From the Archives: Lena Dunham

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 See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:36Alec Baldwin?

  Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here. Before we launch our next season of Here's the Thing at iHeart Radio in January, I thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives. Three years ago, 23-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, 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 produce Girls, a show she created for HBO

• 2:20Alec Baldwin?

  that premiered its second season on January 13. So you're good?

• 2:25Speaker 06

  Hannah, I am so good. Are you kidding? I have never been this well in my life.

• 2:30Speaker 07

  No, I know. I mean, you seem good. It's just that the wedding was so quick and unexpected. I kind of know how to process it, or if you'd like...

• 2:35Speaker 06

  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.

• 2:44Speaker 07

  I think Sandy really likes me. I really like him too. I mean, he's so nice and funny. And when we have sex, there's no part of me that wants to, like, pretend I don't exist, which is a rarity.

• 2:52Speaker 06

  That's awesome.

• 2:54Speaker 07

  He's kind of a Republican, which feels weird.

• 2:57Speaker 06

  What's wrong with the Republican? It's just the same as the Democrat. They're old dirtbags.

• 3:01Alec Baldwin?

  Lena Dunham has achieved an astonishing amount in just three years. Her portrayal of Hannah Horvath in "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, 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, literally.

• 3:36Speaker 07

  My show's moving into the 30 Rock stages.

• 3:38Alec Baldwin?

  No!

• 3:39Speaker 07

  Yes. We're taking over your...

• 3:40Alec Baldwin?

  You guys are moving to Silver Cup?

• 3:41Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 3:42Alec Baldwin?

  You and Michael Fox?

• 3:42Speaker 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 gonna be on your stages and in your offices.

• 3:56Alec Baldwin?

  No, no, I thought, isn't Michael Fox coming there too?

• 3:59Speaker 07

  He is. We're, I think, we don't take as much stage space as you guys did. So we're gonna have, because we have fewer sets. So I think Mr. Fox is gonna have, we're gonna have a piece, and he's gonna have a piece.

• 4:10Alec Baldwin?

  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.

• 4:18Speaker 07

  Really?

• 4:18Alec Baldwin?

  Nothing. I'm a bit thrown here because you play someone who is, I guess, in your mind, and I'm going to talk about your vision of what kind of character you wanted to create, is a little bit a beat behind everyone else. I'll let you articulate that, what you think she is.

• 4:33Speaker 07

  That's well put, though.

• 4:34Alec Baldwin?

  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.

• 4:48Speaker 07

  Thank you!

• 4:48Alec Baldwin?

  And you cut your hair, and you look gorgeous.

• 4:51Speaker 07

  That is firstly, very meaningful, and I have to not turn red and get excited because you said that.

• 4:55Alec Baldwin?

  It's radio, so don't care.

• 4:56Speaker 07

  Okay, good.

• 4:57Alec Baldwin?

  We don't care what color we turn.

• 4:58Speaker 07

  Okay, 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, the "a beat behind" idea really speaks to me, because I'm always sort of saying, when people ask about Hannah, 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 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.

• 5:22Alec Baldwin?

  But she's who you used to be.

• 5:24Speaker 07

  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 myself. It's that easy. I'm just writing myself." Because the idea of sort of creating an entire other human can be so intimidating.

• 5:40Alec Baldwin?

  Who are you, though?

• 5:41Speaker 07

  In real life?

• 5:42Alec Baldwin?

  In real life, who are you?

• 5:44Speaker 07

  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's 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 is a person who is always sort of, if I 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 in women's 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.

• 6:26Alec Baldwin?

  Shoot the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

• 6:28Speaker 07

  Exactly. It was to shoot the rolling, cover of Rolling Stone magazine. You know, it's 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 stores because it has to be my own dress and so I'm dealing with all these sort of this strange ecosystem and all these weird politics that I kind of never imagined would happen to me in my lifetime.

• 6:44Alec Baldwin?

  You never imagined?

• 6:45Speaker 07

  No.

• 6:46Alec Baldwin?

  You really never imagined it?

• 6:47Speaker 07

  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.

• 6:54Alec Baldwin?

  Like a Roz Chast cartoon character.

• 6:57Speaker 07

  Exactly, like a Roz Chast cartoon character or like I think because I went to pretentious private school, the biggest dream you would have is you'd be like, I'm gonna be Joan Didion. That was kind of where your brain was allowed to wander.

• 7:09Alec Baldwin?

  Or maybe Nora Ephron, maybe you'll make films, but you're not gonna be in films.

• 7:13Speaker 07

  Exactly, 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 I 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 self-conscious about the idea of being

• 7:37Alec Baldwin?

