December 24, 2024 • 43 mins
Dunham, the creator of HBO’s GIRLS, says when she was younger, she thought she’d be a "Gender and Women’s Studies teacher who showed movies at the occasional film festival." Instead she's trying to figure out what to wear to shoot the cover of Rolling Stone. Dunham talks with Alec about getting a dog and her first date with her boyfriend Jack Antonoff. She’s not ready for children—yet—but they are on her mind: “I was raised to think that the two most important things you could do in your life were to have a passionate, generous relationship to your work and to raise children.”
Originally aired January 21, 2013
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here before we launch our next
season of Here's the Thing at iHeartRadio in January, I
thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives.
Three years ago, twenty three year old Lena Dunham made
a low budget art house film called Tiny Furniture. She
filmed the movie in her parents' house and basically played herself,
(00:25):
a recent college graduate moving back into her childhood bedroom
while making plans for her future. Dunham was proclaimed a
fresh original voice, a director with a bright future. Writer
director Judd Apatow was one of those who took notice,
and today he and Dunham executive produced Girls, a show
she created for HBO that premiered its second season on
(00:47):
January thirteenth. You're good.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I am so good at you kidding? I have never
been as well in my life.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
No, I know. I mean you've seen good that. The
wedding was so quick and unexpected. I kind of even
know how to process it.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, well, you tend to overthink things, and that's an
issue for you. This is what it's like when the
hunt is over. I think Sandy really likes me.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I really like him too.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
When you's so nice, and funny when you have sex.
There's no part of me that wants like pretend they
don't exist, which is a rarity.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
That's awesome. He's kind of a Republican, which feels weird.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
What's wrong of the Republican?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
It's just the same as a Democrat. They're old bags.
Lena Dunham has achieved an astonishing amount in just three years.
Her portrayal of Hannah Horvath and Girls recently won her
a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series.
This past October, she sold a book of essays and
advice to Random House, and her boyfriend is a rock star. Today,
(01:45):
she hardly resembles Aura, her character from Tiny Furniture. I
thought I wouldn't have much in common with Lena. She's
half my age and has been fiercely embraced by my
daughter's generation. But oh, how quickly we realized there was
common ground between us us.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Literally, my show is moving into the thirty rock stages.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
No, yes, we're taking you guys are moving to Silver Cup. Yes,
you and Michael Fop.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
We were in Silver Cup. Then we went to Steiner
because we couldn't get our stages back because some show
that has one word that's about murder took it. And
then we are coming back because you guys are leaving,
so we're going to be on your stages and in
your offices.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
No, no, I thought, isn't Michael Fox coming there too?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
He is. We're I think we don't take as much
stage space as you guys did, so we're going to
have because we have fewer sets. So I think it
is gonna have We're gonna have a piece and he's
gonna have a piece.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Now, as I'm sitting here meeting you for the first
time and talking to you for the first time, you
are nothing like I imagined you would be. Really nothing.
I'm a bit thrown here because you play someone who
is a guess in your mind that I want to
talk about. Your a vision of what kind of character
you wanted to create is a little bit a beat
behind everyone else. Or I'll let you articulate that what
(02:57):
you think she is though, But what I want to
say is you when I meet you, you seem like
you could be like a senator or the head of
the corporation. I mean, you're really very, very You seem
so together and smart, and you look great, and you
cut your hair, you look gorgeous. That is firstly, very meaningful.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And I have to not turn red and get excited
because you said that's radio.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
So I don't care. I don't care.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I'll get good, perfect, and I'm wearing my crew jacket
and I really I should have dressed up more for you.
But that being said, you know, it's funny. Firstly, a
beat behind idea really speaks to me because I'm always
sort of saying when people ask about Hand, I'm always
sort of saying, she's a version of me, but she's
a few years behind me, and she's also sort of
a few minutes behind everyone around her. So you really
(03:43):
picked up on a concept that I'm sort of always
thinking about a little bit when I play her and
when I write her.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
But she's who you used to be.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
You know, it's funny. I think I used to I
think I in order to convince myself that I should
play this character, or that I should even write this character,
I had to say, well, I'm just writing my It's
that easy. I'm just writing myself. Because the idea of
sort of creating an entire other human can be so
intimidating and Who are you?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Though?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
In real life?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
In real life, who are you?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I think that Hannah is someone who I'm very capable
of being, who's wounded, ambitious but doesn't know where to
place it. Hannah sort of the version of myself if
I'd had less understanding parents and sort of less drive
to get things done. And I think who I am
as a person who was always sort of if I
(04:31):
had to describe the war within myself that exists currently.
It's sort of the challenge of trying to reconcile the
part of me that that always thought I would be, like,
you know, a weird gender and women studies teacher who
occasionally showed movies at film festivals and hung out in
my strange apartment that was stacked high with books. Trying
to reconcile that with the part of me that has
to like figure out a dress.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
The cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Exactly it was to shoot the Rolling cover of Rolling
Stone Magazine was to figure out a dress to wear
that for an event that and everyone seems to be
worried about whether or not the dress is in st
because it has to be my own dress, and so
I'm dealing with all these sort of this strange echosystem
and all these weird politics that I kind of never
imagined would happen to me in my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You never imagined, No, you really never imagined it.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I think I my dream situation was that I would
be someone who people thought, oh, she's doing important work
in her own little corner.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Like a ras Chaste cartoon character, exactly like a Ra's
Chast cartoon character, or like I think because I went
to pretentious private school, the biggest dream you would have
is you'd be.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Like I'm going to be Joan Diddyon. That was kind
of where your brain was allowed to wantry maybe Nora.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
E from Maybe You'll make films, but you're not going
to be in films exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And I don't think when I first started acting, I
mean I never got parts in high school. I never
even I never was able. I think I had a
twofold thing about it. One is that it came from
a family of artists, and so the idea was sort
of like you made your work and then got out
of the way of it. Like part of what was
I think I internalized the idea that your work was
supposed to speak for you. You were not supposed to
speak for your work, and so I think I was
(06:00):
conscious about the idea of being anything so self promoting,
and although that's not what acting is, it is now
it's become that. And then I also think that I thought, well,
there's people who are professionals who can do this better
than me. So I'm just going to act until I
have access to the people who should be acting. And
sometimes I still feel that way. Sometimes I think, like,
(06:21):
you know, I'll do this a little longer and then
Michelle Williams can play me every day till I die.
Something that's really nice about making the show that isn't
that is a comedy that isn't stuck in any sort
of I mean, thirty Rock was able to bust out
of a lot of network sitcom tropes, but a lot
of the time when you're on a I think one
of the biggest things that networks prevent, besides curse words
(06:43):
and showing your breasts is development. I think that when
you play, I think so many sitcom characters end up
playing the same version of themselves in various scenarios.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
This is the thing as God as my judge. This
is the thing that we talked about in the meeting
to prep this thing with you, which was shows I've
seen where the protagonists male or female, they're going through
the same set of problems in season six that they
were in season one. It's just different lines in different coasts. Yes,
And with you, I'm wondering, do you have a Bible
(07:17):
on the show? Do you have an arc in your mind?
Not even on paper, not even approved with your other
Could you do this with jud correct.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I do it with Judd and a woman named Jenny
Connor who's the other executive producer.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
And we have a great little writer's room.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
But our writer's room doesn't really work like It's not
like we write a script and then all sit together
punching it up. It's much more we sit together at
the beginning of the season and really talk through It's
like a giant therapy session where we work out the
emotional arc and then we go to it.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And when you work out that emotional arc, do you
think to yourself are the things that she's going through?
Now your character and the other characters where you're saying
to yourself, let's make sure they're not going through this,
that there is growth a season from now or by
the end of the season completely.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And that's why I feel like it's okay for me
to cut my hair, or it's okay for me to
start spinning, or it's okay for me you know whatever
I whatever to change to change, because I feel as
though so much of what this show is about is
about seeing these girls off into their adulthood. Like in
my Bible, the ideal finale to the show would be
a feeling like, you know, they don't have to have kids,
(08:17):
they don't have to have husbands, but you look at
them and you kind of go, they're on their way.
They're more okay than they were when they started, or
they're less okay, but we have an understanding of what
kind of adult we think they're going to be.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So describe to me how that works. Because the theme
here is control. And you are, like other brilliant comedy
writing chicks I've known over the years. You have this
is your show, this is your thing. So how does
it start? How does whose idea was? Girls? Was it yours?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
It was mine? Because I basically I went in, I
made this movie tiny Furniture, and I made it. You know,
my mom and sister starred. We shot it in my
mom's house, my mom and dad's house. It was totally
populated with friends, some of whom have made their way
to Girls with me.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
And what motivated you don't want to do tiny furniture.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I had always wanted to be a writer, and I
used to think I wanted to be a playwright, and
then in college I sort of had this revelation where
I thought, like, plays, you rehearse, and you rehearse, and
then they happened twice. Like I just felt so frustrated
by the lack of permanence. Like I'd always been sort
of turned on by the fact that when my parents
as artists, made work, like they had these material items
that would outlast them. And I was frustrated that that
(09:25):
wasn't a part of the theater experience. So I started
making short films and I made my first feature and
went to south By Southwest Film Festival with it, and
then I just had and I'd been making web TV,
and I just had this itch to sort of tell
the specific story, and I wrote the script and the kind.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Well, that's what I want to talk about, is is
that itch meaning beyond the arc of the shooting and
the and the career aspects of it or the burgeoning career.
What was it about what was going on in your
life that you want to do that movie?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
On a practical, real life level, I wanted to talk
about that moment between college and adulthood that felt so
flounder and so every day I felt like I was
walking through the strangest, most surreal soup. That would mean
that on a deeper level, I kind of wanted to
talk about change, which is what I always think is
sort of the most interesting place to find characters is
in a time of intense change. And so I sort
(10:16):
of also wanted to capture this moment where I was
I knew that I wouldn't live at home forever, that
my little sister wouldn't be sort of seventeen and ambitious
but also stuck in her bedroom forever, that my mom
was sort of looking in this beautiful moment where she
kind of was I mean, she'd murder me for saying this,
but she looked that kind of beautiful way where it's
like you're not quite old yet and you just look
(10:37):
kind of She just looked kind of perfect to me,
and I just.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Look a great car.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, And I just thought I could say that exactly,
and I just thought, I want to capture all of this.
