Lena Dunham on sex, oversharing And writing about lost 'Girls' (2014 interview) | Fresh Air

What this episode is about

Lena Dunham discusses her personal essays in "Not That Kind of Girl," addressing themes of self-acceptance, the complexities of young adulthood, and the fine line between candor and oversharing in her writing. She also reflects on her hit series "Girls," exploring the struggles of her characters as they navigate relationships and self-discovery.

Key takeaways

• Lena Dunham’s bold self-exploration brings vulnerability to the forefront, challenging the fine line between therapy and oversharing.
• Receiving acclaim from critics like Michiko Kakutani can feel like winning a cultural jackpot, yet it’s a precarious pedestal.
• Dunham’s depiction of youth resonates: navigating identity while dodging the societal pressures is both personal and universally relatable.
• Translating life’s chaos into art is therapeutic, but does it risk avoiding the messiness of real emotions?
• In a world craving authenticity, Dunham’s transparent storytelling invites audiences to process their own relatable awkwardness and insecurities.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Terry Gross (Host) · 18 min speaking
• Lena Dunham (Guest) · 26 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Not That Kind of Girl, HBO, Miko Kakatani
2. 35:00 – 40:00: Mil Street, Tama Janowitz

Notable quotes from "Lena Dunham on sex, oversharing And writing about lost 'Girls' (2014 interview) | Fresh Air"

• Quote lock eyes with the New York Times book critic Miko Kakatani. Hannah would envy and resent Lena Dunham. Dunham not only has a new collection of personal essays called Not…

  about Not That Kind of Girl · at 0:37

• Really loved like transgressive writing and yeah he wanted her to be like a real he wanted her to be like a real empowered like the new Tama Janowitz just like out on the streets doing drugs living life and she was like she's kind of a nerd.

  about Tama Janowitz · at 35:39

• Thank you. Yeah. I don't know. now that Mil Street has dropped all of David's projects, I just I'd have to find a new publisher. So, we'll see.

  about Mil Street · at 37:18

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Miko Kakatani — Person · Referenced expert (book critic) · 1 mention · first at 0:40
  Cited as the New York Times book critic whose review and cultural authority are discussed; also referenced as an ambition of the character Hannah.
  Hannah is a writer who got and lost two book deals. One of her ambitions is to quote lock eyes with the New York Times book critic Miko Kakatani. Hannah would envy and resent Lena Dunham. Dunham not only has a new collection of personal.
• Tama Janowitz — Person · Referenced author (comparison point) · 1 mention · first at 35:46
  Used as a cultural/literary reference point for the kind of 'transgressive' writer the editor wanted Hannah to become.

Books & papers

• Not That Kind of Girl — Book · 2 mentions · first at 0:48

Companies & orgs

• HBO — Company · 1 mention · first at 0:02
  This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is Lena Dunham, the creator and star of the HBO series Girls.
• Mil Street — Company · 2 mentions · first at 35:31

Media & podcasts

• Girls — Media · 1 mention
  Sometimes embarrassing detail. Dunham has written a book that's as acute and heartfelt as it is funny. Lena Dunham series Girls about a group of friends in their 20s trying to…

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest is Lena Dunham, the creator and star of the HBO series Girls.

0:07 Hi, Dad. Hi. Hi, honey. What's going on? Oh, nothing. Just uh just taking the day off to soak up some rays. Well, also I had a small procedure. Nothing to worry about.

0:19 I just met with the publisher and they want to give me a real book deal. Not a stupid pathetic ebook deal. A real book deal. That's Lena Dunham's character, Hannah, on the phone with her father. Hannah is a writer who got and lost two book deals. One of her ambitions is to quote lock eyes with the New York Times book critic Miko Kakatani. Hannah would envy and resent Lena Dunham. Dunham not only has a new collection of personal essays called Not That Kind of Girl, she got a great review from Macho Kakatani, who described the book as smart and funny and wrote that by simply telling her own story in all its specificity and sometimes embarrassing detail. Dunham has written a book that's as acute and heartfelt as it is funny. Lena Dunham series Girls about a group of friends in their 20s trying to figure out what they want out of life and out of each other begins its fourth season in January.

1:19 Lena Dunham, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you back on our show.

1:23 Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here. I want to start with a reading from your new book. So, let's start with a reading from the very, very beginning.

1:30 Great. This is a reading from the chapter entitled Introduction. I am 20 years old and I hate myself. my hair, my face, the curve of my stomach. The way my voice comes out wavering and my poems come out modlin. The way my parents talk to me in a slightly higher register than they talk to my sister, as if I'm a government worker that snapped, and if pushed hard enough, might blow up the hostages I've got tied up in my basement. I cover up this hatred with a kind of aggressive self-acceptance. I dye my hair a fluorescent shade of yellow, cutting it into a mullet, more inspired by photos of 1980s teen mothers than by any current beauty trend. I dress in neon spandex that hugs in all the wrong places. My mother and I have a massive fight when I choose to wear a banana printed belly shirt and pink leggings to the Vatican and religious tourists gawk and turn away.