  Self-promoting.

• 7:38Speaker 07

  Self-promoting and although that's not what acting is, it's

• 7:42Alec Baldwin?

  It is now.

• 7:43Speaker 07

  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 gonna act until I have access to the people who should be acting. And sometimes I still feel that way. Sometimes I think like, 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 a show that isn't that is a comedy that isn't stuck in any sort of net I mean, 30 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 and showing your breasts is development. I think that when you play I think so many sitcom characters end up playing

• 8:26Speaker 07

  The same version of themselves in various scenarios.

• 8:29Alec Baldwin?

  It's funny, this is the thing. As God is 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 protagonist, 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 and different coasters.

• 8:48Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 8:49Alec Baldwin?

  And with you, I'm wondering, do you have a Bible on the show? Do you have an arc in your mind? Not even on paper, not even approved with your other, because you do this with Judd, correct?

• 8:59Speaker 07

  I do it with Judd and a woman named Jenny Connor, who's the other executive producer. And we have a great little writers' room, but our writers' 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.

• 9:19Alec Baldwin?

  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?

• 9:30Speaker 07

  Completely, 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.

• 9:38Alec Baldwin?

  To change.

• 9:39Speaker 07

  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, 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 gonna be.

• 10:01Alec Baldwin?

  Right. 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?

• 10:19Speaker 07

  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, we, it was totally populated with friends, some of whom have made their way to Girls with me, and...

• 10:35Alec Baldwin?

  What motivated you to want to do Tiny Furniture?

• 10:37Speaker 07

  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 happen 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...

• 10:54Speaker 07

  They had these material items that would outlast them and I was frustrated that that 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

• 11:14Alec Baldwin?

  Well, that's what I want to talk about is that itch, meaning beyond the arc of the shooting and the career aspects of it or the burgeoning career, what was it about, what was going on in your life that you wanted to do that movie?

• 11:27Speaker 07

  On a practical, real-life level, I wanted to talk about that moment between college and adulthood that felt so floundering 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 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 17 and ambitious and 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'll murder me for saying this, but she looked that kind of beautiful way where it's like,

• 12:09Speaker 07

  you're not quite old yet and you just look kind of, she just looked kind of perfect to me and I just

• 12:14Alec Baldwin?

  Like a great car.

• 12:15Speaker 07

  Yeah. And I just thought

• 12:17Alec Baldwin?

  She's not my mother, so I can say that.

• 12:19Speaker 07

  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

• 12:26Alec Baldwin?

  So you really love your mom?

• 12:28Speaker 07

  I'm obsessed with my mom.

• 12:29Alec Baldwin?

  Okay.

• 12:30Speaker 07

  I love my mom.

• 12:32Alec Baldwin?

  But I'm saying that's interesting that you have that feeling and that's what makes you survey what's around you and 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.

• 12:46Speaker 07

  Totally. So 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, let's capture this. And then, you know, I'd love the feeling, I was just watching like Panic in Needle Park last week, that movie, which is, you know

• 13:01Alec Baldwin?

  Kitty Winn.

• 13:02Speaker 07

  Kitty, gosh, she's so good. Where did Kitty Winn go?

• 13:05Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. Let me get that vial out for Kitty Winn. She's incredible.

• 13:08Speaker 07

  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...

• 13:21Alec Baldwin?

  And just behaving on film.

• 13:22Speaker 07

  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 you are right now."

• 13:31Alec Baldwin?

  Now, the, uh, so the film did well, so then how does girls happen?

• 13:37Speaker 07

  Girls happen 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 do next."

• 13:48Alec Baldwin?

  Tiny furniture helped you do all that? I mean, you're on the runway now.

• 13:50Speaker 07

  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 to work with me."

• 14:10Alec Baldwin?

  And he meant he wants you to come clean his pool?

• 14:12Speaker 07

  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 the one that...

• 14:19Alec Baldwin?

  What comforted you on TV?

• 14:20Speaker 07

  What comforted me on TV was, there was a range of things that comforted me on TV. I love...

• 14:27Alec Baldwin?

  Something weird.

• 14:28Speaker 07

  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 puppets and it was on every morning at 7:00 AM.

• 14:37Alec Baldwin?

  Good God.

• 14:38Speaker 07

  There were three of them named Iggy, Gloria, and Jay. And Iggy was an iguana, Gloria's 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 lam with her three victims.

• 14:58Alec Baldwin?