I want to capture our cats, I want to capture
our house, I want to remember all of this. And so,
so you really love your mom. I'm obsessed with my mom. Okay,
I love my mom.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
But I'm saying, that's interesting that you have that feeling
and that's what makes you survey what's around. You wouldn't
want to capture that because I find typically people who
are not happy they got to wait a while until
they can negotiate the pain to go back and talk
about that.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
It's one of the biggest things that inspires me to
make work is this feeling of looking around and going,
even if you're not perfect, you're all so perfect right now,
let's capture this and then, you know, I'd love the feeling.
I was just watching like Panic and Needle Park last week,
that movie which is you know it, Kitty Win, Kitty Gosh,
She's so good. Where did Kitty Win go?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah? Let me get that vile out for Kitty Win.
She's incredible.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
But so I was watching that and I was just
thinking about how exciting it was to be able to
watch sort of like al Pacino at that first moment
when he was sort of like he still almost looked
a little adolescent, and he was still and he was
learning his craft and just behaving on film. Yeah, and
I just love capturing that. And that's something that I've
tried to do with girls too, is sort of grab
people and go, let's just let's just see you as
(11:55):
you are right now.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Now.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
So the film did well, So then how does girls Happen?
Girls happened? Because so then I went to LA and
kind of did that. I went like, Okay, I guess
what you do next is get an agent. And I
guess what you do next is try to figure out
what you're doing next.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You, I mean, you're on the runway.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Now, Yes, I was. I was on the runway, and
I was going around LA doing the sort of what
I call the couch and water bottle tour of LA,
where you meet everybody and have those kind of general
meetings where and I remember it was so funny because
at first I didn't understand that everybody says to you
at the end of the general meeting, oh, I'd love
to find a way to work with you. And so
I would call my agent afterwards and go, oh my god,
it was amazing, and he said he wants to find
a way.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
To work with me, and he meant he what should
come clean his pool?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, basically, I'd always been obsessed with TV. I'd always
loved TV and found it to be the most sort
of comforting medium and.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
The one that what comforted you on TV?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
What comforted me on TV was there's a range of
things that comforted me on TV. I loved having weird
what was the most what was the weirdest? I mean,
my favorite show when I was little was Under the
Umbrella Tree, which is a Canadian show about a woman
who lives with three puppet and it was on every
morning at seven am. God there were three of them
named Iggy, Gloria, and Jay, and Iggy was an iguana.
(13:07):
Gloria is a groundhog and Jay is a blue jay
and he lives out back in a birdhouse. They like
talk to you about recycling, or like help their old
elderly neighbor who fell down in the street. Like they're
just like nice puppets, But looking back, it feels like
a child molester who's on the lamb with her three.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
My my guilty pleasure. Like that was when I was
in my twenties and I go to my friend's house
and we just had this weird habit where like at
four o'clock in the afternoon, we'd like make a drink
and we'd roll the biggest joint and we'd smoke pot
and watch a show called Stairway to Stardom that was
on Public Access TV. And Stairway to Startom was this
older man and kind of looked like Rod Steiger. He
was like a burly looking, tough looking older man. And
(13:45):
his wife and she kind of looked like like Tammy
Faye Baker. She was like a big, big honey combed
shellacte hair and she was like this big bosom me
older woman. And the guy would come out and he
had the funniest voice. He'd be like, welcome everyone to
sell and use, and they'd sing a song and opening
so and they would bring out acts that would perform.
(14:06):
They were all like local queens Brooklyn talent parakeets.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
It was like it was bizarre that sounds like the
best thing in the world. It was the best show
in the world, especially if you've smoked.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
An enormous amount of marijuana an enormous joint, so you're
on the Sofa water Bottle Tour and what happens on
the sofa water bottle.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Tour and my agent, who I feel like you're not
supposed to say you love your agent because it makes
you sound really Hollywood and everyone. I love everyone, And
also I have the best agent. He's like really been
at it for a long time. He's like a cigar
smoking you know, he's what I imagined. His name's Peter Benedeck.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Peter Benedict did know Peter Benedeck, And he smoked cigars.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
He's old school, he's old kind of a hectemic gothapy exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
And he belongs to a cigar club. Which one does
he belong to? I think it says it has a
Cuban flair. I think it is.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I'm on the board of Grand ev are you. I
know Peter and I probably have seen him a Granda
that Wow. He always plays on the out there and
smoked the goods with him when you were still a
gleam in your parents. Aye, you weren't even around God.
Damn with the way this business works. No, no, no,
So he's your agent and you love him.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
I love him, And he said to me, I was
sort of saying to him like, maybe I could get
I just wanted to move out of my parents' house,
and I thought and make more movies. And I was like,
maybe I could should write a spec how I met
your mother, and I could get staffed on a show.
I mean, I didn't know any I didn't know how
any of this worked. And he said that I should
go for a meeting at HBO, and I did, and
I said, well, here's what I'd want to see, is
(15:30):
like a show about all my girlfriends, like sort of
like Tiny Furniture, but there's more of us, and we
don't live with our parents anymore, but it's still about that.
It's like it was pitched so weekly, like a year
after my movie, but there's more of us and it's
a TV show.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So the conversation wasn't coming out of and Tiny Furniture
in the indie and in the festival world had a
very good buzz. There was no conversation, but you just
going right into films and making more films. Normally they're
going to want to steer some especially your age was
very young. They're going to go just keep making movies.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well, you know, there was a conversation, but I think
I picked up on the fact very early going on
the Couch and Water Bottle tour that the kind of
stories that I wanted to tell we're not really being
funded on a larger scale and film.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
We're taking a break stay with us.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I picked up on the fact very early going on
the Couch and Water Bottle tour that the kind of
stories that I wanted to tell we're not really being
funded on a larger scale.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And film Tina says that sometimes the Tina I would
just finished working. Yeah, it seems like it's more difficult
to ay to have the control you want in the
film business and be to say what you want to say.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
It is, And the fact is I could have kept
saying what I wanted to say, you know, making twenty
five thousand dollars movies, but I wanted It's weird. The
reason that I like having some budget is not because
you know, I want to stagecarshes or I want to
have you know, ten makeup artists on set, although those
things would will would be lovely, But but it's more
(17:08):
because of the fact that I do so many jobs,
so so exciting to not have to worry anymore about
answering the doorbell, about returning the equipment, about making sure
that people had the pizza. Also, that's going to happen
in TV. And what I has money and has HBO
is time Warner. But they have money, but they use
it in this kind of amazing It's this amazing model,
which is that they don't have to answer to advertisers
(17:30):
in the same way. So HBO can sort of fulfill
its odd little interests. And that's what I started out
as and I what I didn't predict was how much
I would love the opportunity to develop characters in this
way and the kind of the fiber of TV itself.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
And they believe in you. Based on my experience, I've
never worked for them, but I've have many friends and
colleagues over the years who've worked for them, and I've
I've almost worked for them here and there. You know,
HBO is one of those places like that, I think
the most six testful studios and networks. The way they operate,
which is that they vetted maybe to a fairly well,
but if once they believe in you, they're all in
(18:07):
it's yours. They give you the money that they it's
not too intrusive now, so the template of four women,
and obviously HBO is no stranger to the template of
four women talking about but obviously those women were older.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And you've been a fan of that show, Yes, I
think that I can't find one girl who isn't at
least secretly a fan of Sex and the City who's
my age. And I loved it, And you know, I
was very conscious when I was first writing the show.
I thought to myself, should I put these girls in Boston?
There was and I tried to make it three girls
because and Shashana was initially not one of the girls.
(18:42):
Shashana was jess as Zosher Mammot's character was jess A's
Jemim mc kirk's character's cousin, and she kind of came
in and out as a kind of She was the
more suring as a recurring in and out goofball who
was sort of supposed to call to.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Be that.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
She does. She plays it beautifully and but the reason
that I wrote her was to sort of call out
the Sex and the City thing, like this is the
girl who came to New York to have her cosmos
and her Manolo's and it's not going quite right. But
she was so wonderful, and she added something that the
three of us didn't have on our own, and so
it became a four person delio. And so I tried
(19:23):
to make it three women. I tried to put it
in a different city. But the fact is is that
New York is where it was supposed to happen, and
four women just somehow there's a symmetry to it that
doesn't Gee.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Star, be damned, I'm going to do.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it. And so
but the fact is that you know, sext and City
is a specter that hangs over in a I mean
in a positive way. Everything when female centric, and you know,
in the writer's room, every there were so many episodes
of Sex and City and they tackled every area of
sexual function and dysfunction that there's almost nothing you can
pitch that they haven't done.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
But I found that the women on Sex in the City,
that those women would have things happen, and they tended
to brush off the consequences pretty quickly. Yeah, whereas the
girls on your show, the tone seems very different. Everybody
seems to almost be doubting what they're doing, or they
have a kind of a sense of fear or anxiety
about it. While they're doing it, it seems more real. Was
(20:14):
that deliberate in your part? Well, something I.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Feel about being in your twenties, which is different than
you know. Sex and the City was a show about
women in their thirties who had successful careers pre recession,
the best, most supportive friends. They didn't have. I mean,
they had little friend TIFFs. But the characters on our
show are tortured. It's sort of impossible to get through
your twenties without It's like, if you ask a girl
in her twenties, are you a happy person? I think
(20:38):
she can say I have happy moments, but I don't
think it's possible. Maybe I'm maybe people will radically disagree
with me, but I don't really think it's possible to
be sort of an at peace human when you are
between twenty two and thirty, and so I think there's
dot I don't because I think.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
That's a problem that I mean for me. One thing
that I noticed when I went to college, which is
a long time ago, an interesting number of people they
really knew what they wanted to be, they weren't quite
sure how to get there. They had a dream. I
want to become a lawyer, I want to become a doctor.
I want to go into politics. I want to go
into and now people today it seems like younger people
really they think they have more time to figure it out.