2:23 I'm living in a dormatory that was not too long ago an old age home for lowincome towns people and I don't like thinking about where they might be now. My roommate has moved to New York to explore farmtofork cooking and lesbianism. So I'm alone in a ground floor onebedroom, a fact I relish until one night a female rugby player rips my screen door off the hinges and barges into the dorm to attack her philandering girlfriend. I've bought a VHS player and a pair of knitting needles and spend most nights on the sofa making half a scarf for a boy I like who had a manic break and dropped out. I've made two short films, both of which my father deemed interesting, but beside the point, and I'm so paralyzed as a writer that I've started translating poems from languages I don't speak, some kind of surrealist exercise meant to inspire me, but also prevent me from thinking the perverse looping thoughts that come

3:15 unbidden. I am hideous. I'm going to be living in a mental hospital by the time I'm 29. I will never amount to anything.

3:24 Thank you for reading that. That's Lena Dunham reading the opening reading the opening of her new book, Not That Kind of Girl.

3:31 One of the opening quotes in your book is from your father. And you say it is you say, "This is your father admonishing you." And he says,

3:37 "How quickly you transform the energy life throws at you into the folded bows of art."

3:44 Your father and your mother are artists. What exactly was he criticizing about you there?

3:51 I believe that we had had an argument which I had very quickly recycled into something that I was using in the show and I told him about it and he kind of laughed. There's this very specific laugh that that my father has when he recognizes his own behavior in my work. This sort of oh what now kind of laugh that was that I had just summoned from him. And then he was sort of describing half admiringly, half with horror, the way that he didn't feel like he could do anything without it being recycled into my work. And it kind of felt like even though he didn't mean it as a compliment, it kind of felt like the perfect encapsulation of my of sort of how the day-to-day translates into what I do, at least at this point in my creative life. Do you think he was partly saying you deflect life and turn it into art? Like instead of experiencing it or instead of absorbing what I just told you, you just turn it

4:47 into art completely. I think that my parents have always gotten frustrated as have certain other people in my life, you know, namely namely my current boyfriend because no other boyfriend paid enough attention to me to care. But I I they have this feeling as if I'm able to sort of feain a certain kind of self-awareness by putting it into my work, but that by putting it into my work, I avoid actually having the experience. So, it's this kind of vicious cycle, but it's rough because it's the only way that I know how to process feelings and move on.

5:22 Um, some people think that you overshare and I'm wondering um because you do share so much like in your memoir and there's so much personal stuff in girls whether whether it really happened to you or not, whether it's autobiographical or not, a lot of people just assume that it is. So, have you ever made anything public that was very personal through your work or through your interviews that you later regretted saying? You know, I thought about this a lot because it's um it's a challenging thing when you're a person who has a desire or let's say a compulsion to um share uh facts about your personal life. If that's the way you process the world is to make um creative content based on your personal life, then you have to be really careful um about making yourself feel too too exposed. But for me, the biggest concern is my family and the people that I love. And I feel very very conscious of making sure that my

6:20 parents, my boyfriend, my friends don't feel in any way demeaned, exposed or abused by the work that I make. Especially now, there's no writing about someone anonymously. People will pick it apart. They will figure out who that person is. There's sort of no sort of protective measures you can put in place at this point in history to take care of the people you love. So, you have to be careful. And so there have been a couple times where I've said things about my parents or about my boyfriend that I felt have been taken out of context or misunderstood that have opened them up to criticism and that is the stuff that pains me.

6:57 And I also think Yeah, go ahead. You know, I think the term oversharing is so complicated because I do think it's really gendered. I think that when men sort of share their experiences, it's bravery. And when women share their experiences, it's some sort of, you know, it's like people are like, "Tmi, too much information has always been my least favorite phrase because what exactly constitutes too much information?" It seems like it has a lot to do with who is giving you the information. And I feel as though

7:26 there's some sense that society trivializes female experiences. And so when you share them, they they aren't given considered as vital as their male counterparts. And that's something that I've always roundly rejected. You know, it's interesting. I think writing about yourself uh and kind kind of shape shaping your your personal narrative gives you a certain power over your life because you're controlling the story. But nowadays, you do that. You control your story. You put it out and the story is not finished yet because everybody's going to tweet about it. they're going to give it their interpretation. So, um that sense of like controlling your own narrative in a way doesn't exist anymore.

8:06 It's that is so accurate. And there are a few things in this book that I was terrified but to put into the world because I thought of the headline and sort of people hearing thirdand what existed in the essay and it was just um it was a really it was a really scary thing and I really had to examine with a few of these essays. Is this something that I can bear to see sort of uh put through that game of telephone?