  My guilty pleasure like that was when I was in my twenties and I'd go to my friend's house and we just had this weird habit where like at 4 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 Stardom was this older man, he kind of looked like Rod Steiger, he was like a burly looking, tough looking older man, and his wife, and she kind of looked like, uh, like Tammy Faye Baker, she was like a big, big honey combed shellacked hairdo and she was like this big bosomy older woman and the guy would come out and he had the funniest voice, he'd be like, "Welcome everyone to Stairway to Stardom."

• 15:37Alec Baldwin?

  And they'd sing a song, an opening song, and they would bring out acts that would perform, they were all like local Queens, Brooklyn talent.

• 15:44Speaker 07

  That sounds amazing.

• 15:45Alec Baldwin?

  People singing and parakeets, it was bizarre.

• 15:47Speaker 07

  That sounds like the best thing in the world.

• 15:49Alec Baldwin?

  It was the best show in the world, especially if you'd smoked an enormous.

• 15:52Speaker 07

  A amount of marijuana.

• 15:54Alec Baldwin?

  An enormous joint. So, you're on the Sofa Water Bottle Tour and what happens?

• 15:57Speaker 07

  I'm on the Sofa Water Bottle Tour and my agent, who, I feel like you're not supposed to say you love your agent because it makes you sound really Hollywooded out.

• 16:03Alec Baldwin?

  You love everyone.

• 16:04Speaker 07

  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 an agent would be.

• 16:12Alec Baldwin?

  What's his name?

• 16:12Speaker 07

  His name's Peter Benedec.

• 16:14Alec Baldwin?

  Peter Benedec, I know. Peter Benedec, and he smokes cigars?

• 16:17Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:18Alec Baldwin?

  He's old school.

• 16:19Speaker 07

  He's old school.

• 16:19Alec Baldwin?

  He's like out of a Hector MacArthur play.

• 16:21Speaker 07

  Exactly, and he belongs to a cigar club.

• 16:23Alec Baldwin?

  Which one does he belong to?

• 16:24Speaker 07

  I think it says, it has a Cuban flair to it.

• 16:27Alec Baldwin?

  Is it Grand Havana?

• 16:28Speaker 07

  I think it is.

• 16:28Alec Baldwin?

  I'm on the board of Grand Havana.

• 16:30Speaker 07

  Are you really?

• 16:30Alec Baldwin?

  I know Peter and I probably have seen him at Grand Havana.

• 16:32Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 16:33Alec Baldwin?

  Fantastic.

• 16:34Speaker 07

  He always invites me to.

• 16:34Alec Baldwin?

  And I probably hung out there and smoked cigars with him when you were still a gleam in your parents' eye, you weren't even around. God damn it, the way this business works. No, no, no, so he's your agent and you love him?

• 16:44Speaker 07

  I love him, and he said to me, I was sort of saying to him like, "Maybe I could get, I just wanted to make, 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 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 weakly, like, "A year after my movie, but there's more of us, and it's a TV show."

• 17:19Alec Baldwin?

  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 gonna want to steer some, especially your age, who's very young, they're gonna go, "Let's just keep making movies."

• 17:36Speaker 07

  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 were not really being funded on a larger scale and film.

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• 20:11Speaker 07

  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 were not really being funded on a larger scale in film.

• 20:20Alec Baldwin?

  Tina says that sometimes, Tina I just finished working on.

• 20:24Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 20:25Alec Baldwin?

  That it seems like it's more difficult to A to have the control you want in the film business and B to say what you want to say.

• 20:31Speaker 07

  It is, and the fact is, is I could have kept saying what I wanted to say, you know, making $25,000 movies, but I wanted, it's weird, the reason that I like having some budget is not because, you know, I want to stage car crashes, or I want to have, you know, 10 makeup artists on set, although those things would be lovely, but it's more because of the fact that I do so many jobs, so exciting to not have to worry anymore about answering the doorbell, about returning the equipment, about making sure the people had the pizza, also, that's going to happen in TV.

• 21:03Alec Baldwin?

  And HBO has money.

• 21:04Speaker 07

  And HBO has, HBO is Time Warner, but they have money, but they use it in this kind of amazing, they're, it's this amazing model, which is that they don't have to answer to advertisers 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.

• 21:30Alec Baldwin?

  And if they believe in you, based on my experience, I've never worked for them, but I've had 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 successful studios and networks, the way they operate, which is that they vet it, maybe to a fair thee well, but if, once they believe in you, they're all in, it's yours, they give you the money, 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.

• 22:03Speaker 07

  Those women?

• 22:04Alec Baldwin?

  Had you been a fan of that show?