(21:20):
You're turning twenty five, and they really don't have that
picture and focus. Do you agree?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I do agree, And I think a big part of
it is being I think the Internet has cracked things
open in a way that's both beautiful and that it
helps you find. There's so many things that I never
would have even known about, things that have been huge
for me that have existed because of the Internet. And
I think that I've been able to partially connect with
people who would be fans of the show because of
(21:44):
the Internet. I think, you know, it's always exciting when
like there's this website called rookiemag dot com that's run
by this girl, Tavi Jevnson, and it's a smart teen
magazine that exists only on the Internet. And I just
think if when I was a teenager there had been
that place and that message board, I would have felt
like the world was my oyster like just meeting other
weirdo girls who had the same who like you know whatever.
(22:06):
At the time, I just wanted to talk to someone
about Connor Oberst or something on the Internet, and that
would have been possible. But I think now the fact
that like the Internet has created so many strange specialized
jobs and so many things where it's like, you know,
I'm a brand consultant, slash blog enhancer or whatever. People
are like, suddenly the world feels wide open, but there
(22:28):
are less jobs available, and so it's a really confusing
moment to make any decisive choice about what you want
to do.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
It's interesting you say that the Internet is responsible for that,
and then idea of having too many choices than you
need you wind up bout.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
That could also be a metaphor for like men in
their twenties dating. I feel like men in their twenties
like I once had dated a guy who told me
that he didn't feel like he could be serious about
anyone in New York because it would be like eating
at the same restaurant every night in New York, Right,
there's so many amazing choices. It's New York City.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
I hope he choked some whatever a restaurant to go. Yeah,
I shouldn't say that. That's me that's wrong.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I feel like that, so it's helpful to have it
backed up by Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the
thing more in a minute. Lena Dunham didn't have to
(23:30):
look far to come up with her character on Girls.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Physically, I'd say Hannah is. I mean, she's me because
I play her. But it's funny because she's chubby, but
she doesn't. That's not where her anxiety comes from. Like
she's just not I like playing a character who doesn't
have a perfect body, but that's not the main source
of their anxiety. I feel like we have very few
female characters on television who don't look like models and
(23:56):
aren't constantly discussing it. So of course Hannah has her
moments of self conscientiousness, just like every woman does, but
that's not She sort of doesn't notice that her clothes
don't quite fit. She sort of doesn't think about what
she eats.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
It's and I have closed her just to cover you
up and keep you warm, exactly. They have some degree
of style to the grain, but less.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Like a character exactly. And I like she's more interested
in like whether her clothes are funny and witty, like
I don't think she really cares about being sexy. She's
more just like, oh, this dress like has owls on it?
How sweet? I used to be much in college. I
dressed like a complete lone. I feel like my dad
always told me, I look the golon tamer all the time.
I've calmed down just because I realized that you could
vests with so many vests, red vest, so many red vests,
(24:35):
so many like you know, strained boots pulled over my
weird leggings with a three flounced skirt. I could never
accessorize enough. It was oppressive. But in the Luftwaffa, yeah, exactly.
And so so that's Hannah's sort of physical I think emotionally,
some facets of Hannah are that she is, you know,
she has a certain amount of wit and a certain
(24:56):
amount of sort of spunk, but she isn't really applying
it anywhere properly yet. And she's also.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Smart and funny and not mean because a lot of
the people in that world and the improvisational comedy were
oh my god and funny in there me and that
meanness is the font that it comes from. Is that source?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I know and you know the thing about Firstly, my
dad is like a manner's Nazi. So I think that
I grew up feeling like the worst thing you could
do was offend somehow.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Sit up straight in that chair, and your dad told
me to say that.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I know, Oh my god, my dad still tells me
to sit up straight constantly.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I'm going to call it.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And then and it's funny because both my dad is
an artist and he paints these sort of outlandish intense
I mean, he paints things that are pretty pretty sexual images,
pretty aggressive images, you know, a man with a I mean,
they're funny, but they're intents. It's like two men with
penises for noses in a war with guns and knives
(25:49):
with three women.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Grew up around this, is around it.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
But it was what was interesting was that my dad
was sort of like you.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Can do girls. I know, dad had penises on his face, on.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
His face, on every face, but you know, you I
grew up around it. But I think that my dad
always really showed me that there was a difference between
you know, what your work was and who you were.
And he's so my parents are so polite and so
sort of they just I think so much of this. Again,
I've never had kids. I've you know, I don't know
what that feels like. But I think, how old are
you know? I'm twenty six and I want kids, but
(26:20):
I'm not ready. No, please, I really.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
I just tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I just got a doctor.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
We already have birth control pills for you.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Seriously, no kids now. I don't want kids. I just
got adoption. Everybody things I'm insane. I just finished season two.
Season three. Well, we're starting season three and we're starting
at the end of March, so exciting.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, I want to come and play yours therapist.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
That would be the most fun thing in the world.
It's bad, bad, bad, But I forget what I'm saying.
But I'm glad you don't think.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
I get too guilty if I ever make a mean joke,
like appreciate what I'm saying, I do, well, I'm terrified.
It's one of the reasons I don't I don't really
feel like a comedy writer, because there's sort of like
a quickness and a harshness, and you need.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
To have those people in your bullpen there. Do you
have some more really traditional edgier We do have.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I have a couple of writers on the staff, one
Murray Miller, who this season was really essential in sort
of bringing us just hard jokes, But no one on
our staff has that particular kind of darkness. I've been
around a lot of those comedy writers, and you know,
there's that feeling of like even when they're saying something
nice to you, they're kind of trying to murder you
with their eyeballs, and it's.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
It's it becomes too much salt to the soup exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It's impressive to me in small doses, but terrifying.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
You've got to have it, but you've got to mix
it carefully. Like when we did our show that was
that was a big issue where like sometimes I would say,
I just think this is too mean, Like we're going
to lose people like we want to be we want
to be mean, but we have to decide who we're
going to be mean too. It's true who deserves it.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
My thing is also I always I only really make
jokes about people I like, Like when there's a joke
that references a celebrity on the show, it's usually a
joke that I'm making because I have really taken note
of their work and have fascinated by.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
It's not because you slept with them and you want
to get even with them.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
No, I don't have that instinct.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
So talk about two things. The level of control you have.
I mean, you are a very young woman, and I'm
assuming it's all you correct, I mean it is.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
I mean I work with Jenny and Judd really closely,
and I definitely I think I'm constantly sort of telling
myself I have bosses around. It kind of comforts me.
I mean, and you don't, do you not exactly. I
have collaborators. I have collaborators, but I have collaborators who
I take really seriously and who you need and who
I need and who I would never I think the
(28:34):
minute you get an attitude like it's my show, the
ship runs on duneam and my way or the highway,
I think it's broken exactly. I think you still want
to feel a little fear when you share a script
with your collaborations. You want to go I hope they
like this. I'm going to listen to them. When they don't,
I still feel tremendously indebted to them and anxious about
(28:56):
their reactions. And I never feel like, you know, I'm
the big boss and you guys can all get with
it or leave.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
So when so the Hannah character you start out, I
mean in tiny Furniture, I almost feel like tiny.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Furniture is it's.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
You. You. You may become one of these actresses now
where it's all one series. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
It kind of is. It's funny when I look at
any character I've played in anything that I've made, it's you,
it's me, and it's it's funny. I've never played anyone
whose name doesn't end with a I've made. I've written
all these characters who because I always have to have
a name that I think sort of like is.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
In the world name it's the two double syllables.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Someone said to me to be a famous star, you
need to have two double syllable names.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
You do, do you?
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Or two monos? But Sean Penn, Marlon Brando.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
My mom did tell me that she gave me my name,
which is so funny because it's not like we have
any actors in her family. My mom said, I'm named
after my Russian gret Grad. And my mom said, but
when she named me, she thought, I don't know what
she'll want to do. But this is a great name
if she does want to be a movie star. That
was what my mom thought, which is so funny because
it's not like my mom's some crazy stage mom or
(30:11):
like is she she's a photographer and.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
She's what's the source of your real close to the start,
to the extent you can say, I don't.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Want to prob oh, no, I don't mind. I've clearly
I don't mind. We are very similar in ways that
can be delightful and can be maddening. Something I like
about both my parents, and I'd imagine you're like this
with kids too. Is they really talked to me like
I was an adult always? And I love that And
I love I love talking to kids like their adults
because it's like they kind of come alive when you
(30:38):
just ask them real questions. And yes, my mom always
really let me into her world. And I'm working right now,
I'll talk to in ten minutes, And just having that
kind of access to her was amazing. Yeah, And I've
just always thought she was the coolest, and it's funny
and it's nice to see it echoed because all my
friends think she's the coolest too.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Now you're going to do how many seasons of the
show are you signed on to do well?
Speaker 2 (30:59):
You know, it's not clear. I mean HBO contractually has me,
I think as an actor for six years, but as
a writer, and I wish I should pay more attention
to my deals. But I'm just so excited to have
my job. I just go, okay, whatever you say. But
I think my dream world is that, you know, I
want to kind of follow like you know, how British
shows always know British shows and thirty Rock always know
(31:20):
just when to get off the air.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
The question becomes how you can maybe you know, do
that TV show? And the schedule is how many months.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
We do it?
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Well, how many episodes.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
We've been doing ten? I think between you, me and McGee,
I think we might do twelve next year, right, But
I would love that. I don't want to, like, I
don't have any desire in doing like, you know, a
twenty two episode. I don't even understand how someone does
the twenty two episode marathon. But I do think that
doing I think that a little more would be just
a little more storytelling real estate and it'd be amazing.
(31:53):
But you know, so I shoot four four and a
half months out of the year, then I'm editing and
I'm doing press that I'm writing. Then I'm back. So
so it's not four and a half months, so it's
not it's safe months. It's actually more like twelve months.
And so would you make.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
A movie during the breakfast now?
Speaker 2 (32:11):
No, I couldn't because there was just no time. I
finished shooting in August, I was editing.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Why don't you make a deal with HBO with all
financi your films, so you're working for them in its
olin house.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
It's very smart. I mean, I really want to make
a movie. I have two features scripts that I've been
working on that I just I want to make another
before I make like a big, massive ambitious movie. I mean,
I want to make a creatively ambitious movie. But I
want to make another small movie I have. I have
small movie idea.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Do you have a massive ambitious movie inside you? I do,
but it's I you have an idea?