8:31 Can you give us an example of one of the things you were concerned about? Yeah, I think the chapter about date rape in the book was a really really terrifying thing for me to put into the world because as important as the topic is and we are also having this massive moment of cultural awareness about campus assault which is um a very gratifying thing to see and I hope it leads to um incredible change but just sort of honestly the the idea of seeing sort of you know the fourthhand UK Daily Mail headline Lena Dunham tells all about rape was Um it was a nightmare to me.

9:05 But at the same time, I think um I knew that sharing that experience was I not only felt it was important because of what I was seeing other young women go through. I felt it was important because of what it was um going to give me spiritually to not be hiding that anymore. I thought that was a really interesting chapter and your confusion about is this rape or not? Like am I complicit in this or not? Like what what has happened here? And you were you were hurt. I mean, and I don't mean emotionally hurt, though. You were that too. You you were you were physically hurt for a while. It was a painful experience physically and emotionally. And one I spent a long time trying to reconcile. And I actually I've been thinking about it a lot this week because I sent an email to somebody who I had known at that time who I had who was um who knew the guy who had uh whatever we're going to say perpetrated

10:02 the act who knew him and I wanted to make it clear to this old friend what I felt had happened before he you know potentially you know bought the book at Hudson News and read about it. I just I hated the idea of somebody finding out that information because at the time that it happened it wasn't something that I was able to be honest about. I was able to share pieces, but I sort of used the lens of humor, which has always been my uh default mode to try to talk around it. And I said to this old friend in an email, I said, "I spent so much time scared. I spent so much time ashamed. I don't feel that way anymore.

10:34 And it's not because of my job. It's not because of my boyfriend. It's not because of feminism, though all those things helped. It's because I told the story and I still feel like myself and I feel less alone." You know, the way you describe it in your book, this experience happened to you. You were telling one of your girlfriends about it and your girlfriend said you were raped. And it hadn't even occurred to you to think of it that way before that.

10:58 Before that, I think I had just felt that something was very wrong. I had felt that something had happened and I remember thinking, can I ever be the same? But I was not comfortable giving myself the clarity of that because the fact is is I know that I knew that I was sort of at this party where the I was at a party drunk waiting for attention and somehow that felt like such a shameful starting off point that I didn't know how to um reconcile what had come after. But I knew that it wasn't right and I knew in some way that this experience had been forced on me. And when I shared it with my best friend and she used the term you were raped at the time, I sort of laughed at her and thought like, you know, what an ambulance chasing drama queen. And later felt this incredible gratitude for her for giving me um that giving me that gift of that kind of certainty that she had. I think at a lot of times when I felt at my lowest about

11:53 it, those words in some way actually lifted me up because I felt that somebody was justifying the pain of my experience.

12:04 Did you change any anything about your behavior at parties and the kind of person you would be with or, you know, um I'm I'm not saying this in a blame the victim kind of way, but but I'm just curious like what your takeaway was from from that experience.

12:22 I didn't really go to any more parties. I just stopped going. I stopped um I stopped putting myself into I don't think I I basically didn't have a drink for the rest of college.

12:35 Seriously, as far as I can tell, I mean, I really removed myself from that world. And I don't know if I would have told you at the time, oh, I'm doing this to keep myself safe. But obviously in hindsight, I started, you know, I started dating someone who was pretty hermetic and very sweet and um and I basically removed myself from the social world as I'd known it. And then I spent a lot of time, which I talk about in the book, trying to figure out sort of what my, uh, for lack of a better word, um, sexual preferences were and whether they were, they did in any way align with this experience I'd had, whether there was any part of me that had in quotes wanted that. And I think it took me a long time of self-examination and um getting I think being in a writer's room hearing about other people's sort of sexual evolutions and realizing oh that's not something that happens to everyone and when it does happen they're

13:35 allowed to mourn it and feel pain about it. Hearing that helped me. you write a lot about sex in your memoir and in girls. A lot of the um storylines, you know, revolve around sexuality. So, it's interesting to read in your book um that it really took you a while to actually enjoy sex.

14:02 Yeah, that was it was interesting. I think I spent so much time being interested in the intellectual content of sex that I forgot to worry about whether it felt good or not. When you say the intellectual content, you mean

14:13 I think I was the sexual politics of it or I mean I wish it had been as evolved as sexual politics. It was more just that I was so fascinated by the fact that sex allowed me to be in a position where I saw people behaving in these ways that they never would. Sort of, you know, standing out on the quad or sitting in a diner. I couldn't believe, you know, I've always been the nosiest person in the world. I mean, my mom always tells a story of like, you know, from the backseat of the car, she and my par my dad when I was like three would be talking about someone from work and I'd scream, "What color is her hair? How old is she? Does she have a husband?" Like, I just I needed to know everything about everyone. And so somehow when sex began, I went, "Oh my god, I can't believe that you get to be in a room with somebody behaving this way."