• 22:05Speaker 07

  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 Shoshana was initially not one of the girls. Shoshana was Jessa's, Zashia Mamet's character was Jessa's, Jemima Kirk's character's cousin. And she kind of came in and out as a kind of, she was the, as a recurring in and out goofball who was sort of supposed to call to attention.

• 22:40Alec Baldwin?

  She's a nana, right?

• 22:41Speaker 07

  Yeah, seriously.

• 22:42Alec Baldwin?

  She's so dippy, that character, in a wonderful way. She plays it really well.

• 22:45Speaker 07

  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 Manolos 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 dealio. And so I tried 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 exist.

• 23:15Alec Baldwin?

  So Darren Star, be damned, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do.

• 23:17Speaker 07

  I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it. And so, but the fact is, is that, you know, Sex and the City is a specter that hangs over, in a, I mean, in a positive way, everything female-centric. And, you know, in the writers' room, every, there were so many episodes of Sex and the City and they tackled every area of sexual function and dysfunction that there's almost nothing you can pitch that they haven't done.

• 23:37Alec Baldwin?

  But I found that the women on Sex and the City, that those women would have things happen and they tended to brush off the consequences pretty quickly.

• 23:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 23:46Alec Baldwin?

  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 that, was that deliberate on your part?

• 23:59Speaker 07

  Well, something I 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 Tiff's, 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 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 22 and 30. And so I think there's two.

• 24:39Alec Baldwin?

  You don't?

• 24:39Speaker 07

  I don't because I think-

• 24:40Alec Baldwin?

  Do you think that's a problem that, I mean, for me, one thing that I've 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, they really, they think they have more time to figure it out. They're turning 25 and they really don't have that picture in focus. Do you agree?

• 25:06Speaker 07

  I do agree, and I think a big part of it is being, I think the world, 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, you know, connect with people who would be fans of the show because of the internet. I think, you know, it's always exciting when, like, I, there's this website called RookieMag.com that's run by this girl, Tavi Jevensen, and it's a, it's like 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

• 25:49Speaker 07

  at the time, I just wanted to like, 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 are less jobs available. And so it's a really confusing moment to make any decisive choice about what you want to do.

• 26:17Alec Baldwin?

  It's interesting you say that the internet is responsible for that. And that idea of having too many choices than you need, you wind up, uh-

• 26:23Speaker 07

  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.

• 26:37Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 26:37Speaker 07

  There's so many amazing choices.

• 26:39Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 26:40Speaker 07

  It's New York City.

• 26:41Alec Baldwin?

  I hope he chokes in whatever restaurant he goes, "No, I shouldn't say that. That's mean. That's wrong. I'm sorry."

• 26:44Speaker 07

  I feel like that, so it's helpful to have it backed up by Alec Baldwin.

• 26:52Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing, more in a minute.

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• 29:19Alec Baldwin?

  Lena Dunham didn't have to look far to come up with her character on Girls.

• 29:25Speaker 07

  Physically, I'd say Hannah is, I mean, she's me because I play her, but she's, it's funny because she's chubby, but she doesn't, that's not where her anxiety comes from.

• 29:34Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 29:35Speaker 07

  She's just not, I like playing a character who isn't, 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 aren't constantly discussing it. So, of course Hannah has her moments of self-consciousness, 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.

• 29:58Alec Baldwin?

  Clothes are just to cover you up and keep you warm.

• 30:01Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 30:02Alec Baldwin?

  And they have some degree of style to them, but let's not get carried away.

• 30:04Speaker 07

  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 loon. I feel like my dad always told me I looked like a lion tamer all the time. I've calmed down, just because I realize that you could...

• 30:22Alec Baldwin?

  A lot of vests.

• 30:23Speaker 07

  So many vests.

• 30:24Alec Baldwin?

  Red vests.

• 30:25Speaker 07

  So many red vests, 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...

• 30:34Alec Baldwin?

  You're like in the Luftwaffe.

• 30:36Speaker 07

  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 amount of sort of spunk, but she isn't really applying it anywhere properly yet, and she's also...

• 30:52Alec Baldwin?

  But you're smart and funny and not mean. Because a lot of the people in that world, in the improvisational comedy world...

• 30:58Speaker 07

  Oh, my god.

• 30:59Alec Baldwin?

  They're smart and funny, and they're mean, and that meanness is the font that it comes from, is that source.

• 31:03Speaker 07

  I know, and you know, the thing about, firstly, my dad is like a manners Nazi. So, I think that I grew up feeling like the worst thing you could do was offend somebody.

• 31:10Alec Baldwin?

  I was just gonna say, could you sit up straight in that chair? Your dad told me to say that to you.