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I do.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
But it's so weird, fifty four year old psychotherapist that.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
There's there's a fifty four year old somebody And I mean.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
I'll talk to you later in the traffic controller.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Working with you is one of my long standing dreams.
But I am and I'm also I'm writing a book.
So that's something that.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Was really well I heard about that.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
It's something that was really important to me to start
doing it at this point in my career.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Starn And you write and produce your own TV show
and you're writing a book. H Who did that remind
me of? What are you gonna write a book about?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I'm writing a book. Well, I guess it's about me,
although it's a little less about me because it also
has advice an advice component, but it's like personal essays.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
So is it like Paula Pell's Hey Young Girls?
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Oh my god, I love Hey Young Girls. Makes me
so happy. Paula Pel is funny. Paula Pel is someone
who's funny and not mean.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah, Paula Pel's I mean to the right people.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
She's just a dreamy person. But you know, the thing
that's been so great about writing the book is I've
always loved writing prose, and I wanted to make it
a part of my career sooner rather than later, because
I didn't want it to be like when I decided
to write a book in ten years, it was like, oh, look,
here's a celebrity memoir. Number fifty seven I wanted it
to really feel like I'm a person who writes prose
and that it's a part of my life and career
(33:50):
for a long time.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
But unlike other people that are writing books, they don't
have TV shows that they're starring in and writing. When
you're done doing now not just ten but twelve episodes,
what do you have left to go into the book?
Speaker 2 (34:00):
There's stuff that's just for the book.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
There's still an example.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Well, likewise, I write a lot about my childhood in
the book. I write a lot about my parents. I
write a lot about college and sort of like that,
I write a lot about that period. I write a
lot about sort of the beginning of being sexual person.
I write about relationships. I'm writing a lot about sort
of female role model I.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Want to say about sexuality.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
It's interesting. I've had to become more conscious about what
I say and what I promote. Not in a way
that stifles me, but just in a way where I
realize now that there are seventeen year old girls who
come up to me and tell me that the show
means a lot to them, and.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
This show one percent of your audience is influenced. This
is what I learned from someone one percent of your
one percent is genuinely and in any way influenced by
what you do and say. That's still tens of thousands
of people.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
It's amazing. It's an amazing thing. And it's like it's
a platform that you have to take seriously, which is
why sometimes it's like I used to be really into Rihanna,
that pop star, and then it was like again, I
don't want to ever, you know, throw stones from my glasshouse,
but I follow her on Instagram and I just think
about how many little girls, beyond what I could even comprehend,
are obsessed with Rihanna, Like, you know, she left Barbados,
(35:08):
she's had this amazing career, she's you know, one Grammy,
she's talented, and then she gets back together with Chris
Brown and posts a million pictures of them smoking marijuana
together on a bed, and it cracks my heart in
half in a way that makes me feel.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Like I'm nicety Chris Brown smoking pot.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
No, because she got back together, was going, oh, yeah,
you guys, you made a really good joke, and I
got too emotional and in my response, yeah, because I
want to that's here. It's terrible, mean enough, it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
So you are as a role model. What won't Hannah
or the other girls in the quartet do?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Jenny and I talk about this a lot. We won't
fuck someone because they have a nice apartment. There's not
going to be any version of sort of like prostuding yourself.
There's not going to be any version of dating somebody
because he can take you out to nice dinner.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Wait, wait, you're putting down my whole playbook. This is
all I have left. Wait a second. That is so
wrong of you.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Come on, it's interesting. I have so many friends who
are so sort of tortured by their romantic relationships, and
I think such a big part of it is that
the desires of young men and young women are not
caught up with each other.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
And I say to my wife, I do want to
eat in the same restaurant every night, but I want
the hostess to wear a different outfit every night. Perfect.
But so you say they won't monetize sex.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
They won't monetize sex, And it's like even more subtle
than that, Like, I don't like a storyline that's like
unless it's really saying something about where characters at. I
don't like a storyline that's like, you know, he bought
me an entire trousseau of dresses, and so I'm his forever.
Like that's just not the way that I want to
idealize anything. I think that the characters, the characters can
make mistakes, but they have to be emotionally responsible for
(36:41):
the things that they've done. I don't ever want to
like have a makeover scenario where someone's doing better after
they've put on a great dress and you know, straight
ironed their hair. Like I just there's it's a really
instinctual thing, but it's just a feeling a balance. I
want women. This is so kind of Hippi tippy, but
I want them to make their own choice. I want
them to I don't want people to live in service
(37:03):
to sort of what television things they should look like,
or what their family things they should act.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
How much do you think that women, because this is
a very sensitive topic, I mean because I'm I'm not
going to go Norman Mailer here, but I feel like,
you know, the interesting thing for society is if women
have been allowed to make their own choices for the
most part, for the last forty years, or at least
for the last twenty five and that's reaped enormous benefits
for society. I mean, forget about just women. But at
(37:28):
the same time, women are the only ones who can
have children, true, and therefore in the way that we're
trying to in the traditional family or even in a
gay family where a man and two guys want to
have a baby with a woman, or two women want
to have a child together, that balance of career and
ambition and so forth with family is that something that
(37:48):
you struggle with some numbers you even think that.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Struggling, But I mean I think about it all the
time actually because I'm.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Because you're the product of a happy home, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
And I want all that you want to replicate that totally.
I was raised to think that the two most important
things you could do in your life were have a passionate,
generous relationship to your work and to raise children. And
so you still feel that way, and I do still
feel that you want to have children big time. I'm
so excited. I don't want like to jolly pit the
whole situation, but like, like at least two and I
(38:16):
think all the time about it's funny exactly. I might
got Jenny Connor's daughter, Coco, who's eight and is my
dear friend. We like to go out to see live
music together. Coco one day was like, when do you
think you're going to have children? Just roughly, and I
was like, I don't know, Coco, Like, you know, I'm
twenty six, so I'd like to wait till I'm like
at least thirty. And she was like, at that point,
I think you should not be working on girls. And
(38:39):
if you are working on girls, you're going to have
to cut your hours down to like eight thirty to
six because you need to be able to be there
when they wake up, and you also need to be
there with them at nice issue. Yeah, and she, basically
an eight year old, started to school me in the
way that my lifestyle would not allow for children. She
was like, you know your boy My boyfriend's a musician
and he tours a lot. And she was like and
she was like, he might have to quit his job.
And I was like, I don't think he's going to
(38:59):
quit his job. Well, that might be hard for you too.
You might have to really talk about it. And even
just now, I just adopted a dog and I was
really really it was like instead of just meeting a dog,
thinking it was adorable and bringing it home. It was
this tortured thing of like, am I gonna be able
to give it what it needs? And what if it
resents me? And at a certain point my mom, who
is really ready to play dog grandma and is playing
(39:20):
to spend a lot of time with the dog, was
like she was like, Lena, it's a fucking dog. She
was like, it's at a certain point she was like,
I get it. I'm glad you're thinking it through, but like,
this is not like adopting twins now.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Two things that I think are kind of connected, which
is how do men present themselves? You have a boyfriend,
and I don't want to prior to your personal life,
but you how do men present themselves too differently? You
said that Hannah was this and that and a chubby
girl who did and now you're now the name Lena
Dunham means something else to people. How do men present
themselves to you now different from the way they used to?
Speaker 2 (39:54):
It's interesting. I mean, I'm so bad at knowing if
anybody's hitting on me, Like someone literally has to like
beat me on the head with a drumstick and me
back to their cave for me to understand that it's
going on, and then I would, and then they then,
and then I didn't hire Gloria Alred as my attorney.
Yeah exactly. But you know, the thing is is that
sleazy people are attracted to and sleazy people and not
(40:16):
sleazy people are attracted to any sense of GRAVI toss
that someone might have. So so I definitely have had more.
I mean, I definitely have had felt less ignored by
the opposite sex. But I'm also so bad at perceiving
any of it. And so did you know your boyfriend
liked to Well, we got set up on a blind date,
(40:37):
so I knew he liked well. I didn't know he
liked me, but he was predisposed. He was predisposed to
like me because what we were going on was a date.
And then that was a special situation because I went, oh,
I think he likes me, and I like him, And.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Tell me if you don't want answer this question, but
I just find it charming. Where did you go on
your first date with your boyfriend?
Speaker 2 (40:51):
We went to Blue Ribbon Bakery in the West Village.
And the reason I was happy is because I find
picking a restaurant so anxiety producing, because I feel like.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, because the lemma a burdens ass. It really is.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
And also, what if I choose the wrong restaurant and
you have a bad association with it or you think
I'm pretty much.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Poorly on me?
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Exactly, it's just the worst. And like what if we
go there and you don't like a brand muffin? Exactly,
it's stressful. So he said, before I even had to
say anything, he said, if it's stressful for you, I
can pick the restaurant. And I felt like, okay, I'm
going to be in great hands.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Where did you pick?
Speaker 2 (41:25):
And then you picked Blue room Maker? And then I
ate a cheese and then I ordered a hamburger and
he said, I think you should get cheese on it.
It's not nice.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
And you went, oh my god, I'm home.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Yeah that's easy.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
I was so glad you like, did my mom call
you for this date?
Speaker 1 (41:39):
And let you know, cheese? I like Yarlsburg exactly, somebody
suggesting burger and then and then and now you've been
dating it for a while, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Like almost a year. It's been. He's a very very
great person.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
To meet you and tell me if I'm onto something here.
You seem like someone that regardless of what you look
like or didn't look like, or what you had or
didn't have. Whoever you were, you have a very very
healthy and kind of guileless sense of who you are
and you present it yourself to people your entire life,
going this is who I am, and if you like me, great,
and if you don't, there's another six point five billion
(42:18):
people out there to go for it. Am I right?
Speaker 2 (42:20):
I mean that's the most stress to me. That's the
most lovely way of putting it. I mean, I think
I think I always had a feeling like if you
just stick around and continue to be yourself, the correct
people will find you. And that's something that's been so
wonderful about the show is that it kind of confirmed
that for me, which is not everyone watches it, but
the people who watch it understand it. And that feeling
I'm sure you've had this before of uniting with your
appropriate audience and sort of uniting with your people is
(42:42):
like about as comforting as feelings get.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
You too, can unite comfortably with Lena Dunham over the
unique discomfort of being a woman in your twenties. Today.
