EMMYS: Lena Dunham On ‘Girls’
Charlie Mason is an AwardsLine contributor.
A year ago, you’d have been hard-pressed to find anyone who had ever heard of Lena Dunham. Now, of course, the 26-year-old New Yorker’s name is one of the household variety. Her Judd Apatow-produced HBO series, Girls, didn’t just earn its creator-writer-director-leading lady rave reviews, the pop-culture phenom also sparked 
discussions of nepotism and race — since she and two of her co-stars come from distinguished families, and there’s not a person of color among the cast.
AWARDSLINE: Congratulations on the nominations we think you’re going to get.
LENA DUNHAM: Thank you! That’s something I still can’t wrap my brain around.
AWARDSLINE: No? C’mon. Would you say you have a healthy interest in a nod, a mild obsession, or would you rather I hadn’t jinxed you by bringing it up?
DUNHAM: The Jew in me wants to go with the third. I’m so focused on shooting Season 2 that it’s hard for me to [worry about it]. That being said, it’s always nice to have the fantasy of the dress and getting to tell your parents how much you love them in a context that really matters — all those things [you] imagine when you’re standing in the shower.
AWARDSLINE: Is it a relief to just concentrate on work?
DUNHAM: It’s the best. If I wasn’t working, I can just imagine myself under my covers, hiding from people, reading every obscure blog entry possible.
AWARDSLINE: Would it be more meaningful for you to be nominated as an actor, director or writer?
DUNHAM: I’ve never thought of myself as an actor, so somebody recognizing me for that would be a real shock.
AWARDSLINE: Is that because the parts that you’ve played so far, in Girls and your breakthrough indie feature Tiny Furniture, have been versions of you?
DUNHAM: Yeah. I always say that I can play sort of six variations on one girl, all of whom are a variation on me. Maybe I’ll think of myself as an actor if, like, I do a corset drama.
AWARDSLINE: Compared to a lot of the people who’d be in your Emmy categories, you’re relatively inexperienced. Is that actually an asset in your work?
DUNHAM: I think so. I’ve been really encouraged… to stay in my own bubble. [No one’s] given me a lecture on how TV works, so it’s been a huge gift to just [create] without any limitations to the form. That’s like, ‘It’s OK to cast your friend from camp … it’s OK to write a 30-minute episode with a 15-minute scene.’
AWARDSLINE: Does Lena the actress ever frustrate Lena the director?
DUNHAM: Definitely. Even more, I frustrate myself as a writer. There are certain things that I’ll think, ‘Well, that would be really fun to play … if somebody else was playing this character.’
AWARDSLINE: Do you worry that, now that you’ve ‘made it,’ you’ll stop having the kind of misadventures that inspire your writing?
DUNHAM: That was my fear. [I harbored] an illusion: Nailing down what you want to do professionally would save you from certain interpersonal anxieties, and [now] I don’t think that’s true. Maybe the opposite is.
AWARDSLINE: With all the praise that’s been heaped on the show, there’s also been some backlash. You seem to be bearing up well.
DUNHAM: Of course, it’s challenging when people are attacking your show … especially the ‘race on television’ dialogue. But I was like, ‘Well, there aren’t enough people of color on television, and if my show is the one that gets people talking about it, I’m willing to take that one for the team.’ As for the well-known parents thing, we laughed about that in my house. People were like, ‘She’s Laurie Simmons’ daughter!’ I wanted to say, ‘I’d like you to give me an explanation in two sentences of who Laurie Simmons is and see if you can even do that.’ I do get it, though. It might seem like a crazy coincidence that we’ve got a David Mamet child and we’ve got Brian Williams’ child, but I think, once people watch the show, they forget who their parents might be.
AWARDSLINE: Yeah, if you’re watching Allison and thinking of Brian Williams…
DUNHAM: … Then you have your own special Brian Williams obsession that needs to be treated!
AWARDSLINE: Is there anyone you’re afraid you’ll forget from your potential acceptance speech that you’d like to thank now to be safe?
DUNHAM: My grandmother would be very angry at me for even allowing myself to believe that this could happen. But you can’t give any exciting speech without misremembering things. I gave a graduation speech in high school where I thanked, like, every single person except the school principal who was retiring that year. It definitely felt like about as low as I could sink in the ‘forgetting people’s names’ category, so I think I’ve already nailed this one!
Some of the complaints about Lena Dunham have been sexist.
