Tommy Dorfman married his partner Elise Williams in a secret ceremony in Santa Monica in 2023, but the couple's adorable love story was nothing the actor expected.
“I couldn't wait to start my Samantha Jones era,” the “13 Reasons Why” veteran wrote in a Vogue essay published Thursday. “I wanted to explore my new womanhood as freely as possible in the city famous for its short-term adventures.”
She had just finalized her divorce from businessman Peter Zurkuhlen a month before revealing in July 2021 that she was transgender. She wasn't looking for anything serious after all that change.
(“Today is about clarity: I am a trans woman,” Dorfman told Time magazine at the time. “My pronouns are she/her. My name is Tommy.” She added in an accompanying video: “Some people moved from home during the pandemic. “Some people changed their gender.”
Back from a “season” in Los Angeles, after adjusting to New York City life, she downloaded the dating app Hinge, hoping to find those short-term flings. Instead, he came across the profile of his “undeniably beautiful” future wife, whom he classifies as a “private” person.
The couple got engaged after two months, but waited a year to move in together. However, “[O]You could argue that taking in a Great Dane puppy when we were six months old was a little irresponsible,” Dorfman noted jokingly.
The couple knew they wanted to elope and on a trip to Los Angeles they discovered that the state of California offers confidential marriage certificates, so that their marriage would not be discovered by the media. And naturally, being so close to Tinseltown, concierge services were available for same-day weddings.
“A few hours later, a man showed up at our hotel in Santa Monica, took photos of us with our iPhones and a disposable camera I bought at CVS that morning, and we ended the day at a concert without telling anyone what we were doing. I already did it,” Dorfman wrote.
The arrangement worked for the couple, he wrote, because they had done everything they could to keep their relationship out of the spotlight. In 2022, there was an internet frenzy after Dorfman mentioned that he was participating in an episode of Rachel Bilson's “Broad Ideas” podcast, and that the experience compromised their privacy.
Upon their return to their Brooklyn abode, they revealed the news to their close friend and photographer Hunter Abrams, who took photographs of the couple in the wedding dresses they purchased at Dover Street Market in Los Angeles before their unplanned elopement.
They have kept their marriage quiet in the year since, enjoying the honeymoon phase without prying eyes. But now, Dorfman wrote, they are ready to begin “celebrating [their] love with the world” and reaffirming “the importance of people seeing trans and queer love in vogue.”