Girls is on Sunday nights on HBO. I'm ac Baldwin,
here's the thing. Is brought to you by iHeart Radio
Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here before we launch our next
season of Here's the Thing at iHeartRadio in January, I
thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives.
Three years ago, twenty three year old Lena Dunham made
a low budget art house film called Tiny Furniture. She
filmed the movie in her parents' house and basically played herself,
(00:25):
a recent college graduate moving back into her childhood bedroom
while making plans for her future. Dunham was proclaimed a
fresh original voice, a director with a bright future. Writer
director Judd Apatow was one of those who took notice,
and today he and Dunham executive produced Girls, a show
she created for HBO that premiered its second season on
(00:47):
January thirteenth. You're good.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I am so good at you kidding? I have never
been as well in my life.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
No, I know. I mean you've seen good that. The
wedding was so quick and unexpected. I kind of even
know how to process it.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, well, you tend to overthink things, and that's an
issue for you. This is what it's like when the
hunt is over. I think Sandy really likes me.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I really like him too.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
When you's so nice, and funny when you have sex.
There's no part of me that wants like pretend they
don't exist, which is a rarity.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
That's awesome. He's kind of a Republican, which feels weird.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
What's wrong of the Republican?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
It's just the same as a Democrat. They're old bags.
Lena Dunham has achieved an astonishing amount in just three years.
Her portrayal of Hannah Horvath and Girls recently won her
a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series.
This past October, she sold a book of essays and
advice to Random House, and her boyfriend is a rock star. Today,
(01:45):
she hardly resembles Aura, her character from Tiny Furniture. I
thought I wouldn't have much in common with Lena. She's
half my age and has been fiercely embraced by my
daughter's generation. But oh, how quickly we realized there was
common ground between us us.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Literally, my show is moving into the thirty rock stages.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
No, yes, we're taking you guys are moving to Silver Cup. Yes,
you and Michael Fop.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
We were in Silver Cup. Then we went to Steiner
because we couldn't get our stages back because some show
that has one word that's about murder took it. And
then we are coming back because you guys are leaving,
so we're going to be on your stages and in
your offices.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
No, no, I thought, isn't Michael Fox coming there too?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
He is. We're I think we don't take as much
stage space as you guys did, so we're going to
have because we have fewer sets. So I think it
is gonna have We're gonna have a piece and he's
gonna have a piece.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Now, as I'm sitting here meeting you for the first
time and talking to you for the first time, you
are nothing like I imagined you would be. Really nothing.
I'm a bit thrown here because you play someone who
is a guess in your mind that I want to
talk about. Your a vision of what kind of character
you wanted to create is a little bit a beat
behind everyone else. Or I'll let you articulate that what
(02:57):
you think she is though, But what I want to
say is you when I meet you, you seem like
you could be like a senator or the head of
the corporation. I mean, you're really very, very You seem
so together and smart, and you look great, and you
cut your hair, you look gorgeous. That is firstly, very meaningful.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
And I have to not turn red and get excited
because you said that's radio.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
So I don't care. I don't care.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I'll get good, perfect, and I'm wearing my crew jacket
and I really I should have dressed up more for you.
But that being said, you know, it's funny. Firstly, a
beat behind idea really speaks to me because I'm always
sort of saying when people ask about Hand, I'm always
sort of saying, she's a version of me, but she's
a few years behind me, and she's also sort of
a few minutes behind everyone around her. So you really
(03:43):
picked up on a concept that I'm sort of always
thinking about a little bit when I play her and
when I write her.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
But she's who you used to be.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
You know, it's funny. I think I used to I
think I in order to convince myself that I should
play this character, or that I should even write this character,
I had to say, well, I'm just writing my It's
that easy. I'm just writing myself. Because the idea of
sort of creating an entire other human can be so
intimidating and Who are you?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Though?
Speaker 2 (04:07):
In real life?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
In real life, who are you?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I think that Hannah is someone who I'm very capable
of being, who's wounded, ambitious but doesn't know where to
place it. Hannah sort of the version of myself if
I'd had less understanding parents and sort of less drive
to get things done. And I think who I am
as a person who was always sort of if I
(04:31):
had to describe the war within myself that exists currently.
It's sort of the challenge of trying to reconcile the
part of me that that always thought I would be, like,
you know, a weird gender and women studies teacher who
occasionally showed movies at film festivals and hung out in
my strange apartment that was stacked high with books. Trying
to reconcile that with the part of me that has
to like figure out a dress.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
The cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Exactly it was to shoot the Rolling cover of Rolling
Stone Magazine was to figure out a dress to wear
that for an event that and everyone seems to be
worried about whether or not the dress is in st
because it has to be my own dress, and so
I'm dealing with all these sort of this strange echosystem
and all these weird politics that I kind of never
imagined would happen to me in my lifetime.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You never imagined, No, you really never imagined it.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I think I my dream situation was that I would
be someone who people thought, oh, she's doing important work
in her own little corner.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
Like a ras Chaste cartoon character, exactly like a Ra's
Chast cartoon character, or like I think because I went
to pretentious private school, the biggest dream you would have
is you'd be.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Like I'm going to be Joan Diddyon. That was kind
of where your brain was allowed to wantry maybe Nora.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
E from Maybe You'll make films, but you're not going
to be in films exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And I don't think when I first started acting, I
mean I never got parts in high school. I never
even I never was able. I think I had a
twofold thing about it. One is that it came from
a family of artists, and so the idea was sort
of like you made your work and then got out
of the way of it. Like part of what was
I think I internalized the idea that your work was
supposed to speak for you. You were not supposed to
speak for your work, and so I think I was
(06:00):
conscious about the idea of being anything so self promoting,
and although that's not what acting is, it is now
it's become that. And then I also think that I thought, well,
there's people who are professionals who can do this better
than me. So I'm just going to act until I
have access to the people who should be acting. And
sometimes I still feel that way. Sometimes I think, like,
(06:21):
you know, I'll do this a little longer and then
Michelle Williams can play me every day till I die.
Something that's really nice about making the show that isn't
that is a comedy that isn't stuck in any sort
of I mean, thirty Rock was able to bust out
of a lot of network sitcom tropes, but a lot
of the time when you're on a I think one
of the biggest things that networks prevent, besides curse words
(06:43):
and showing your breasts is development. I think that when
you play, I think so many sitcom characters end up
playing the same version of themselves in various scenarios.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
This is the thing as God as my judge. This
is the thing that we talked about in the meeting
to prep this thing with you, which was shows I've
seen where the protagonists male or female, they're going through
the same set of problems in season six that they
were in season one. It's just different lines in different coasts. Yes,
And with you, I'm wondering, do you have a Bible
(07:17):
on the show? Do you have an arc in your mind?
Not even on paper, not even approved with your other
Could you do this with jud correct.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I do it with Judd and a woman named Jenny
Connor who's the other executive producer.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
And we have a great little writer's room.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
But our writer's room doesn't really work like It's not
like we write a script and then all sit together
punching it up. It's much more we sit together at
the beginning of the season and really talk through It's
like a giant therapy session where we work out the
emotional arc and then we go to it.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And when you work out that emotional arc, do you
think to yourself are the things that she's going through?
Now your character and the other characters where you're saying
to yourself, let's make sure they're not going through this,
that there is growth a season from now or by
the end of the season completely.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And that's why I feel like it's okay for me
to cut my hair, or it's okay for me to
start spinning, or it's okay for me you know whatever
I whatever to change to change, because I feel as
though so much of what this show is about is
about seeing these girls off into their adulthood. Like in
my Bible, the ideal finale to the show would be
a feeling like, you know, they don't have to have kids,
(08:17):
they don't have to have husbands, but you look at
them and you kind of go, they're on their way.
They're more okay than they were when they started, or
they're less okay, but we have an understanding of what
kind of adult we think they're going to be.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So describe to me how that works. Because the theme
here is control. And you are, like other brilliant comedy
writing chicks I've known over the years. You have this
is your show, this is your thing. So how does
it start? How does whose idea was? Girls? Was it yours?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
It was mine? Because I basically I went in, I
made this movie tiny Furniture, and I made it. You know,
my mom and sister starred. We shot it in my
mom's house, my mom and dad's house. It was totally
populated with friends, some of whom have made their way
to Girls with me.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
And what motivated you don't want to do tiny furniture.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
I had always wanted to be a writer, and I
used to think I wanted to be a playwright, and
then in college I sort of had this revelation where
I thought, like, plays, you rehearse, and you rehearse, and
then they happened twice. Like I just felt so frustrated
by the lack of permanence. Like I'd always been sort
of turned on by the fact that when my parents
as artists, made work, like they had these material items
that would outlast them. And I was frustrated that that
(09:25):
wasn't a part of the theater experience. So I started
making short films and I made my first feature and
went to south By Southwest Film Festival with it, and
then I just had and I'd been making web TV,
and I just had this itch to sort of tell
the specific story, and I wrote the script and the kind.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Well, that's what I want to talk about, is is
that itch meaning beyond the arc of the shooting and
the and the career aspects of it or the burgeoning career.
What was it about what was going on in your
life that you want to do that movie?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
On a practical, real life level, I wanted to talk
about that moment between college and adulthood that felt so
flounder and so every day I felt like I was
walking through the strangest, most surreal soup. That would mean
that on a deeper level, I kind of wanted to
talk about change, which is what I always think is
sort of the most interesting place to find characters is
in a time of intense change. And so I sort
(10:16):
of also wanted to capture this moment where I was
I knew that I wouldn't live at home forever, that
my little sister wouldn't be sort of seventeen and ambitious
but also stuck in her bedroom forever, that my mom
was sort of looking in this beautiful moment where she
kind of was I mean, she'd murder me for saying this,
but she looked that kind of beautiful way where it's
like you're not quite old yet and you just look
(10:37):
kind of She just looked kind of perfect to me,
and I just.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Look a great car.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah, And I just thought I could say that exactly,
and I just thought, I want to capture all of this.
