Aisha Dee was starring in a string of hit TV shows when she was woken by shooting pain that changed her life.

Aisha Dee would never recognise her younger self if she ever passed her in the street, yet continues to live in awe of her every day.

The actress was born and raised in the tourist-friendly world of Queensland's Gold Coast, and jumped on a plane at the age of 17 to conquer the audition circuit in America after the Australian film and TV industry made it clear there wasn't a place for her.

"I really admire the younger version of myself because I don't know if I'm as strong as her now," Aisha told Mamamia's podcast No Filter.

"I don't know how I found the bravery to do that. After someone told me there was not a place for me, for me to then say, 'Ok I'll find go find one.'"

"Some different bitch said that, not me," she laughed.

"Movies and TV shows were an intense and beautiful escape for me as a kid," the 32-year-old actress continued, explaining why she grew up wanting to be an actress.

"Specifically, the movies and TV shows that were available at the library, which is where I spent a lot of time as a kid. It was where I was exposed to a lot of culture that I wasn't really able to access through Australian television, especially at that time."

As a child, Aisha found her first acting agent by dialling a number she found after leafing through the pages of a phone book and started booking jobs, but as the only child of a single mother, the path to landing her first professional job was paved with extra obstacles.

"My mum was working around three jobs at the time," Aisha explained. "I would say 'Hey, on your one day off, do you mind driving me 40 minutes in our shitty rental car to some random open call?

"I auditioned for the musical Annie, and there were hundreds of kids there but I got the role of Molly," she continued. "Then my mum said I couldn't do it because she didn't know how I was going to get to rehearsals, so there was no way for us to do it.

"I think she saw how devastated I was that she didn't let me do that, and she promised me that she would let me do the next job I booked.

"The next thing just happened to be The Saddle Club."

Listen to Laura Brodnik's full interview with Aisha Dee on No Filter.

Aisha made her screen debut in 2008 playing Desiree Biggins in the third season of the popular Australian TV series The Saddle Club, with her voice also appearing in two of its many hit soundtracks.

She became a recognisable and beloved face across Australia, but when The Saddle Club came to an end, the phone didn't ring with job offers, and she found herself, as a woman of colour, slowly being shut out of the industry.

"I was noticing that friends of mine who fit the Australian mould, however problematic it is, were having a different experience to me," she said. "It was also explicitly said to me, people would say 'well, I can't really help you' when I was auditioning for roles. That's just what the landscape was at the time.

"But Australia's come a really long way since then, and I think it's really beautiful to see."

After heading to the other side of the world to forge a new career path, Aisha landed a string of roles in smaller TV and film projects before stepping into the character that would lead her to worldwide fame, playing Kat Edison in The Bold Type.

The series, which ran for five seasons and was syndicated across the world (including on Stan in Australia, where it quickly amassed a huge fan base), was inspired by the life of former Cosmopolitan magazine editor-in-chief Joanna Coles.

The story was hooked on three young women working at the fictional Scarlet magazine in New York, where Aisha's social media editor, Kat, formed a close friendship with writer Jane Sloan (Katie Stevens) and stylist Sutton Brady (Meghann Fahy).

The three actresses remain the closest of friends to this day, and while Aisha now looks back at the role that changed her life with fond eyes, at the time, she was keeping a secret that made her nervous to portray Kat on screen.

Aisha Dee, Katie Stevens and Meghann Fahy in The Bold Type. Image: Stan.

"I remember Kat being described as confident and queer," she said. "She was cool and I was still very much in the closet. So I didn't have the confidence to play this queer character who's very confident.

"But I went in for the audition, not thinking I would get it, and then I did get it. Honestly, it was a pretty scary role to walk into as someone who was performing the thing that I one day hoped to be."

"Kat inspired me," she continued. "I remember early on in the show, people would come up to me in the street and they would say things like 'Kat inspired me to tell this girl that I love her, or to come out to my parents.'