14:56 So it seems like it was the writer in you that was having sex. 100%. And I remember thinking I remember thinking almost feeling and I talk about this in the book like I was you know a private detective standing in the doorway watching two people have sex and they described that experience later to my friend Jamaima and I was like you know that feeling when you're having sex but you're kind of outside your own body and you're not really in it and you're watching from the door and she was like uh no that's the reason I've never needed to make a sex tape is just because I'm making one in my own mind all the time.

15:29 That's hysterical. So, is that one of the reasons why sex is so central to your work? Because you's over you've always been like the observer of it.

15:38 I think so. I mean, I think probably if I was had been at all points more physically engaged, I might not remember enough to write all of these chapters. But I think and it's interesting, you know, the thing that's always hard for me to act on girls, it's very easy for me to do the sort of humiliating sex scenes. But a moment where I'm actually supposed to be enjoying sex and engaged, I find almost impossible to bear performing that it because it feels so private,

16:04 right? Um, so was this a disappointment to you at first? Were were you expecting much more than what the experience initially was?

16:15 Yes. which I think I later realized a lot of women, a lot of young people felt that way. Like a real is this it quality to sex because I think we'd been taught by movies, by, you know, romance novels we'd stolen from our babysitters, what and our grandmas, whatever. We'd been taught that it was going to be some kind of totally, you know, you were going to be transported to, you know, the Hawaii of the mind when you had sex. And ultimately that is not what happened. And so I think and I think also realizing how much sort of self-consciousness and self-hatred made their way into the act of sex, especially you know sex in college dorm rooms that was um that was an unfortunate reality to face and but I also found something so poetic about the way that people were revealed to each other and partially revealed to each other through this act. And so, you know, on girls, I always tell people that I hope that the sex scenes, I mean,

17:10 they're not just in there for like the audience to have a titilating break to see, you know, the side of somebody's breast. They're in there because I think it's sometimes when we get the most information about our characters. And so, they're always pushing the plot forward, if not in a concrete way, and sort of a more spiritual way.

17:27 The message you get about Hannah in those scenes is almost one of compliance, like, "Oh, sure. You want me to do that? I'll do that. Well, I think a big I mean a phenomenon that Hannah experienced and Hannah experienced it because I experienced it was the sense that if you were a girl who didn't have an ideal body, what you had to offer was your willingness to please, your openness to adventure, and your just, you know, your desire to do it all. And I think there's a very funny joke, I don't know if you know the comedian Mo'Nique, um, but she has an amazing joke in this DVD, Queens of Comedy, where she talks about having sex as a fat girl. And she kind of goes,

18:05 she says, "You want to put it in my ear? Put it in my ear. Whatever you want, I'll do it. I'm a fat girl. Just do I'm I'm down for anything. I'm not like those skinny girls. I can't say no." And I remember thinking Mo'Nique had distilled something so perfect with you want to put it in me my ear just put it in my ear about the attitude that girls you don't have to obviously be chubby to feel this you just have to feel an essential sense that you yourself are not enough. Does it kind of um make you sad when you see um very young girls having sex because you you know that they might be facing kind of disappointment or um emotional hurt.

18:49 I think about girls having sex in high school and obviously there's, you know, there are young couples who are in love, but I just know that like I was so emotionally, even if you're physically ready to have sex in high school, I was so emotionally not there. I mean, I was I would have been playing with Barbies if I thought it was socially acceptable. So, I do feel sort of a twinge when I think about girls feeling, you know, a pressure to engage that way as young people because I think that it's um so often our bodies appear ready for things that our hearts and minds are not ready for. And I do also think that, you know, the experience of having sex in college is this sort of it's this sort of sad sad hunt for validation. And obviously that is again not everyone's experience.

19:35 There are girls who are know what they need physically and emotionally and are getting it and I applaud them. But that wasn't me and that wasn't very many of my friends. I'm wondering how you think movies and the accessibility of internet pornography has affected sexual relations now. And one of the things I've noticed in movies for for years and because um so often now the the act begins with with the two people like walking into the home and like they cannot wait. They are in such a hurry that like they're tearing off each other's clothes and and the guy lifts up the woman and like slams her onto the counter and like they're going at it and it's

20:20 and then they're having intercourse way before it would ever make sense in anybody's actual foreplay pattern to be having sex.

20:27 Well, the like foreplay has become almost like non-existent in a lot of movies. Um, and you know, it's just kind of the opposite about of how it used to be when there was still um, uh, a lot of, you know, censorship in movies when there things like you couldn't show.

