a bottle of champagne as they toast Jane’s new promotion in the office fashion closet. We see Jacqueline bail Kat out of jail, invite Jane into her home, stick a certain Ms. Knowles (“no shit, Andrew”) on hold. Quite like the best, fun, new shows as of right now, you can literally shove any actor in any scene together—whatever the pairing (as evidenced by Page’s performance with the core trio in episode seven)—and it works a charm.

Fahy and Dee had a chemistry read, and it shows. We suspect they didn’t really need one, but when you’re performing that Yoni egg scene in episode two, it’s hard to imagine how they didn’t have a chemistry read. Even better, neither one of them had a read with Stevens, yet the trio are quite the equilateral triangle. There is not one pairing that seems more natural than the other. Each side is totally equal, and when pieced together, rather invincible.

Before we rave about the Internet’s newly-adopted sweetling ‘Kadena’, an honourable mention goes to the relationship carved between Jacqueline and Kat. It’s not quite the mother-daughter type between Jacqueline and Jane, but it’s obvious why. Kat’s far more strong-willed than Jane. And it’s her stubbornness and embarrassment of having her boss intervene in personal matters that makes Hardin and Dee so compelling to watch. Having Dee against mountains of experience like Hardin’s is quite the ask—and Dee more than lives up to it.

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Apparently, #Kadena is somewhat of a trend. We see Nikohl Boosheri slink into the room, all sultry and…hummus-y?

We don’t know about you, but when Nikohl Boosheri’s Adena burst onto the screen as a kickass, out-and-proud lesbian Muslim photographer who’s unapologetically daring all the while being a sultry-ass, talented, insanely perfect feminist—we’re sure we heard hearts fainting around the world. Alas, we’d take it down a notch, but there really is no other way of describing Adena. Full props to Boosheri for commanding the screen the way she does. She’s hard as nails. It’s impossible to not empathise with her. She’s a photographer—and what she does photograph slots in so perfectly with her character it’s brilliant.

We’d argue and we’d probably garner a wave of agreement by simply stating that some of the best scenes of the season belonged to Aisha Dee and Nikohl Boosheri. Episode five’s SoulCycle revelation plus extra cardio for Dee’s Kat as she sprints over to Adena’s flat comes second only to Dee’s admission that she has feelings for Adena in episode four. There is something about the simultaneous expectance yet surprise melding over Boosheri’s unfairly good-looking face, paired up with Dee’s frankness and openness that proves to be a winning combination. Dee’s vulnerability as Kat, with the way her voice crackles in self-doubt, so atypical of the Kat Edison we know, is stardust in a bottle.

What Boosheri and Dee do so well with Kat and Adena is give each other space. The generosity of their acting proves synergistic. So rather than simply Boosheri or Dee stealing the scene, they end up stealing it together. ‘Kadena’ may well be the scrappy, raw romance of television right now, and that’s really because Dee and Boosheri pour their souls into their journey. And when they succeed in making it hurt more than a spin class, you know it’s good.

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Confident, sexy, bold—Aisha Dee’s Kat embodies everything the show’s about. Steadily fearless with the heart of a lion and the vulnerability you want to squish, Dee’s going to be the next big thing.

It should be a testament to Dee that she can spit out half of Kat’s technical mumbo-jumbo in a solid American accent when she’s so darn Aussie. That’s not even half of it. The biggest trait of Kat’s, constantly pointed out by others, is her strength. Jane often wishes that she was as strong as Kat. Kat prides herself from episode one at being the most confident of the trio. Jacqueline’s solid faith in her, despite Kat’s many brushes with getting fired (that nipple fiasco?!) only bolsters that.

Yet what makes that whole situation so delicious is how Aisha Dee simultaneously smothers us with carefree Kat, and then breaks everyone’s hearts by riding a gym bike. Usually, it’s Adena at the core of this. And Kat readily admits it when she says Adena puts her on her back-foot. It also means ‘The Bold Type’ makes willing sadists of us all, because they literally put a backing track with the lyrics “hurts so good” during a Kat/Adena scene, and we’re still falling for the pain.

If that isn’t a sign of how utterly convincing Dee can be (that is a power that should be banned, for the sake of our health) then we don’t know what is. Full credit to Boosheri too, for being the perfect screen-partner. It’s a very Anubis-like situation; they weigh each other out to a tee. But if season one was stolen by anyone, amidst a very wide net of possibility, we’ve got to give it to Aisha Dee. Consistency laced with bursts of lifting the episode with Kat’s body-slams of scenes—nobody could’ve done it better.

The nail in the coffin? It’s the way Dee gives this line:

Kat: “…And…I think I really like you.”

Us too, Kat. Us too.