Dylan Mulvaney Wanted to Write About Girlhood. Then She Had to Grow Up Fast

Y
ou are not allowed to take off your life jacket while operating a swan boat on Los Angeles’ Echo Park Lake. You aren’t allowed to stand up on the boat, either. And while the rules posted at the boat house don’t specifically mention this, I can’t imagine the rental company would be happy if you stood up on the boat, sans life jacket, in stilettos, to pose for a floating photo shoot. But Dylan Mulvaney, as usual, is making the most of the moment. 

“Are my nipples out?” she asks, removing the puffy blue vest that, as she noted when we were suiting up for this aquatic adventure, doesn’t really go with her strapless Tanner Fletcher dress. It’s a gown in different off-white shades, made to look like pages of old letters and journal entries in flowing scripts, all stitched together — evoking the impassioned writings of a Jane Austen character, or pages of a novel-in-progress. Thankfully, nothing is out of place, and Mulvaney strikes one pose after another alongside the neck of our swan vessel, basking in the California sunshine. Only once does she nearly slip, quickly regaining her balance with a dancer’s poise. Close call.

The wardrobe is a nod to what could well be Mulvaney’s most ambitious and personal project, a book titled Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer, on sale March 11. With its pink gingham cover, featuring Mulvaney deep in thought at a typewriter while lying in bed wearing a silk negligee, it makes a pretty accessory, which Mulvaney says is by design. “I thought, you know, if people don’t like the words, they could at least like it on their shelf.” 

The words, however, are decidedly likable, fizzy, and spill out like they might at a slumber party, with plenty of allusions to formative pop culture. “Bitch, you’ve got to watch Sex and the City,” Mulvaney demands when I confess I’ve never seen the show, whose cast she included among portraits of “inspiring women I love with my whole heart” that she put up at home when she needed all the moral support she could get. (Other figures to come to her aid included Frida Kahlo, Marsha P. Johnson, Audrey Hepburn, and Miss Piggy.)

You probably remember just how bad things got for Mulvaney a couple years back. An up-and-coming theater star who had toured in The Book of Mormon but found herself jobless during the pandemic, she turned to making comedic TikToks as a creative outlet. Then, when she came out as trans in 2022, she began to document her journey in a “Days of Girlhood” video series, and went mega-viral, amassing millions of fans. Just months later, she was one of six “change-makers” picked to interview Joe Biden in a presidential forum, where she asked about Republican efforts to restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare. That made her a high-profile target for the transphobic far right, and in April 2023, after posting a sponsored Instagram clip advertising Bud Light (the brand had sent her a can with her face on it), she faced a tsunami of reactionary hate. Budweiser factories received bomb threats, customers boycotted the beer, and MAGA musician Kid Rock filmed himself shooting up 12-packs with a submachine gun, tears in his eyes.

When Mulvaney first set out to write a memoir, it was supposed to be a straightforward adaptation of “Days of Girlhood.” But once her “shit got rocked” by the Bud Light fallout, as she puts it in the introduction to the book, she felt the need to include reflections on that dark time as well — and how she started to heal with help from friends, life coaches, and a certain powerful psychedelic substance. Paper Doll therefore includes collage-like diary entries, which find Mulvaney delving into expressions of femininity, surgical consultations, awkward family conversations and surreal moments of overnight celebrity, alongside essays on the more unexpected consequences of becoming one of the most visible trans women on the planet. She explores earlier moments of self-discovery, too, from her childhood embrace of musical theater to high school’s sexual awakenings.   

While most readers won’t come to the book with a “Beergate”-type experience, they’ll find plenty that’s relatable, like Mulvaney’s stated obsession with junk food versus a distaste for more wholesome fare like tomatoes  — “that’s the worst one,” she declares — and lots of surprises, including her expedition to Peru for a mind-blowing ayahuasca retreat that clarified her sense of purpose. “I kind of feel like people won’t expect it to be as adult as it’s gonna be,” she says of Paper Doll. “People sometimes think of me as almost a child performer, in the way that on TikTok, a lot of my audience is younger. This book is for adults. I have a very Chelsea Handler side to me, and I’m really excited to show that.” 

On the other hand, she also recounts exploring her spiritual faith, years after a Catholic upbringing. Nearly halfway through her first year of transition, she found herself missing the ritual of mass and on a whim attended service at a Unitarian church in L.A., where she heartened to join a sea of quirky worshippers. Mulvaney says that when her religious mother reviewed the parts of the book that mention her, she remarked, “Well, I liked when you talked about God.” Mulvaney writes, in fact: “Maybe God could have a bigger connection with my transition than I would’ve suspected.”   

“So there is a little bit of something for everyone,” she concludes. “I still am really trying to figure out what being trans means in regards to a higher power, because so many people claim I’m not entitled to that, and I couldn’t disagree more.”