20:46 But I'm wondering if that like like tearing off the clothes kind of thing has if you think that's kind of entered into the real world because people think that's what you're supposed to do. I do think that, you know, we that kids have been miseducated about what sex is by films. I think that's that films have whitewashed sex in many ways and sort of tried to hide what is messy and what is challenging about it. And I feel like there's, you know, a couple brands like, I'm so angry. I hate you so much. We need to have sex right now, which isn't particularly healthy. Or I'm so in love with you that the minute that we get in, you know, I'm going to shed my neglige and we're going to be doing it. I mean there's just I think that most depictions of sex are destructive and I also think you know I am by no means sort of anti- pornography and I know that there are certain feminists who have a very strong feeling against it

21:37 and I know it's a complicated complicated issue but I do think that the proliferation of internet porn is insane because people are that's how many boys are learning about sex. The fact is in pornography I don't know I don't care how much they're screaming those women are not having orgasms at least not all of the time and so that is female pleasure that has been designed for men to uh pleasure themselves too and so it should not be a guide book for anybody's um sexual relations and I also I remember experiencing you know in college just the sense that somebody was doing something that they had seen someone else uh far more experienced and far less less sensitive do. And so, you know, as much I don't want to walk around sort of uniformly slamming pornography because I think it's a much more complicated issue, but I do think that um we are in an age where young kids are getting a totally unrealistic

22:33 sexual education way before it's needed. Interesting for you to say that. Um, so this is way too personal. This is like really getting into oversharing territory, but I'll ask and you could decide how much of this to overshare.

22:49 Yeah. Um like the character of Hannah and and also her her boyfriend in it talk a lot during sex and tell each other things to do. I'll skip this. This is really like way too personal.

23:04 Moving on. Oh, I was you. I was not in I was like I was like I'm ready for where you're going, Terry. I'm ready to take that journey with you.

23:11 All right. Okay. Okay. So, let me ask it. Are you into like being really talkative?

23:17 Well, you know, and descriptive and descriptive, you know, uh almost like narrating.

23:22 I kind of just like I mean, no, I think there were times in my life where anything anyone suggested to me, I was open to. And that's not a secret because that's what sort of the show is about is about a young woman who is who thinks that she will make herself more appealing to the people around her by being completely flexible. Everything from, oh yeah, I'll go to that party that's in deepest Bushwick to, oh yeah, I'll pretend I'm an 11-year-old prostitute. But then it builds all this rage in her and so which she expresses at the wrong times and in the wrong ways. And so I think that quality of sort of extreme adaptability and sort and if you notice in all their dirty talk, Adam is talking and Hannah's kind of going, "Okay, all right. Whatever you say, she doesn't know how to do it, but she knows how to agree." And I think that that was that's sort of a cornerstone of this character, but what

24:18 it's creating in her is this deep deep resentment about not being heard and not being seen. And so I think the answer is no. Oh, in my own sex life, I find that whole idea of sort of, you know, someone like creating an entire narrative where you're like, you know, a teenage slave totally unappealing and kind of distressing. But I've definitely encountered as a younger woman people who want to engage that way and didn't feel like I was in a position to go actually like I'd rather just, you know, talk about books than do it then talk about books some more. You write in your book about how you have a lot of phobias, including germaphobia um and an obsession with with death.

24:56 Which are the phobias that really plague you the most? My germaphobia has passed. It's it's expired. I feel really

25:04 How did it go away? You know, I don't I think a lot of people with OCD find that because obviously the things they're anxious about aren't truly the things they're anxious about. It's a traveling anxiety that finds its comfortable place to rest and then it's like a vir. like a virus that's you know or that's moving from person to person and living out its life in different forms like that's sort of what

25:24 or like a cold that travels from your nose to your chest to your throat. Exactly. Exactly. Whatever sickness metaphor we want to use it basically it moves around and my I mean my anxiety has always floated. I always have it always has a focus and then it always goes on its way and there's a moment of relief after I've resolved one area of anxiety and then it hops to another you know lily pad and sits there for a while and so as a kid germaphobia was a really really easy place to go and then it kind of you know it departed and went to other things and obsession with death is the really hard one because no one can talk you out of that everybody can say to you you know you're not going to get cancer or you're not going to get Ebola Ola, but nobody, you don't have cancer, you're not going to get Ebola, but nobody can say to you, you're not going to die. So, that's an easy place for it to go back to again and again and again.

26:16 Um, at this point, I would say my anxiety often tends to rest on something that's happening career-wise. You know, a phone call I have to make, an email I haven't gotten back, you know, a person I'm worried I've offended, but probably feeling a level of distress about those prospects that is um outsized. I think it was in season three that your character on Girls, Hannah, has a a kind of um um comeback of OCD in um season two. Season three.