• 31:13Speaker 07

  I know, my dad, oh, my god, my dad still tells me to sit up straight constantly.

• 31:17Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, I'm gonna call him.

• 31:18Speaker 07

  And then, and it's funny, because both my, 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.

• 31:28Alec Baldwin?

  Such as?

• 31:28Speaker 07

  You know, a man with a, I mean, they're funny, but they're intense. It's like two men with penises for noses in a war with guns and knives with three women.

• 31:40Alec Baldwin?

  And you grew up around this.

• 31:41Speaker 07

  And I grew up around it, but it was, what was interesting was that my dad was sort of like, "You can do that in your work."

• 31:45Alec Baldwin?

  There was one in your show called Girls.

• 31:46Speaker 07

  I know.

• 31:47Alec Baldwin?

  Dad had penises on his face.

• 31:49Speaker 07

  On his face, on everyone's face, but you know, you, I grew up around it, but I, 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, 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've, I don't know what that feels like, but I think.

• 32:07Alec Baldwin?

  How old are you now?

• 32:08Speaker 07

  I'm 26, and I want kids, but I'm not ready.

• 32:11Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, no, please.

• 32:12Speaker 07

  I really, I just.

• 32:13Alec Baldwin?

  I'll call HBO tomorrow.

• 32:14Speaker 07

  I just got a dog.

• 32:15Alec Baldwin?

  Have them reorder your birth control pills for you.

• 32:17Speaker 07

  Seriously.

• 32:17Alec Baldwin?

  No kids now.

• 32:18Speaker 07

  I don't want kids, I just got a dog and everybody thinks I'm insane. I just finished season two.

• 32:22Alec Baldwin?

  And you signed for how many?

• 32:23Speaker 07

  We're starting season three, and.

• 32:26Alec Baldwin?

  When?

• 32:26Speaker 07

  Uh, we're starting at the end of March.

• 32:28Alec Baldwin?

  Great, I'll be available.

• 32:29Speaker 07

  I'm so excited, yay.

• 32:31Alec Baldwin?

  I want to come and play your therapist.

• 32:32Speaker 07

  That would be the most fun thing in the world.

• 32:34Alec Baldwin?

  You need a therapist.

• 32:35Speaker 07

  Bad.

• 32:36Alec Baldwin?

  Bad.

• 32:36Speaker 07

  Bad, but, I forget what I'm saying, but I'm glad you don't think I'm mean. I get too guilty if I ever make a mean joke.

• 32:40Alec Baldwin?

  But do you appreciate what I'm saying?

• 32:42Speaker 07

  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.

• 32:51Alec Baldwin?

  But you need to have those people in your bullpen there? Do you have some more really traditional, edgier?

• 32:55Speaker 07

  We do have, I have a couple of writers on the staff, um, 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, it's.

• 33:16Alec Baldwin?

  It becomes too much salt in the soup, though.

• 33:18Speaker 07

  Exactly, it's impressive to me in small doses, but terrifying.

• 33:22Alec Baldwin?

  You've gotta have it, but you've gotta 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 gonna lose people, like, we wanna be, we wanna be mean, but we have to decide who we're gonna be mean to.

• 33:33Speaker 07

  It's true.

• 33:34Alec Baldwin?

  Who deserves it.

• 33:34Speaker 07

  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'm, have really taken note of their work and am fascinated by.

• 33:48Alec Baldwin?

  It's not because you slept with them and you wanna get even with them.

• 33:50Speaker 07

  No, I don't have that. That instinct.

• 33:54Alec Baldwin?

  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?

• 34:03Speaker 07

  I mean, it is. 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-

• 34:13Alec Baldwin?

  And you don't, do you?

• 34:14Speaker 07

  Not exactly. I have collaborators. I have collaborators. But I have collaborators who I take really seriously, and-

• 34:21Alec Baldwin?

  And who you need.

• 34:22Speaker 07

  And who I need, and who I would never, I think the minute you get an attitude like, "It's my show, this ship runs on Dunham, and my way or the highway." I think it's broken.

• 34:32Alec Baldwin?

  Hoist the jolly roger.

• 34:33Speaker 07

  Exactly. I think you still want to feel a little fear when you share a script with your collaborators. 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 their reactions, and I never feel like, you know, I'm the big boss and you guys can all get with it or leave.

• 34:53Alec Baldwin?

  So, when the, so the Hannah character, you start out, I mean, in Tiny Furniture, I almost feel like Tiny Furniture is-

• 35:00Speaker 07

  It's a prequel.

• 35:01Alec Baldwin?