"I was always so inspired by their stories, but I would also have to check myself and not get too emotional, because I hadn't been brave enough to come out to my mum yet.

"At the time, I wondered if I would ever feel brave enough. "I thought I would come out once and it would be done, but it was actually this slow, constant coming out again and again and again with different people and in different ways. Sometimes it went well, and sometimes I didn't have a great time.

"I felt a lot of imposter syndrome playing Kat, a character who was so at home in her queerness, and I wasn't there yet. It took me a long time, but I'm grateful for that, because it's actually given me a lot of empathy for other people who also take a minute to come out. I'm jealous of people who came out at 13. That's so cool."

Aisha Dee in Watching You. Image: Stan.

After The Bold Type ended, Aisha starred in a series of projects, including the SBS series Safe Home, a thriller about a young woman who leaves her job at a prominent law firm to work at a struggling Family Violence Legal Centre and the Netflix series Apple Cider Vinegar, based on the true story of wellness guru Belle Gibson who lied about having cancer.

Aisha's new series, Watching You, premieres this week on Stan and sees her play Lina, a happily engaged paramedic who has a one-night stand with a stranger. Lina then discovers that the event has been captured by a hidden camera, and she is then blackmailed with the footage.

From an outsider's perspective, Aisha's career since wrapping The Bold Type has been a series of career highs, featuring global hits and critically acclaimed performances. Yet behind the scenes, she was living with crippling pain.

"I have always had weird stuff with my uterus and my ovaries, ever since I was a teenager," she said. "I didn't actually get my period until I was 20.

"Almost as soon as I got my period, I started to get chronic pain. I had surgery when I was around 22, and they found a cyst that was quite large, and discovered I had polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).

"So I had a laparotomy," she continued. "Which is open abdominal surgery, and after that surgery, they told me I have PCOS and that's it. They told me at the time that I didn't have endometriosis (which is a condition in which cells similar to the lining of the uterus, or endometrium, grow outside the uterus).

"So then I spent the next 10 years almost with my chronic pain getting worse and worse and worse every year. While I was filming Watching You, it took a turn to where it started to scare me how much pain I was in.

"I was actually really blessed because one of the other girls on the show, Olivia Vásquez, was a huge support for me.

"She ended up saying, 'Babe, sounds like you got endo'. And I replied that I had surgery, and they told me I didn't. Then it got progressively worse. When I started doing press for Apple Cider Vinegar, it was pretty unbearable.

"Then one night, I woke up out of my sleep in the middle of the night with a cramp. A cramp that started in my stomach and shot up into my heart and then into my hips and down my legs. I sat up in bed and couldn't breathe. Then I rolled out of bed and had to crawl to my bathroom, where I threw up. I was lying on my bathroom floor and I thought, 'This can't be my life, I can't keep living like this.

"So I looked up a pelvic floor therapist who specialised in my kind of pain management, and she pointed me in the direction of an amazing surgeon who has honestly changed my life. I will be forever grateful. That night on the floor of my bathroom was when I decided that it was time.

"Honest to God, every day that I wake up now, and I don't feel like I want to die I am grateful. Every day when I can walk down the street and not feel pain...I could cry right now, just thinking about it.

"I'm so grateful that my legs work and I I have my life back. I know surgery is not always the answer for everyone but it was for me.

"I think it's important to let people know that it's not normal to be in pain every day."

Ever since that life-changing moment, Aisha said she finds it hard to sit still, and as she promotes her new series, she's looking forward to a future filled with challenging roles and family time.

"Watching You is a very intense psychological, erotic thriller," she said. "You've got to tread lightly going into the first half of the show, and it's six episodes. I think the first half is more of an erotic thriller, and then the second half of the show is really a more of a traditional thriller and it has the most beautiful cast of people. I'm very proud of it.

"I just want to spend the rest of my life hopefully playing make believe and telling cool stories, and then getting to balance that with community and family."

The Stan Original Watching You will premiere October 3, only on Stan.

Feature image: Getty.