26:48 End of season two. End of season two. Okay. Yeah. End of season two, but then it kind of pokes around in season 3. So, it's sort of it's its arc exists through both those seasons. And how come you didn't address that at the beginning but waited till like season two to get to the OCD? Cuz I was surprised that like suddenly she's OCD. I know some people had that reaction. Some people were like, "What? You're shoehorning a mental illness onto this character who's already weird enough?" But the fact was that I had had an obsessive compulsive sort of I mean, well, let's use the term meltdown. um right before season 1 came out and right as we were beginning to shoot season two, I had a moment where those things came back in a way that was really harsh and uncomfortable and a reminder of how bad it could get. And that was something that, you know, because at that point I had um a whole writing staff who I

27:40 worked with and a close relationship with Jenny and Jud who produced the show with me. That was something that they had lived through with me and we thought this is exciting and important to talk about. So it was sort of based on the fact that I mean in the show Hannah has to write her book and she has writer's block, a deadline coming up, a certain kind of attention she hasn't had before and OCD which can very often be um instigated by stress comes barreling back and so that really just paralleled my experience with making the show and finding myself under a new kind of pressure and resorting to these old habits.

28:16 Was it helpful to write about it like that? It was. And what was hard was to perform it because, you know, you spend so much of your life as a person with obsessivempulsive disorder, a person with any sort of, you know, mental illness, trying to camouflage your habits, trying to appear normal. And so to say to myself, I'm gonna, you know, go in front of this crew of 60 Italian men and 60 old school Italian men, some younger guys, too, and uh and perform these super personal ticks and quirks. Like that was um that was really scary.

28:50 That was scarier to me than any sex scene. And also the feeling like once I turn this on, once I open the floodgates of letting myself like, you know, check over my shoulders eight times and blink my eyes, am I going to be able to stop? And it's also so letting myself sort of enter into that pattern of physical behavior in front of my crew. That was really really kind of intense.

29:12 So you gave Hannah some of your own uh compulsions. Yeah. All of them. Cuz I didn't know how to do any others because OCD is so personal. Like it's funny whenever I've met another person with, you know, and my biggest pet peeve is when people are like, "I'm so OCD. I have to organize all my socks in my drawer. Like they all have to be just in little pairs." Or people will be like, "I'm so OCD. I have to go to the gym every day. That's like saying, "I was so I'm so bipolar. I was mad at my mom yesterday." Like this.

29:37 That's not what obsessivempulsive disorder is. Obsessivempive compulsive disorder doesn't follow any like rules of logic. I wish my OCD had been helpful enough to force me to organize my socks. And so, but when you talk to somebody who has OCD, their habits are super specific. Super specific. And so, I wouldn't really know how to perform anybody else's version of it. And so I kind of just had to do my own and hope it translated.

30:01 So was it helpful for you to actually perform it and therefore kind of put it under a microscope and take it outside of yourself and put it on onto somebody else. Your character Hannah.

30:14 Yes. And there was also something so cathartic about doing it and then calling cut and the crew laughing like I had just done like a funny Carol Bernett physical comedy thing. Like there was something so comforting about that because I spent so much time thinking that, you know, alone in my bedroom thinking I looked like a hideous, mentally disturbed freak that to then have all my like bros at work think that it was funny. It felt really good.

30:38 Girls is soon coming back for its fourth season. It strikes me. Yeah. We'll be back in January.

30:43 Yeah. So that's that's actually pretty soon. It strikes me that you've probably had to learn a lot more about plotting than you had maybe ever expected to do because you know once you're into like a fourth season like the the plots have gotten so you know there's so much more character that's been developed. It's different than doing um a story or even a short movie where you go from here to there and you know it's like a finite amount of story that you have to tell and this is just like ongoing. So, I'm just wondering what it's like for you to to get more and more into plot as a character.

31:21 It's a great question. You know, the first I mean as a writer. I said as a character. I meant as a writer.

31:25 Same difference. But the the first season kind of came out as this kind of fever dream. You know, there were so many stories I'd been storing up in the in the time that I had been think sort of in the time since I'd graduated from college and was sort of living this reality. There were so many stories that I had been kind of hoarding and that combined with the influence of Jenny and Jud and the other people I was working with on the show just the first season kind of just, you know, spat itself out. And then after that, you know, and I think there was a part of me that always thought, okay, they're going to let me make a pilot but not anything else.