  It's a prequel.

• 35:02Speaker 07

  It's a prequel in a lot of ways.

• 35:03Alec Baldwin?

  Because you, you, you may become one of these actresses now where it's all one series, you know what I mean?

• 35:08Speaker 07

  It kind of is. It's funny, when I look at any character I've played in anything that I've made-

• 35:13Alec Baldwin?

  It's you.

• 35:14Speaker 07

  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 in the world of Nina.

• 35:23Alec Baldwin?

  What's Hannah's last name?

• 35:24Speaker 07

  Horvath.

• 35:25Alec Baldwin?

  It's, it's the two double syllables.

• 35:27Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 35:28Alec Baldwin?

  Someone said to me, "To be a famous star, you need to have two double syllable names."

• 35:31Speaker 07

  You do. Do you?

• 35:33Alec Baldwin?

  Or, or two monos, but Sean Penn. Marlon Brando.

• 35:38Speaker 07

  Alec.

• 35:39Alec Baldwin?

  Lena Dunham.

• 35:40Speaker 07

  Oh, thank you.

• 35:40Alec Baldwin?

  It really helps.

• 35:41Speaker 07

  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 our family.

• 35:46Alec Baldwin?

  Is that Lana?

• 35:48Speaker 07

  She like mom said, I'm named after my Russian great grandmother and my mom said that 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 like.

• 36:02Alec Baldwin?

  What is she?

• 36:02Speaker 07

  She's a photographer and she's.

• 36:05Alec Baldwin?

  What's the source of your real closeness to her, to the extent you can say I don't want to pry?

• 36:08Speaker 07

  Oh, no, I don't mind. 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 they're adults because it's like they kind of come alive when you just ask them real questions.

• 36:30Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 36:31Speaker 07

  My mom always really let me into her world and would say like, I'm working right now. I'll talk to you in 10 minutes. And just having that kind of access to her was amazing.

• 36:39Alec Baldwin?

  Sincerity.

• 36:39Speaker 07

  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.

• 36:45Alec Baldwin?

  Now, you're going to do, how many seasons of the show are you signed on to do?

• 36:49Speaker 07

  Well, 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 30 Rock always know just when to get off the air.

• 37:11Alec Baldwin?

  Right. The question becomes how you can maybe, you know, do that TV show and the schedule is how many months?

• 37:21Speaker 07

  We do, well.

• 37:21Alec Baldwin?

  How many episodes?

• 37:22Speaker 07

  We've been doing 10, I think, between you, me and McGee, I think we might do 12 next year.

• 37:28Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 37:28Speaker 07

  But.

• 37:29Alec Baldwin?

  That works for you?

• 37:29Speaker 07

  I would love that. I don't want to like, I don't have any desire in doing like, you know, a 22 episode. I don't even understand how someone does the 22 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 would be amazing. But, you know, so I shoot four, four and a half months out of the year. Then I'm editing, then I'm doing press, then I'm writing, then I'm back. So, so.

• 37:54Alec Baldwin?

  It's not four and a half months.

• 37:55Speaker 07

  So it's not, it's.

• 37:56Alec Baldwin?

  It's eight months.

• 37:57Speaker 07

  It's actually more like 12 months.

• 37:59Alec Baldwin?

  No.

• 37:59Speaker 07

  And so it really-

• 38:00Alec Baldwin?

  Did you make a movie during the break just now?

• 38:01Speaker 07

  No, I couldn't.

• 38:02Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 38:02Speaker 07

  Because there was just no time. I finished shooting in August. I was editing through-

• 38:06Alec Baldwin?

  Why don't you make a deal with HBO where they'll finance your film so you're working for them and it's all in-house?

• 38:10Speaker 07

  It's very smart. I mean, I really want to make a movie. I have two feature 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 ideas.

• 38:26Alec Baldwin?

  Do you have a massive, ambitious movie inside you?

• 38:28Speaker 07

  I do, but it's so-

• 38:30Alec Baldwin?

  Without getting into an idea, you have an idea?

• 38:31Speaker 07

  I do, but it's so weird-

• 38:33Alec Baldwin?

  Is there a 54-year-old psychotherapist in it?

• 38:34Speaker 07

  There's, there's a 54-year-old somebody and, I mean, I'll talk to you later because-

• 38:39Alec Baldwin?

  An air traffic controller?

• 38:40Speaker 07

  Working with you is one of my longstanding dreams, but I, um, and I'm also, I'm writing a book, so that's something that was really-

• 38:46Alec Baldwin?

  Now, I heard about that.

• 38:47Speaker 07

  It's something that was really important to me to start doing at this point in my career.