True, but the majority of the complaints have been from other women. Guys either like her, or don’t care at all. Women are ticked that she’s getting her shot, and they’re 25 and are out in the cold. Worse, they care that a difficult to look at girl is getting her shot, while they look the same and expect to get passed over by model types. You expect pretty girls to get the breaks, but when one of your own gets it, the claws come out.
It took reading about two sentences of her interview to see she has both a sense of humor and very good timing. I know squat about her show — this made me want to watch. Good for her.
Where to begin? First, I personally know several men who HATE the show, especially fathers. Your theory that guys either like her or don’t care is weirdly dismissive as if Lena and her show aren’t worth male attention. Secondly, “a difficult to look at girl.”. Seriously? I find her to be adorable and the most compekling thing about the show. The whole “claws come out” think is the same old tired perpetuation of sexist stereotype. Get a clue.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE GIRLS.
THE PILOT WAS A BIT WEAK BUT HAS GOTTEN BETTER WITH EACH EPISODE WITH THE BESDT FINALE OF THE LAST FEW TELEVISION SEASONS.
I also feel that one shouldn’t feel compelled to add people of color for the sake of being politically corect. HOWEVER IS IT REALLY EASIER TO FIND A 26 YEAR OLD VIRGIN IN NYC(BROOKLYN NO LESS) THANK PEOPLE OF COLOR????
I AM AN NYU WRITER ACTOR I WOULD LOVE TO SHARE MY SCRIPT WITH YOU ABOUT MY NYC
Get lost.
Hi, NYC is full of people with color. Hispanic, blacks, Asians. The way they shoot this show doesn’t make me think New York at all. Sex And The City didn’t have any people of color as main characters but they had a way of making their surroundings full of colorful people.
Great show.
I love Lena Dunham. I don’t care that she has no minority leads.
I do care that she and her staff refer to defecating as “Taking Obama to the White House.” Get it? From The Atlantic: “That is ‘funny’ because the President has brown skin, and brown is the color of feces. There are other examples of her [Arfin's], ah, insensitivity on these issues. A reader sent a long this screencap of when Arfin favorited a swastika tweet.”
Also, when she does have a minority character, she does everything she can to rip minorities, specifically minority women who guys are apparently passing her up for.
The Asian character she slammed, the line about “it was all Indian girls,” the black homeless guy, the line about –
“I judge white guys who date Asian girls.”
Well, Lena, you’re not the only one, but how about this? I date white girls who judge white girls for dating Asian girls? Because only fug girls worry about the lack of white guys to date. I support your “art,” I loved TINY FURNITURE, but have some respect for your President.
Those quotes don’t prove shes a racist. She wouldn’t have Donald Glover on if she were a racist. Also, Donald Glover probably wouldn’y join the show if she made racist statements.
“date” should read “judge.”
Ha, I wrote my post before I read yours. My issue is with the staff writers and the blatant racism in the show. My jaw literally dropped at the end of the first character with the “smile, girl” homeless, crazy black guy. A show can have an all white cast. A show shouldn’t have an all white cast where the characters routinely make racist quips, the staff writer is a white woman who openly talks about using the n word and makes racist comments, and several of the minor minority characters are cringe worthy stereotypes. Girls makes 2 Broke Girls look culturally sensitive, and that’s hard to do.
Wait, you’re holding Lena Dunham responsible for a column one of her staff writers wrote before she was even employed by the show? What kind of bullshit is that? I don’t even like “Girls,” but it’s bizarre watching Dunham getting held to a standard that literally no one else in the entertainment industry is.
you include no context as to where/how these things were said– really, you should have some links when you post this kind of stuff.
It’s sad that Jemima Kirke and Lena Dunham have never really acted beyond Tiny Furniture, yet they both act Allison Williams off the screen. Allison Williams might be the single worst actor in the history of television. She is wooden in every single season. Just ruins the show for me.
It’s her character… and she nails it.
No. It’s not her character, what a lame excuse. Have you seen her try to act-cry? Ugh, please. She is such a sad excuse for an actress.
Every single season, huh?
I wish I could “like” this.
Lena Dunham may be a house hold name in parts of NY but that’s it lol.
I was thinking the same thing. No one knows who this chick is, outside of maybe this site and the 45 people who have seen Tiny Furniture.