31:59 Okay, they're going to let me make this first season but not every anything else. So, let's just, you know, burn it down and do as much as we can because there's a good chance that I'll be working at the children's clothing store again within 6 months. And I once it sort of became apparent that we were going to get a little time to do this thing, that's when I really had to start thinking about what it meant to um what it meant to sort of sustain a story over a long period of time and to develop these characters in a way that was sort of naturalistic but also had some of the sort of tropes and energy that makes television such a pleasure to watch. And so I've definitely been on a crash course and actually the fourth season shooting it there was a kind of uh ease and joy to it. Knock on wood, which I obsessively do, that um that was surprising. And I actually think in hindsight it was because we the plotting

32:55 was coming a little more naturally and we were able to just enjoy writing these characters again. Whereas in seasons two and three there were things that we knew we wanted to cover. But um you know I I was definitely getting adjusted to uh figuring out how to um dispense information. You know, you know, so much of it is about deciding when you're going to reveal what and who's going to reveal it to whom. And um it involves you know like really like working on the whole thing like a puzzle in a way that I had never learned to do because my writing is so stream of consciousness and so confessional.

33:29 Have you, Lena Dunham, and your character of Hannah gotten further apart as the show has gotten deeper into the story? Because your life has really changed in a way that Hannah's hasn't. Hannah's Hannah's kind of like emotionally stuck in a lot of ways, but your life sounds like you've really, you know, been transformed in a lot of ways by the experience of doing Girls. Well, it's amazing you say that because I think so many people ask the question, is it hard for you to write about Hannah because now you work in Hollywood and go to fancy parties and your life doesn't resemble hers? And I think to myself, no, that's not hard because firstly, I don't go to that many fancy parties, but secondly, we all understand what it's like to feel, you know, we all can transfer the awkwardness we feel at any social event to any other social event.

34:17 and you're a writer, so you use your imagination and you create circumstances that don't necessarily exist. But it is hard sometimes to continue to write a character who has been who has such um such sort of limited and limiting responses to uh the world around her. And I really have to remember where she's coming from and have sympathy for her and recognize that well just in the kind of scope of television. I mean, I I don't know. Our our one of our writers, Max Brockman, is the keeper of the timetable of the show. He could tell you exactly how many weeks, months, years have passed since in the world of the show from the first episode to the 42nd episode. I c I do not have that I do not have that brain. But I will say that the scope of the span of time we've covered in the show is much shorter than the span of time in which I've been doing the show. So, she's grown less both chronologically and emotionally than I

35:15 have since we started. She's only had one birthday since we began. Oh, wow. Okay. I want to play a scene from season 3 of Girls, which was shown earlier this year. And um Hannah had a deal with a publishing company called Mil Street to write an ebook memoir. And she was working with an editor there who was played by John Cameron Mitchell who really loved like transgressive writing and and

35:42 yeah he wanted her to be like a real he wanted her to be like a real empowered like the new Tama Janowitz just like out on the streets doing drugs living life and she was like she's kind of a nerd like yeah so so anyways that that editor died and in this scene she's at Hannah's at his funeral and Hannah and a lot of other people assumed that this editor was gay. Okay. But she's just met the editor's wife, the editor's now widow. And so here's Hannah uh trying to talk with the editor's wife, now widow, who's played by Jennifer Westfeld, and

36:16 who's the best. Yeah. And so this is like maybe the second time that they've spoken.

36:23 Hi again. Oh, hi Hannah. Not Paige. Hannah. I know. I know. I'm sorry. No, don't be. I was surprised that David has such a beautiful

36:36 just stunningly You thought he was gay? Uh, no. Yes, you did. No, you did. It's okay.

36:44 I didn't think he was. I didn't I thought he was straight. I thought he was straight. I thought he wanted to sleep with me.

36:49 Really? I I didn't I mean I didn't think wouldn't have slept with him. A lot of people think it. A lot of people think he was gay.

36:56 Well, he he acted gay. So, and you know, he was sometimes. Okay. I loved your working with your husband. David was wonderful.

37:06 Oh, a bet. I mean, I I know. Um I'm working on a on a book with David, too. I was was

37:14 I really hope you finish the book, and I really really hope I get to read it someday.

37:18 Thank you. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, now that Mil Street has dropped all of David's projects, I just I'd have to find a new publisher. So, you know, we'll see.

37:27 Say Mil Street's dropped all of David's projects. Yeah. Oh, there's David's mom. She's so devastated. Have you seen Pepper? Did you read her? I

37:35 She's devastated. Wait, you were just saying that you were saying that Mil Street's dropped all of David's projects,

37:39 right? That's right. For now. Yeah. So, my book is dead. Um, do you happen to know another publisher that I could maybe slip the manuscript to if I do decide that I really want to try to

37:54 keep it alive or Okay. Um, if I do give you another name, will you get the out of here?

38:07 Yes. Great. Great. I'll be back. Honestly, I loved your husband. Just just a reminder, that's a scene at a funeral.

38:23 She's such a jerk. your your character of Hannah just everything she said is so completely inappropriate.

38:31 She's such a jerk. I think she puts some kind of premium on like honesty, like the idea that she's going to be the person who really cuts through it and is really real about what's actually going on, but she forgets that like certain social constructs are in place for a reason. Like that's the reason that you don't ask people for uh professional contacts at funerals.