I want to capture our cats, I want to capture
our house, I want to remember all of this. And so,
so you really love your mom. I'm obsessed with my mom. Okay,
I love my mom.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
But I'm saying, that's interesting that you have that feeling
and that's what makes you survey what's around. You wouldn't
want to capture that because I find typically people who
are not happy they got to wait a while until
they can negotiate the pain to go back and talk
about that.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
It's one of the biggest things that inspires me to
make work is this feeling of looking around and going,
even if you're not perfect, you're all so perfect right now,
let's capture this and then, you know, I'd love the feeling.
I was just watching like Panic and Needle Park last week,
that movie which is you know it, Kitty Win, Kitty Gosh,
She's so good. Where did Kitty Win go?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah? Let me get that vile out for Kitty Win.
She's incredible.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
But so I was watching that and I was just
thinking about how exciting it was to be able to
watch sort of like al Pacino at that first moment
when he was sort of like he still almost looked
a little adolescent, and he was still and he was
learning his craft and just behaving on film. Yeah, and
I just love capturing that. And that's something that I've
tried to do with girls too, is sort of grab
people and go, let's just let's just see you as
(11:55):
you are right now.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Now.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
So the film did well, So then how does girls Happen?
Girls happened? Because so then I went to LA and
kind of did that. I went like, Okay, I guess
what you do next is get an agent. And I
guess what you do next is try to figure out
what you're doing next.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
You, I mean, you're on the runway.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Now, Yes, I was. I was on the runway, and
I was going around LA doing the sort of what
I call the couch and water bottle tour of LA,
where you meet everybody and have those kind of general
meetings where and I remember it was so funny because
at first I didn't understand that everybody says to you
at the end of the general meeting, oh, I'd love
to find a way to work with you. And so
I would call my agent afterwards and go, oh my god,
it was amazing, and he said he wants to find
a way.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
To work with me, and he meant he what should
come clean his pool?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, basically, I'd always been obsessed with TV. I'd always
loved TV and found it to be the most sort
of comforting medium and.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
The one that what comforted you on TV?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
What comforted me on TV was there's a range of
things that comforted me on TV. I loved having weird
what was the most what was the weirdest? I mean,
my favorite show when I was little was Under the
Umbrella Tree, which is a Canadian show about a woman
who lives with three puppet and it was on every
morning at seven am. God there were three of them
named Iggy, Gloria, and Jay, and Iggy was an iguana.
(13:07):
Gloria is a groundhog and Jay is a blue jay
and he lives out back in a birdhouse. They like
talk to you about recycling, or like help their old
elderly neighbor who fell down in the street. Like they're
just like nice puppets, But looking back, it feels like
a child molester who's on the lamb with her three.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
My my guilty pleasure. Like that was when I was
in my twenties and I go to my friend's house
and we just had this weird habit where like at
four o'clock in the afternoon, we'd like make a drink
and we'd roll the biggest joint and we'd smoke pot
and watch a show called Stairway to Stardom that was
on Public Access TV. And Stairway to Startom was this
older man and kind of looked like Rod Steiger. He
was like a burly looking, tough looking older man. And
(13:45):
his wife and she kind of looked like like Tammy
Faye Baker. She was like a big, big honey combed
shellacte hair and she was like this big bosom me
older woman. And the guy would come out and he
had the funniest voice. He'd be like, welcome everyone to
sell and use, and they'd sing a song and opening
so and they would bring out acts that would perform.
(14:06):
They were all like local queens Brooklyn talent parakeets.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
It was like it was bizarre that sounds like the
best thing in the world. It was the best show
in the world, especially if you've smoked.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
An enormous amount of marijuana an enormous joint, so you're
on the Sofa water Bottle Tour and what happens on
the sofa water bottle.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Tour and my agent, who I feel like you're not
supposed to say you love your agent because it makes
you sound really Hollywood and everyone. I love everyone, And
also I have the best agent. He's like really been
at it for a long time. He's like a cigar
smoking you know, he's what I imagined. His name's Peter Benedeck.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Peter Benedict did know Peter Benedeck, And he smoked cigars.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
He's old school, he's old kind of a hectemic gothapy exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
And he belongs to a cigar club. Which one does
he belong to? I think it says it has a
Cuban flair. I think it is.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
I'm on the board of Grand ev are you. I
know Peter and I probably have seen him a Granda
that Wow. He always plays on the out there and
smoked the goods with him when you were still a
gleam in your parents. Aye, you weren't even around God.
Damn with the way this business works. No, no, no,
So he's your agent and you love him.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
I love him, And he said to me, I was
sort of saying to him like, maybe I could get
I just wanted to move out of my parents' house,
and I thought and make more movies. And I was like,
maybe I could should write a spec how I met
your mother, and I could get staffed on a show.
I mean, I didn't know any I didn't know how
any of this worked. And he said that I should
go for a meeting at HBO, and I did, and
I said, well, here's what I'd want to see, is
(15:30):
like a show about all my girlfriends, like sort of
like Tiny Furniture, but there's more of us, and we
don't live with our parents anymore, but it's still about that.
It's like it was pitched so weekly, like a year
after my movie, but there's more of us and it's
a TV show.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So the conversation wasn't coming out of and Tiny Furniture
in the indie and in the festival world had a
very good buzz. There was no conversation, but you just
going right into films and making more films. Normally they're
going to want to steer some especially your age was
very young. They're going to go just keep making movies.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Well, you know, there was a conversation, but I think
I picked up on the fact very early going on
the Couch and Water Bottle tour that the kind of
stories that I wanted to tell we're not really being
funded on a larger scale and film.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
We're taking a break stay with us.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I picked up on the fact very early going on
the Couch and Water Bottle tour that the kind of
stories that I wanted to tell we're not really being
funded on a larger scale.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
And film Tina says that sometimes the Tina I would
just finished working. Yeah, it seems like it's more difficult
to ay to have the control you want in the
film business and be to say what you want to say.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
It is, And the fact is I could have kept
saying what I wanted to say, you know, making twenty
five thousand dollars movies, but I wanted It's weird. The
reason that I like having some budget is not because
you know, I want to stagecarshes or I want to
have you know, ten makeup artists on set, although those
things would will would be lovely, But but it's more
(17:08):
because of the fact that I do so many jobs,
so so exciting to not have to worry anymore about
answering the doorbell, about returning the equipment, about making sure
that people had the pizza. Also, that's going to happen
in TV. And what I has money and has HBO
is time Warner. But they have money, but they use
it in this kind of amazing It's this amazing model,
which is that they don't have to answer to advertisers
(17:30):
in the same way. So HBO can sort of fulfill
its odd little interests. And that's what I started out
as and I what I didn't predict was how much
I would love the opportunity to develop characters in this
way and the kind of the fiber of TV itself.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
And they believe in you. Based on my experience, I've
never worked for them, but I've have many friends and
colleagues over the years who've worked for them, and I've
I've almost worked for them here and there. You know,
HBO is one of those places like that, I think
the most six testful studios and networks. The way they operate,
which is that they vetted maybe to a fairly well,
but if once they believe in you, they're all in
(18:07):
it's yours. They give you the money that they it's
not too intrusive now, so the template of four women,
and obviously HBO is no stranger to the template of
four women talking about but obviously those women were older.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And you've been a fan of that show, Yes, I
think that I can't find one girl who isn't at
least secretly a fan of Sex and the City who's
my age. And I loved it, And you know, I
was very conscious when I was first writing the show.
I thought to myself, should I put these girls in Boston?
There was and I tried to make it three girls
because and Shashana was initially not one of the girls.
(18:42):
Shashana was jess as Zosher Mammot's character was jess A's
Jemim mc kirk's character's cousin, and she kind of came
in and out as a kind of She was the
more suring as a recurring in and out goofball who
was sort of supposed to call to.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Be that.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
She does. She plays it beautifully and but the reason
that I wrote her was to sort of call out
the Sex and the City thing, like this is the
girl who came to New York to have her cosmos
and her Manolo's and it's not going quite right. But
she was so wonderful, and she added something that the
three of us didn't have on our own, and so
it became a four person delio. And so I tried
(19:23):
to make it three women. I tried to put it
in a different city. But the fact is is that
New York is where it was supposed to happen, and
four women just somehow there's a symmetry to it that
doesn't Gee.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Star, be damned, I'm going to do.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it. And so
but the fact is that you know, sext and City
is a specter that hangs over in a I mean
in a positive way. Everything when female centric, and you know,
in the writer's room, every there were so many episodes
of Sex and City and they tackled every area of
sexual function and dysfunction that there's almost nothing you can
pitch that they haven't done.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
But I found that the women on Sex in the City,
that those women would have things happen, and they tended
to brush off the consequences pretty quickly. Yeah, whereas the
girls on your show, the tone seems very different. Everybody
seems to almost be doubting what they're doing, or they
have a kind of a sense of fear or anxiety
about it. While they're doing it, it seems more real. Was
(20:14):
that deliberate in your part? Well, something I.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Feel about being in your twenties, which is different than
you know. Sex and the City was a show about
women in their thirties who had successful careers pre recession,
the best, most supportive friends. They didn't have. I mean,
they had little friend TIFFs. But the characters on our
show are tortured. It's sort of impossible to get through
your twenties without It's like, if you ask a girl
in her twenties, are you a happy person? I think
(20:38):
she can say I have happy moments, but I don't
think it's possible. Maybe I'm maybe people will radically disagree
with me, but I don't really think it's possible to
be sort of an at peace human when you are
between twenty two and thirty, and so I think there's
dot I don't because I think.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
That's a problem that I mean for me. One thing
that I noticed when I went to college, which is
a long time ago, an interesting number of people they
really knew what they wanted to be, they weren't quite
sure how to get there. They had a dream. I
want to become a lawyer, I want to become a doctor.
I want to go into politics. I want to go
into and now people today it seems like younger people
really they think they have more time to figure it out.
(21:20):
You're turning twenty five, and they really don't have that
picture and focus. Do you agree?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I do agree, And I think a big part of
it is being I think the Internet has cracked things
open in a way that's both beautiful and that it
helps you find. There's so many things that I never
would have even known about, things that have been huge
for me that have existed because of the Internet. And
I think that I've been able to partially connect with
people who would be fans of the show because of
(21:44):
the Internet. I think, you know, it's always exciting when
like there's this website called rookiemag dot com that's run
by this girl, Tavi Jevnson, and it's a smart teen
magazine that exists only on the Internet. And I just
think if when I was a teenager there had been
that place and that message board, I would have felt
like the world was my oyster like just meeting other
weirdo girls who had the same who like you know whatever.