Guess what people, minorities are just like white people. Just write a human experience and cast some people that don’t look like you. No one is looking for a race episode, we’re looking for representation visually. The poster for girls is ridiculous and sad since Lena is 23 years old. Come on. Hearing her on NPR was horrifying. “Minorities are not my experience.” Are human beings your experience?
Minorities are not her experience.
Going out of her way to trash them on her show seems to be her experience, however.
Why are you crying for Lena to include somebody who looks like you in her show? We’re just schvartzes to those people. Make your own movie and shoot it yourself. Reflect your OWN reality instead of crying to be in someone else’s. Have some dignity.
Lena Dunham has no responsibility to cast minorities just because they exist. It’s a show about Upper East Side white kids, hence the casting of a bunch of white girls.
Gee, I wonder, if an African American made a show with no whites in it, then compared whites to birdsh!t, and said “Whites are not my experience,” would we see anyone in the media praising that show?
Or would they be labeling it as “controversial,” “exclusionary,” “or “racially biased?”
Outside of New York this show has no significance. This is not a show about Generation Y. It’s not the “voice” of a generation” unless you think that the Millenials are all white girls from money.
This is strictly a program aimed squarely at a white suburban audience and it’s a lie to describe it any other way.
Good lord….please stop acting like you’ve been victimized because you don’t think the show has “representation”. Go watch BET or anything by Tyler Perry if you’re so offended.
What reality are you living in? Clearly, you’re own. Grow an intellect and have a spark a real discussion next time. Good lord.
You’ve said it.
Do you happen to have the link for that interview? I’m a huge fan of hers and if she really did said that, well, that’s just sad.
Girls simply reflects everything that’s wrong with the White Industrial Entertainment Complex. Dunham is just a young heiress-cog, so I don’t blame her.
It’s just blindness all the way around in the industry. Nothing can and will change that.
She looks EXACTLY like Judd Apatow. It’s uncanny.
Your comment not only made me laugh – but it is so much funnier than ANYTHING that has been on GIRLS. You should be writing the show. Don’t want that to come off as sarcasm – it’s TRUE. Funny post. Horrible show, Horrible little girl.
Your comment chillingly nails what nepotism is REALLY about. People want to help “their own”. Being “related” is when someone looks at you and sees themselves. And that happens a lot more for some people in Hollywood than it does for others. Or, as Lena puts it: “Minorities are not my experience.” Obviously.
So it’s not that no one knows who Laurie Simmons’ daughter is. It’s that Laurie Simmons has enough privilege and access to create a life for her daughter where she A) has the self-esteem to believe that people will give a s**t about her tiny movie (because they will, and frankly, they should); B) has access to the resources necessary to realize that tiny story; C) has access to the resources to find an outlet for that tiny story at SxSW; D) is exposed to a very very powerful person who looks like her, see “something” in her, and because of that, E) move to the front of the line at HBO who turns on the hype machine, gets the NY Times in the bag and F) become the new Voice Of A Generation.
Done and done.
A great story. No one’s saying she doesn’t deserve it, but let’s be real, it’s not gonna happen to someone from Washington Heights.
It is unfortunate that you blame her for having had opportunities. She deserves the praise she has received, she writes, directs, stars and produces a very poignant show. It is not for everyone and does not relate to everyone’s experience but to make it sound like she doesn’t work hard and is handed everything is just absurd. I know plenty of people her age who have come from families equally as privileged and aren’t doing anything with their lives. Because her mom is a successful artists you’ve never heard of doesn’t mean she was handed the keys to a castle.
I think nailed it’s point was not that Lena Dunham doesn’t deserve her success, or that plenty of people just as privileged as she is have wasted their opportunities, but the opposite – that some people – not a lot, but surely a few – who are just as talented as Lena Dunham – maybe even more so! – didn’t have her opportunities and therefore may never be heard from.
Certainly Lena Dunham is talented and works hard – would she have gotten this far, this fast, if she was a nobody? We’ll never know.
Her tacit approval of the disgusting racial remarks leveled at Barack Obama are completely unacceptable.
The season finale tonight was downright awful.
A household name? That’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever read on this site.
I wanted to like the show, especially since people have been raving about it. Too bad it sucks. It felt like I had seen all of those characters and situations before in previous movies and tv shows. It didn’t feel like it was bringing anything new to the table. Now that I know that she’s only 26, I know why. The show is slow, bland and unoriginal in my opinion. Felt like a dumded down Sex in the City, but with slackers. Maybe I’m too old for this show and it’s for a younger audience. Nah, it just sucks.