38:49 So you you you just called her such a jerk. How do you feel about writing and playing a character who you just described as such a jerk?

38:59 It's so fun. I honestly it's it's really really fun. I mean, it's such a pleasure to play somebody who sort of lacks the filter that we all walk through the world with. And of course, like of course I wouldn't recommend her as like, you know, a model of behavior to any young people in the world today, but I love the opportunity to just like say the word. I mean, it's funny, Tourette's and OCD are very closely linked together. A lot of people who have one have the other. Um, and I remember, you know, I don't have Tourette's syndrome, but I definitely have the part of myself that was always afraid. One of my fears as a kid was that I was walking to walk down the street and like just, you know, scream out a curse word or, you know, yell a homophobic slur or just do something that was totally, you know, not my personal I was going to say the worst thing that I didn't want to say, but it was just going to come out of me.

39:53 And it's almost like that Tourettzy horrific part of me gets to be expressed in Hannah who's just firing off and she just can't stop. I mean, she just can't stop. Now, Hannah's friends are pretty self-absorbed, too. And one of the characters, Jesso, who's played by Jamaima Mccerk, is so um that destructive. She's self-destructive, but she also like does damaging things to everybody she knows. She seems to have like no empathy or sympathy. Um, and she's she's hurtful. Like, I wouldn't want her to get near me. I would never let her in my house. I'd be afraid she would steal something or or you know like you know read something that you know was very personal that I had definitely read something personal that um so um and I wonder like why would anybody even be friends with her? So tell me why tell me why that character exists and why Hannah and or any of the other girls in the series is friends

40:55 with her. Well, I think Jessa is a character who has a real glamour to her, a real freespirited glamour. I mean, you would be amazed by how many girls tweet at me like, "I want to be Jessa. I want to be a Jessa." Because of the fact that

41:08 shocks me because she has this sense of like she just kind of like blew on a cloud from Morocco and she's doing her thing. And I think what we really wanted to reveal was the pathology behind sort of the concept of the free spirit. sort of this this like iconic ideal of a free-spirited woman is ultimately hiding a very wounded uh dissociated person. And so I don't think Jess is evil. I don't think she's a sociopath. I don't think she, you know, I think she wants to do good. But more powerful than her desire to do good is her um desire to test the boundaries and like sort of her sort of unfillable hole of pain. And I think that the girls like having her in their life because they find her glamorous and they like what it feels like and looks like to take her to a party or post her on their Instagram. And I think they think she's real in some way and that she tells them what's really going on. And also there's

42:08 that sort of that inertia that comes with being friends with someone in your early 20s, early to mid sometimes to late 20s where it's very hard to remove someone destructive from your life just out of sheer force of habit and fear of change.

42:22 Was there someone like that in your life? There's been a few people like that in my life. And um you know I really have tried I don't think I used to know the difference between someone being eccentric and someone being uh you know a destructive nightmare. I think I thought that the two went hand in hand. And now my life is full of people who are special and unusual and strange but don't scare me or hurt me or put me in dangerous situations. But I don't think I used to be able to make that distinction. So I had a few friends who have sort of been Jess's and you know Jamaima has some of that glamour but she's deeply kind and responsible and she's a mother of two but there were some people who I was really transfixed by and sort of followed around for a period of time who ultimately didn't have my best interest at heart or their best interests or anyone's.

43:13 Oh that's interesting. Thanks for for telling us about that. Thank you. I liked the concept I think at a point I really liked the concept of that kind of lost girl. that girl who was sort of moving through the world like you know she had a bit of a a little bit of a Zelda Fitzgerald lost broken woman romance quality that um is not as charming to me as it used to be.

43:32 Right, Lena Dunham. It's really just been so great to talk with you again. Thank you so much.

43:37 It's so nice to talk to you. I always love being here and it's always very surreal to hear you say the words fresh air. Thank you so much.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Lena Dunham on sex, oversharing And writing about lost 'Girls' (2014 interview) | Fresh Air"?

Terry Gross (Host), Lena Dunham (Guest).

What is "Lena Dunham on sex, oversharing And writing about lost 'Girls' (2014 interview) | Fresh Air" about?

Lena Dunham discusses her personal essays in "Not That Kind of Girl," addressing themes of self-acceptance, the complexities of young adulthood, and the fine line between candor and oversharing in her writing. She also reflects on her hit series "Girls," exploring the struggles of her characters as they navigate relationships and self-discovery.

What is mentioned in this Fresh Air episode?

6 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Not That Kind of Girl, Girls, HBO, Mil Street, Miko Kakatani, Tama Janowitz. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Lena Dunham on sex, oversharing And writing about lost 'Girls' (2014 interview) | Fresh Air"?

The episode runs 44 min; the transcript is about 8,446 words in 100 timestamped sections.

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