(22:06):
At the time, I just wanted to talk to someone
about Connor Oberst or something on the Internet, and that
would have been possible. But I think now the fact
that like the Internet has created so many strange specialized
jobs and so many things where it's like, you know,
I'm a brand consultant, slash blog enhancer or whatever. People
are like, suddenly the world feels wide open, but there
(22:28):
are less jobs available, and so it's a really confusing
moment to make any decisive choice about what you want
to do.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
It's interesting you say that the Internet is responsible for that,
and then idea of having too many choices than you
need you wind up bout.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
That could also be a metaphor for like men in
their twenties dating. I feel like men in their twenties
like I once had dated a guy who told me
that he didn't feel like he could be serious about
anyone in New York because it would be like eating
at the same restaurant every night in New York, Right,
there's so many amazing choices. It's New York City.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
I hope he choked some whatever a restaurant to go. Yeah,
I shouldn't say that. That's me that's wrong.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I feel like that, so it's helpful to have it
backed up by Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the
thing more in a minute. Lena Dunham didn't have to
(23:30):
look far to come up with her character on Girls.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Physically, I'd say Hannah is. I mean, she's me because
I play her. But it's funny because she's chubby, but
she doesn't. That's not where her anxiety comes from. Like
she's just not I like playing a character who doesn't
have a perfect body, but that's not the main source
of their anxiety. I feel like we have very few
female characters on television who don't look like models and
(23:56):
aren't constantly discussing it. So of course Hannah has her
moments of self conscientiousness, just like every woman does, but
that's not She sort of doesn't notice that her clothes
don't quite fit. She sort of doesn't think about what
she eats.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
It's and I have closed her just to cover you
up and keep you warm, exactly. They have some degree
of style to the grain, but less.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Like a character exactly. And I like she's more interested
in like whether her clothes are funny and witty, like
I don't think she really cares about being sexy. She's
more just like, oh, this dress like has owls on it?
How sweet? I used to be much in college. I
dressed like a complete lone. I feel like my dad
always told me, I look the golon tamer all the time.
I've calmed down just because I realized that you could
vests with so many vests, red vest, so many red vests,
(24:35):
so many like you know, strained boots pulled over my
weird leggings with a three flounced skirt. I could never
accessorize enough. It was oppressive. But in the Luftwaffa, yeah, exactly.
And so so that's Hannah's sort of physical I think emotionally,
some facets of Hannah are that she is, you know,
she has a certain amount of wit and a certain
(24:56):
amount of sort of spunk, but she isn't really applying
it anywhere properly yet. And she's also.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Smart and funny and not mean because a lot of
the people in that world and the improvisational comedy were
oh my god and funny in there me and that
meanness is the font that it comes from. Is that source?
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I know and you know the thing about Firstly, my
dad is like a manner's Nazi. So I think that
I grew up feeling like the worst thing you could
do was offend somehow.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Sit up straight in that chair, and your dad told
me to say that.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
I know, Oh my god, my dad still tells me
to sit up straight constantly.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I'm going to call it.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And then and it's funny because both my dad is
an artist and he paints these sort of outlandish intense
I mean, he paints things that are pretty pretty sexual images,
pretty aggressive images, you know, a man with a I mean,
they're funny, but they're intents. It's like two men with
penises for noses in a war with guns and knives
(25:49):
with three women.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Grew up around this, is around it.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
But it was what was interesting was that my dad
was sort of like you.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Can do girls. I know, dad had penises on his face, on.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
His face, on every face, but you know, you I
grew up around it. But I think that my dad
always really showed me that there was a difference between
you know, what your work was and who you were.
And he's so my parents are so polite and so
sort of they just I think so much of this. Again,
I've never had kids. I've you know, I don't know
what that feels like. But I think, how old are
you know? I'm twenty six and I want kids, but
(26:20):
I'm not ready. No, please, I really.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
I just tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I just got a doctor.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
We already have birth control pills for you.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Seriously, no kids now. I don't want kids. I just
got adoption. Everybody things I'm insane. I just finished season two.
Season three. Well, we're starting season three and we're starting
at the end of March, so exciting.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, I want to come and play yours therapist.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
That would be the most fun thing in the world.
It's bad, bad, bad, But I forget what I'm saying.
But I'm glad you don't think.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I mean.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
I get too guilty if I ever make a mean joke,
like appreciate what I'm saying, I do, well, I'm terrified.
It's one of the reasons I don't I don't really
feel like a comedy writer, because there's sort of like
a quickness and a harshness, and you need.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
To have those people in your bullpen there. Do you
have some more really traditional edgier We do have.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
I have a couple of writers on the staff, one
Murray Miller, who this season was really essential in sort
of bringing us just hard jokes, But no one on
our staff has that particular kind of darkness. I've been
around a lot of those comedy writers, and you know,
there's that feeling of like even when they're saying something
nice to you, they're kind of trying to murder you
with their eyeballs, and it's.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
It's it becomes too much salt to the soup exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
It's impressive to me in small doses, but terrifying.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
You've got to have it, but you've got to mix
it carefully. Like when we did our show that was
that was a big issue where like sometimes I would say,
I just think this is too mean, Like we're going
to lose people like we want to be we want
to be mean, but we have to decide who we're
going to be mean too. It's true who deserves it.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
My thing is also I always I only really make
jokes about people I like, Like when there's a joke
that references a celebrity on the show, it's usually a
joke that I'm making because I have really taken note
of their work and have fascinated by.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
It's not because you slept with them and you want
to get even with them.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
No, I don't have that instinct.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
So talk about two things. The level of control you have.
I mean, you are a very young woman, and I'm
assuming it's all you correct, I mean it is.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
I mean I work with Jenny and Judd really closely,
and I definitely I think I'm constantly sort of telling
myself I have bosses around. It kind of comforts me.
I mean, and you don't, do you not exactly. I
have collaborators. I have collaborators, but I have collaborators who
I take really seriously and who you need and who
I need and who I would never I think the
(28:34):
minute you get an attitude like it's my show, the
ship runs on duneam and my way or the highway,
I think it's broken exactly. I think you still want
to feel a little fear when you share a script
with your collaborations. You want to go I hope they
like this. I'm going to listen to them. When they don't,
I still feel tremendously indebted to them and anxious about
(28:56):
their reactions. And I never feel like, you know, I'm
the big boss and you guys can all get with
it or leave.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
So when so the Hannah character you start out, I
mean in tiny Furniture, I almost feel like tiny.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Furniture is it's.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
You. You. You may become one of these actresses now
where it's all one series. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
It kind of is. It's funny when I look at
any character I've played in anything that I've made, it's you,
it's me, and it's it's funny. I've never played anyone
whose name doesn't end with a I've made. I've written
all these characters who because I always have to have
a name that I think sort of like is.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
In the world name it's the two double syllables.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Someone said to me to be a famous star, you
need to have two double syllable names.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
You do, do you?
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Or two monos? But Sean Penn, Marlon Brando.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
My mom did tell me that she gave me my name,
which is so funny because it's not like we have
any actors in her family. My mom said, I'm named
after my Russian gret Grad. And my mom said, but
when she named me, she thought, I don't know what
she'll want to do. But this is a great name
if she does want to be a movie star. That
was what my mom thought, which is so funny because
it's not like my mom's some crazy stage mom or
(30:11):
like is she she's a photographer and.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
She's what's the source of your real close to the start,
to the extent you can say, I don't.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Want to prob oh, no, I don't mind. I've clearly
I don't mind. We are very similar in ways that
can be delightful and can be maddening. Something I like
about both my parents, and I'd imagine you're like this
with kids too. Is they really talked to me like
I was an adult always? And I love that And
I love I love talking to kids like their adults
because it's like they kind of come alive when you
(30:38):
just ask them real questions. And yes, my mom always
really let me into her world. And I'm working right now,
I'll talk to in ten minutes, And just having that
kind of access to her was amazing. Yeah, And I've
just always thought she was the coolest, and it's funny
and it's nice to see it echoed because all my
friends think she's the coolest too.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Now you're going to do how many seasons of the
show are you signed on to do well?
Speaker 2 (30:59):
You know, it's not clear. I mean HBO contractually has me,
I think as an actor for six years, but as
a writer, and I wish I should pay more attention
to my deals. But I'm just so excited to have
my job. I just go, okay, whatever you say. But
I think my dream world is that, you know, I
want to kind of follow like you know, how British
shows always know British shows and thirty Rock always know
(31:20):
just when to get off the air.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
The question becomes how you can maybe you know, do
that TV show? And the schedule is how many months.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
We do it?
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Well, how many episodes.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
We've been doing ten? I think between you, me and McGee,
I think we might do twelve next year, right, But
I would love that. I don't want to, like, I
don't have any desire in doing like, you know, a
twenty two episode. I don't even understand how someone does
the twenty two episode marathon. But I do think that
doing I think that a little more would be just
a little more storytelling real estate and it'd be amazing.
(31:53):
But you know, so I shoot four four and a
half months out of the year, then I'm editing and
I'm doing press that I'm writing. Then I'm back. So
so it's not four and a half months, so it's
not it's safe months. It's actually more like twelve months.
And so would you make.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
A movie during the breakfast now?
Speaker 2 (32:11):
No, I couldn't because there was just no time. I
finished shooting in August, I was editing.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Why don't you make a deal with HBO with all
financi your films, so you're working for them in its
olin house.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
It's very smart. I mean, I really want to make
a movie. I have two features scripts that I've been
working on that I just I want to make another
before I make like a big, massive ambitious movie. I mean,
I want to make a creatively ambitious movie. But I
want to make another small movie I have. I have
small movie idea.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Do you have a massive ambitious movie inside you? I do,
but it's I you have an idea?
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I do.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
But it's so weird, fifty four year old psychotherapist that.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
There's there's a fifty four year old somebody And I mean.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
I'll talk to you later in the traffic controller.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Working with you is one of my long standing dreams.
But I am and I'm also I'm writing a book.