“This is a really interesting time for the book to be coming out,” Mulvaney tells Rolling Stone, “given everything that’s happening with trans legislation, and the debate on our existence. I feel really proud of it. The writing took a long time, and it was so isolating.” (She sold the project toward the end of 2022, well before the “Days of Girlhood” series came to its grand finale.) I’m used to making videos in my bedroom. It’s really hard, too, especially when you’re tackling subjects — wow, this is literally a workout!,” she exclaims as we pedal the boat around the fountain in the middle of the lake. She’s put me in charge of steering, so it’s my fault when we get a little too close and are hit with spray, with Mulvaney throwing up a hand to protect her makeup. “Honey, get us out, get us out!” she cries. 

Paper Doll is eloquent and occasionally wrenching about the desire to get out — out of toxic situations, out of the view of paparazzi, and out of one’s own head. It’s the journey of someone who dreamed of the spotlight but got burned by it. “I wanted to be Broadway-level famous,” Mulvaney writes in an early passage about her theater career, “signing playbills at the stage door but not being recognized on the street, 10K followers on Instagram, performing in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for naysayers back in my hometown. To me that was the perfect level of fame. In some ways, I still think it is.” 

It seems, however, that there’s no going back: even as we’re getting the hang of the swan — we’ve just had the very exciting realization we can reverse by pedaling backwards — Mulvaney lights up at a notification on her phone. “Oh my god, I’m gonna be the red carpet correspondent for Netflix at the SAG Awards,” she says. “That’s so fun.” Does she have a Joan Rivers routine? “I guess we gotta start working on it,” she jokes, before turning serious. “No, I would never, ever, ever want to put someone in a position where they felt uncomfortable. I’m also interested in trying remain trustful. I’m such an optimist, and I still am, believe it or not. I kind of hope that stays that way.” (The show would see her rubbing elbows with Cynthia Erivo and Jodie Foster, followed by an intimate afterparty at Cajun seafood restaurant The Boiling Crab.) 

In the book, Mulvaney calls her new era “Celebrity 2.0,” something more evolved than the “meticulously constructed” persona she cultivated in her “Celebrity 1.0” days. She describes it as “the idea that when famous folks are present, real, and committed to their truth, navigating fame will eventually feel less isolating; this leaves room for a longer, happier life and career.” 

Part of that approach, she says out on the lake, is a recommitment to what she calls her “Broadway diva” ambitions. She just headlined a cabaret show on a gay cruise — “I felt like I was Barbara Walters going undercover, and it was so gender affirming, because none of them wanted to sleep with me,” she says. Last year, she took her autobiographical one-woman musical Faghag to Edinburgh Festival Fringe, performing in a venue that held only 250 people. Such intimate settings and a new creative focus may offer a reprieve from the pressures of global exposure online. 

“I’m not trying to influence anyone’s gender or sexuality,” Mulvaney points out. “I’m just trying to influence them to go see a Broadway musical. I’d be happy with even just the basics for people. I mean, Phantom of the Opera is better than nothing, but if you want to throw something like Next to Normal or Spring Awakening in there, that would make me extremely happy.” All in all, Mulvaney says, she wants to escape the “influencer box” and “trans poster box” by returning to her roots: “I’m showing the world that theater is really important to me.”

Trans joy is another top priority for 2025, she says, as it’s necessary to “combat the negative,” and she hopes to keep those triumphs front and center. “If I’m living my life, and I’m successful, and I’m happy, and I’m thriving, and I’m feeling euphoric, that means that whatever is being pushed by the far right or extremists — what they’re saying isn’t true. I’m living proof that it’s not,” Mulvaney says. Contrary to past social media habits, though, not everything is destined for public consumption these days. “I post a lot less,” she adds, recalling sage advice from Laverne Cox back in her first year of transition to “keep some things” for herself.

Mulvaney has found that she has to remain mindful in such matters. Considerations around personal safety mean “that I might not be able to do everything that I would really want to do, creatively or socially.” Then, of course, there are the common private agonies of L.A. notoriety: as we guide the swan boat over to the dock, Mulvaney reveals that tonight she has a date with a match from Raya. I ask what the scene is like these days on the exclusive app. “Horrible, just tragic,” Mulvaney replies with a smile. Earlier, she had mentioned getting a place in London for her frequent trips across the pond, where she has many theater friends and “better luck” dating; it seems “the grass is always greener” outside of America, she says. 

Yet it’s too nice a day here in the park — where Mulvaney recalls once taking shrooms with a pair of twins, both of whom she had crushes on — to wish you were elsewhere. As we start up the footpath from the boat house, a woman walking the opposite direction spots her. “I love you!” she blurts out. Mulvaney, with magnificent ease, answers: “I love you!” Then she catches the eye of another, older woman, who seems not to recognize her but is plainly struck by her literary dress and radiant glow. “So pretty!” she marvels. “A movie star.”

“Maybe one day,” Mulvaney says. She makes it sound like some far-off dream, unlikely to materialize. Then again, she never expected to be where she is now.