• 38:51Alec Baldwin?

  You star and you write and produce your own TV show and you're writing a book, hmm, who does that remind me of? Who does that remind me of? What are you going to write a book about?

• 39:00Speaker 07

  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.

• 39:07Alec Baldwin?

  So is it like Paula Pell's Hey Young Girls?

• 39:09Speaker 07

  Oh, my God, I love-

• 39:10Alec Baldwin?

  On Twitter?

• 39:11Speaker 07

  Hey Young Girls, makes me so happy. Paula Pell is funny. Paula Pell is someone who is funny and not mean.

• 39:16Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 39:17Speaker 07

  Paula Pell's like-

• 39:18Alec Baldwin?

  She's mean to the right people.

• 39:19Speaker 07

  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 10 years, it was like, oh, look, here's a celebrity memoir number 57. 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 for a long time.

• 39:41Alec Baldwin?

  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 10, but 12 episodes, what do you have left to go into the book?

• 39:50Speaker 07

  There's stuff that's just for the book. There's stuff that's just-

• 39:52Alec Baldwin?

  As an example, just topic-wise?

• 39:53Speaker 07

  Well, like, I write a lot about my childhood in the book. I write a lot about my parents. I write a lot about, um, college and sort of like, I write a lot about that period. I write a lot about sort of like the beginning of being a sexual person. I write about relationships. I'm writing a lot about sort of female, um, role models.

• 40:08Alec Baldwin?

  What do you want to say about sexuality?

• 40:10Speaker 07

  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.

• 40:24Alec Baldwin?

  If one percent of your audience is influenced, this is what I learned from someone, if one percent of your audience, one percent, is genuinely and in any way influenced by what you do and say, that's still tens of thousands of people.

• 40:36Speaker 07

  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's like, again, I don't want to ever, you know, throw stones from my glass house, 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, she's had this amazing career, she's, you know, won Grammys, 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 like I'm ninety-five years old.

• 41:13Alec Baldwin?

  Because you want to be about Chris Brown smoking pot?

• 41:14Speaker 07

  No, because she got back together smoking marijuana. Oh, yeah, you got, you made a really good joke, and I got too emotional in my response. Yeah, because I want to be in a bed.

• 41:22Alec Baldwin?

  You're so sincere.

• 41:22Speaker 07

  It's terrible.

• 41:23Alec Baldwin?

  You're not mean enough.

• 41:24Speaker 07

  It's terrible.

• 41:25Alec Baldwin?

  No, but so you are, as a role model, what won't Hannah or the other girls in the quartet do?

• 41:30Speaker 07

  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, prostituting yourself. There's not going to be any version of dating somebody because he can take you out to nice dinner.

• 41:42Alec Baldwin?

  Wait, wait, you're putting down my whole playbook. This is all I have up to my age. Wait a second. That is so wrong of you. Come on.

• 41:49Speaker 07

  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.

• 41:59Alec Baldwin?

  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.

• 42:04Speaker 07

  Perfect.

• 42:05Alec Baldwin?

  But, but, so you say, they won't monetize sex?

• 42:08Speaker 07

  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 a character's 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 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.

• 42:45Alec Baldwin?

  You want them to have balance.

• 42:46Speaker 07

  I want women, this is so kind of hippy dippy, but I want them to make their own choices. I want them to, I don't want people to live in service to sort of what television thinks they should look like, or what their family thinks they should act like.

• 42:58Alec Baldwin?

  And how much do you think the women, because this is a very sensitive topic, I mean, because I'm not, I'm not going to go Norman Mailer here, but I feel like, you know, the interesting thing for society is if women, 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 the same time, women are the only ones who can have children.

• 43:21Speaker 07

  It's true.

• 43:22Alec Baldwin?

  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 you struggle with sometimes, or you even think, not struggle, but think about?

• 43:41Speaker 07

  I do. I mean, I think about it all the time, actually.

• 43:43Alec Baldwin?

  You do?

• 43:44Speaker 07

  Because I'm-

• 43:45Alec Baldwin?

  Because you're the product of a happy home.

• 43:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, and I want all those things.

• 43:47Alec Baldwin?

  And you want to replicate that.

• 43:48Speaker 07

  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-

• 43:58Alec Baldwin?

  You still feel that way.

• 43:59Speaker 07

  And I do still feel that way.

• 44:00Alec Baldwin?

  You want to have children.

• 44:01Speaker 07

  Big time. I'm so excited. I don't want like to Jolie Pitt the whole situation, but like, like at least two.