So that's something that.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Was really well I heard about that.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
It's something that was really important to me to start
doing it at this point in my career.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Starn And you write and produce your own TV show
and you're writing a book. H Who did that remind
me of? What are you gonna write a book about?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I'm writing a book. Well, I guess it's about me,
although it's a little less about me because it also
has advice an advice component, but it's like personal essays.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
So is it like Paula Pell's Hey Young Girls?
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Oh my god, I love Hey Young Girls. Makes me
so happy. Paula Pel is funny. Paula Pel is someone
who's funny and not mean.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah, Paula Pel's I mean to the right people.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
She's just a dreamy person. But you know, the thing
that's been so great about writing the book is I've
always loved writing prose, and I wanted to make it
a part of my career sooner rather than later, because
I didn't want it to be like when I decided
to write a book in ten years, it was like, oh, look,
here's a celebrity memoir. Number fifty seven I wanted it
to really feel like I'm a person who writes prose
and that it's a part of my life and career
(33:50):
for a long time.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
But unlike other people that are writing books, they don't
have TV shows that they're starring in and writing. When
you're done doing now not just ten but twelve episodes,
what do you have left to go into the book?
Speaker 2 (34:00):
There's stuff that's just for the book.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
There's still an example.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
Well, likewise, I write a lot about my childhood in
the book. I write a lot about my parents. I
write a lot about college and sort of like that,
I write a lot about that period. I write a
lot about sort of the beginning of being sexual person.
I write about relationships. I'm writing a lot about sort
of female role model I.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Want to say about sexuality.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
It's interesting. I've had to become more conscious about what
I say and what I promote. Not in a way
that stifles me, but just in a way where I
realize now that there are seventeen year old girls who
come up to me and tell me that the show
means a lot to them, and.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
This show one percent of your audience is influenced. This
is what I learned from someone one percent of your
one percent is genuinely and in any way influenced by
what you do and say. That's still tens of thousands
of people.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
It's amazing. It's an amazing thing. And it's like it's
a platform that you have to take seriously, which is
why sometimes it's like I used to be really into Rihanna,
that pop star, and then it was like again, I
don't want to ever, you know, throw stones from my glasshouse,
but I follow her on Instagram and I just think
about how many little girls, beyond what I could even comprehend,
are obsessed with Rihanna, Like, you know, she left Barbados,
(35:08):
she's had this amazing career, she's you know, one Grammy,
she's talented, and then she gets back together with Chris
Brown and posts a million pictures of them smoking marijuana
together on a bed, and it cracks my heart in
half in a way that makes me feel.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Like I'm nicety Chris Brown smoking pot.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
No, because she got back together, was going, oh, yeah,
you guys, you made a really good joke, and I
got too emotional and in my response, yeah, because I
want to that's here. It's terrible, mean enough, it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
So you are as a role model. What won't Hannah
or the other girls in the quartet do?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Jenny and I talk about this a lot. We won't
fuck someone because they have a nice apartment. There's not
going to be any version of sort of like prostuding yourself.
There's not going to be any version of dating somebody
because he can take you out to nice dinner.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Wait, wait, you're putting down my whole playbook. This is
all I have left. Wait a second. That is so
wrong of you.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Come on, it's interesting. I have so many friends who
are so sort of tortured by their romantic relationships, and
I think such a big part of it is that
the desires of young men and young women are not
caught up with each other.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
And I say to my wife, I do want to
eat in the same restaurant every night, but I want
the hostess to wear a different outfit every night. Perfect.
But so you say they won't monetize sex.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
They won't monetize sex, And it's like even more subtle
than that, Like, I don't like a storyline that's like
unless it's really saying something about where characters at. I
don't like a storyline that's like, you know, he bought
me an entire trousseau of dresses, and so I'm his forever.
Like that's just not the way that I want to
idealize anything. I think that the characters, the characters can
make mistakes, but they have to be emotionally responsible for
(36:41):
the things that they've done. I don't ever want to
like have a makeover scenario where someone's doing better after
they've put on a great dress and you know, straight
ironed their hair. Like I just there's it's a really
instinctual thing, but it's just a feeling a balance. I
want women. This is so kind of Hippi tippy, but
I want them to make their own choice. I want
them to I don't want people to live in service
(37:03):
to sort of what television things they should look like,
or what their family things they should act.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
How much do you think that women, because this is
a very sensitive topic, I mean because I'm I'm not
going to go Norman Mailer here, but I feel like,
you know, the interesting thing for society is if women
have been allowed to make their own choices for the
most part, for the last forty years, or at least
for the last twenty five and that's reaped enormous benefits
for society. I mean, forget about just women. But at
(37:28):
the same time, women are the only ones who can
have children, true, and therefore in the way that we're
trying to in the traditional family or even in a
gay family where a man and two guys want to
have a baby with a woman, or two women want
to have a child together, that balance of career and
ambition and so forth with family is that something that
(37:48):
you struggle with some numbers you even think that.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Struggling, But I mean I think about it all the
time actually because I'm.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Because you're the product of a happy home, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
And I want all that you want to replicate that totally.
I was raised to think that the two most important
things you could do in your life were have a passionate,
generous relationship to your work and to raise children. And
so you still feel that way, and I do still
feel that you want to have children big time. I'm
so excited. I don't want like to jolly pit the
whole situation, but like, like at least two and I
(38:16):
think all the time about it's funny exactly. I might
got Jenny Connor's daughter, Coco, who's eight and is my
dear friend. We like to go out to see live
music together. Coco one day was like, when do you
think you're going to have children? Just roughly, and I
was like, I don't know, Coco, Like, you know, I'm
twenty six, so I'd like to wait till I'm like
at least thirty. And she was like, at that point,
I think you should not be working on girls. And
(38:39):
if you are working on girls, you're going to have
to cut your hours down to like eight thirty to
six because you need to be able to be there
when they wake up, and you also need to be
there with them at nice issue. Yeah, and she, basically
an eight year old, started to school me in the
way that my lifestyle would not allow for children. She
was like, you know your boy My boyfriend's a musician
and he tours a lot. And she was like and
she was like, he might have to quit his job.
And I was like, I don't think he's going to
(38:59):
quit his job. Well, that might be hard for you too.
You might have to really talk about it. And even
just now, I just adopted a dog and I was
really really it was like instead of just meeting a dog,
thinking it was adorable and bringing it home. It was
this tortured thing of like, am I gonna be able
to give it what it needs? And what if it
resents me? And at a certain point my mom, who
is really ready to play dog grandma and is playing
(39:20):
to spend a lot of time with the dog, was
like she was like, Lena, it's a fucking dog. She
was like, it's at a certain point she was like,
I get it. I'm glad you're thinking it through, but like,
this is not like adopting twins now.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Two things that I think are kind of connected, which
is how do men present themselves? You have a boyfriend,
and I don't want to prior to your personal life,
but you how do men present themselves too differently? You
said that Hannah was this and that and a chubby
girl who did and now you're now the name Lena
Dunham means something else to people. How do men present
themselves to you now different from the way they used to?
Speaker 2 (39:54):
It's interesting. I mean, I'm so bad at knowing if
anybody's hitting on me, Like someone literally has to like
beat me on the head with a drumstick and me
back to their cave for me to understand that it's
going on, and then I would, and then they then,
and then I didn't hire Gloria Alred as my attorney.
Yeah exactly. But you know, the thing is is that
sleazy people are attracted to and sleazy people and not
(40:16):
sleazy people are attracted to any sense of GRAVI toss
that someone might have. So so I definitely have had more.
I mean, I definitely have had felt less ignored by
the opposite sex. But I'm also so bad at perceiving
any of it. And so did you know your boyfriend
liked to Well, we got set up on a blind date,
(40:37):
so I knew he liked well. I didn't know he
liked me, but he was predisposed. He was predisposed to
like me because what we were going on was a date.
And then that was a special situation because I went, oh,
I think he likes me, and I like him, And.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Tell me if you don't want answer this question, but
I just find it charming. Where did you go on
your first date with your boyfriend?
Speaker 2 (40:51):
We went to Blue Ribbon Bakery in the West Village.
And the reason I was happy is because I find
picking a restaurant so anxiety producing, because I feel like.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Yeah, because the lemma a burdens ass. It really is.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
And also, what if I choose the wrong restaurant and
you have a bad association with it or you think
I'm pretty much.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Poorly on me?
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Exactly, it's just the worst. And like what if we
go there and you don't like a brand muffin? Exactly,
it's stressful. So he said, before I even had to
say anything, he said, if it's stressful for you, I
can pick the restaurant. And I felt like, okay, I'm
going to be in great hands.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Where did you pick?
Speaker 2 (41:25):
And then you picked Blue room Maker? And then I
ate a cheese and then I ordered a hamburger and
he said, I think you should get cheese on it.
It's not nice.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
And you went, oh my god, I'm home.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Yeah that's easy.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
I was so glad you like, did my mom call
you for this date?
Speaker 1 (41:39):
And let you know, cheese? I like Yarlsburg exactly, somebody
suggesting burger and then and then and now you've been
dating it for a while, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Like almost a year. It's been. He's a very very
great person.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
To meet you and tell me if I'm onto something here.
You seem like someone that regardless of what you look
like or didn't look like, or what you had or
didn't have. Whoever you were, you have a very very
healthy and kind of guileless sense of who you are
and you present it yourself to people your entire life,
going this is who I am, and if you like me, great,
and if you don't, there's another six point five billion
(42:18):
people out there to go for it. Am I right?
Speaker 2 (42:20):
I mean that's the most stress to me. That's the
most lovely way of putting it. I mean, I think
I think I always had a feeling like if you
just stick around and continue to be yourself, the correct
people will find you. And that's something that's been so
wonderful about the show is that it kind of confirmed
that for me, which is not everyone watches it, but
the people who watch it understand it. And that feeling
I'm sure you've had this before of uniting with your
appropriate audience and sort of uniting with your people is
(42:42):
like about as comforting as feelings get.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
You too, can unite comfortably with Lena Dunham over the
unique discomfort of being a woman in your twenties. Today.
Girls is on Sunday nights on HBO. I'm ac Baldwin,
here's the thing. Is brought to you by iHeart Radio
Host
Alec Baldwin
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