• 44:05Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 44:06Speaker 07

  And I think all the time about-

• 44:07Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, no, me and Pharaoh.

• 44:08Speaker 07

  It's funny, exactly. I'm my, Jenny Connors' daughter, Coco, who's, who's eight and is my dear friend. We like to go out to see live music together. Coco one day was like, hmm, when do you think you're gonna 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- And she was like, "At that point, I think you should not be working on girls. And if you are working on girls, you're gonna have to cut your hours down to like 8:30 to 6, because you need to be able to be there when they wake up and you also need to be there with them at night."

• 44:37Alec Baldwin?

  This was Tina's issue, yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 07

  And she basically, an eight-year-old, started to school me in the way that my lifestyle would not allow for children. And she was like, "You know, your boyfriend, my boyfriend's a musician and he tours a lot." And she was like, "He might have to quit his job." And I was like, "I don't think he's gonna quit his job." And she's like, "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 planning 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."

• 45:22Alec Baldwin?

  Now, two things that I think are kinda connected, which is, how do men present themselves? You have a boyfriend.

• 45:27Speaker 07

  I do.

• 45:28Alec Baldwin?

  And I don't wanna pry into your personal life, but you, how do men present themselves to you differently? You said that Hannah was this and that, and a chubby girl, who da-da-da. 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?

• 45:44Speaker 07

  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 drag me back to their cave for me to understand that it's going on. And then I would, and then they...

• 45:55Alec Baldwin?

  In the modern world.

• 45:55Speaker 07

  And then I'd hire Gloria Alred as my attorney.

• 45:58Alec Baldwin?

  Bingo.

• 45:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 45:59Alec Baldwin?

  And get on TMZ.

• 46:00Speaker 07

  Exactly. But, you know, the thing is, is that sleazy people are attracted to, and sleazy people and not sleazy people are attracted to any sense of gravitas that someone might have.

• 46:13Alec Baldwin?

  A might.

• 46:13Speaker 07

  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 sort of...

• 46:24Alec Baldwin?

  How did you know your boyfriend liked you?

• 46:26Speaker 07

  Well, we got set up on a blind date, so I knew he liked, well, I didn't know he liked me, but

• 46:30Alec Baldwin?

  He was predisposed.

• 46:30Speaker 07

  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."

• 46:37Alec Baldwin?

  All right, now, you don't have to answer, tell me if you don't want to answer this question, but I just find it charming.

• 46:40Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 46:40Alec Baldwin?

  Where did you go on your first date with your boyfriend?

• 46:42Speaker 07

  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

• 46:49Alec Baldwin?

  In New York?

• 46:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, because someone's

• 46:50Alec Baldwin?

  It's the dilemma of Burden's ass.

• 46:52Speaker 07

  I, it really is.

• 46:53Alec Baldwin?

  We're gonna starve to death with two bales of pain next to us.

• 46:55Speaker 07

  And also, what if I choose the wrong restaurant and you have a bad association with it? Or you think I'm sleazy?

• 47:00Alec Baldwin?

  Reflects poorly on me.

• 47:00Speaker 07

  Exactly, it's just the worst. And like, what if we go there and you don't like anything on the menu?

• 47:04Alec Baldwin?

  He's sitting there going, "You call this a bran muffin?"

• 47:05Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 47:06Alec Baldwin?

  So what happened?

• 47:07Speaker 07

  It's so 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 gonna be in great hands.

• 47:15Alec Baldwin?

  Where did he pick?

• 47:16Speaker 07

  And then he picked Blue Ribbon Bakery, 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.

• 47:22Alec Baldwin?

  And you went, "Oh, my God, I'm home."

• 47:24Speaker 07

  Yeah, that's easily, I was so glad.

• 47:27Alec Baldwin?

  You're like, "Did my mom call you before this date?"

• 47:30Speaker 07

  And let you know what my dreams are.

• 47:32Alec Baldwin?

  That I like cheese, that I like Yarlesburg on my burger?

• 47:34Speaker 07

  Exactly, exactly, somebody suggesting that you cheese.

• 47:37Alec Baldwin?

  I want a Yarlesburger. And then, and then, and then you've been dating him for a while?

• 47:40Speaker 07

  Yeah, a lot, like, almost a year. It's been, it's, he's a very, very great person.

• 47:46Alec Baldwin?

  To meet you, and tell me if I'm on to 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 presented 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 6.5 billion people out there, so go for it." Am I right?

• 48:10Speaker 07

  I mean, that's the most lovely 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, was 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 like, about as comforting as feelings get.

• 48:41Alec Baldwin?

  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 Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

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  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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