Lena Dunham is Never ‘Too Much’

Writer/director Lena Dunham is the voice of my generation. Or at the very least, a voice of a generation. Her new show, Too Much https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30406366/, is now available to stream on Netflix. We start by discussing her 2022 film Sharp Stick (6:20), the 1970s cinema that inspired it (9:50), and how it offers a “three-way mirror” to the female experience (12:41). Then, Lena reflects on meeting Judd Apatow on the heels of Tiny Furniture (15:39), her rapid ascension following Girls (17:39), the pain and power of grappling with OCD on the show (23:11), the genius of season five’s “The Panic in Central Park” (29:35), and how she’s continued to learn from public criticisms (35:27). On the back-half, we sit with the end of Girls (43:59), the aftermath of that decade (49:57), the new creative path Lena had to forge (55:46), the prophetic presence of her father (1:00:27), the inspiration that is her mother (1:01:47), and the dreams she has for the years ahead—on the screen, and off (1:06:54). Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:21Speaker 00

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Today, actor, writer, director Lena Dunham. For a majority of the 2010s, Dunham served as the creator and star of the hit HBO series Girls. The show has actually had a resurgence lately as younger generations have begun to discover Dunham's singular talent, her ability to write funny, vulnerable, self-aware characters trying desperately to find their way in the world. But how do you follow up a decade-defining show like Girls? Well, for a time, Lena didn't try to. Instead, she moved back to movies, writing and directing two films in 2022, Catherine Called Birdie and Sharp Stick.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  And it was around Sharp Stick that I sat with Lena on the podcast. Since then, she's returned to television with her hit new program Too Much, a rom-com Netflix series starring Meg Stalter and Will Sharp. In it, Stalter portrays Jessica, a heartbroken New Yorker who takes a job in London where she plans to live the rest of her life in solitude. That is, until she meets Felix, a charming, unpredictable musician who, as you can guess, sweeps her off her feet. Here's a clip from the trailer.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Jess, something has shifted with you.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Jess, hi. How are you?

• 2:01Speaker 03

  Girl, are you good?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  You're unhappy.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  Leaving me is the worst thing that anyone's ever done.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Changed your life. Go to London.

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Seriously?

• 2:11Speaker 01

  You love London. You saw Spice World nine times in the theater.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  I could do it. I could go and find my English dream. You know, Estate Grounds, Burning Gardens.

• 2:22Speaker 04

  Good luck with that, love.

• 2:27Speaker 03

  Oh my god, I'm in hell.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  You're the singing guy.

• 2:36Speaker 04

  I'm Felix, by the way. You've got like an American accent, right? Let me guess, you're like one of those Love Actually girls.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  This is the London I came here for. Like out of a movie.

• 2:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, a horror movie. These people are full of pent-up rage and dark secrets.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  I know, but look, it's a yellow house.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  That was from Too Much. You can stream all episodes exclusively on Netflix. The story loosely captures the beginnings of Lena's relationship with her now husband, Louis Felber, who she met on a blind date in January of 2021. It was then shortly after that date that the show was soft-pitched to friend and collaborator, and full disclosure, talk easy producer, to Nyxabravo, who also appears in the series as a coworker to Stalter's Jessica. The New Yorker has praised Too Much as one of the best shows of the year, with Slate claiming that it may finally be the successor to Girls We've Been Looking For: messy, compelling, and classically Lena Dunham. And so with that, I wanted to replay this conversation with Lena.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  It's a personal favorite of mine, and re-listening to it ahead of today, I think it kind of perfectly captures the journey that she had to go through to arrive at this new show. The films that inspired Sharp Stick and her return to directing, the legacy of Girls, and all the tumult of that time, the criticism she received, the lessons she learned, and how she got through all of it, and she did get through all of it, to find her voice all over again. This is Lena Dunham.

• 4:24Sam Fragoso?

  Lena Dunham. Nice to meet you.

• 4:26Speaker 06

  Nice to meet you, Sam. I've heard a lot about you and it's a joy to be in your presence.

• 4:30Sam Fragoso?

  I'm overjoyed to have you.

• 4:31Speaker 06

  I'm overjoyed to be here, Sam. Also, getting here, I had to walk on Hollywood Boulevard, which for me is like, I can't go there without feeling like a six-year-old who's like, lost their mother in a Kmart. It's the craziest feeling out there.

• 4:45Sam Fragoso?

  When you're walking down the street,

• 4:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:47Sam Fragoso?

  did you find your star on there?

• 4:52Speaker 06

  I don't have a star. If I did, I know I wouldn't find it because they would have put it like, down at the bottom of a water heater. Like, it wouldn't be even directly on the pavement. It would be sort of like, below a grate. You'd have to climb down to where the mole people live in the much unused subways of Los Angeles.

• 5:11Sam Fragoso?

  Maybe after this new movie, Sharp Stick.

• 5:13Speaker 06

  Then I could have a star. Also, I want all the listeners to know that this is the kind of guy who holds a pen in his mouth in thoughtful repose, which is the person we all want to be when we're thinking and aren't.

• 5:24Sam Fragoso?

  Thank you for outing me to the listeners. Can we start with this movie? It's your first movie since Tiny Furniture.

• 5:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 5:33Sam Fragoso?

  Which came out in 2010. When this project premiered at Sundance earlier this year, you said, "I realized that after a decade of life in Hollywood, I wasn't taking the advice I always give to young artists. Find the story only you can tell and make it on the scale you can make it." What's the story? And why are you the one to tell it?

• 5:55Speaker 06

  So, this is about a young woman named Sarah Jo who lives in sort of like, Los Angeles, but a sort of very specific, fringy Los Angeles with her mom and her sister. And she's 26 and she's experienced some chronic health issues and she has a sort of very specific naivete about her. And she enters into an affair with a man whose child that she's babysitting. And it's sort of about that and then the kind of fallout, blowback experience of what it looks like after your first experience with sort of love and sexuality comes apart, which I think most people who didn't, you know, marry their high school sweetheart can remember that moment for them. It was one of those things, and actually, the last time

• 6:39Speaker 06

  I'd really had it was Tiny Furniture, where it just kind of came out of my brain and like, just like, fully formed, fully birthed. And it actually, the entire thing generated from a conversation with our mutual friend, Jenix Bravo, who is one of my favorite people and one of my most favorite directors. And we were talking about our love of very specific movies of the 1970s. And she asked me when the last time I'd watched Looking for Mr. Goodbar was. And I said, actually, never. And I watched it. And it sent me on this entire path of reflection about female characters, likability, what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. And I guess, in some ways, the movie was a reaction to that. And then, three days later, this story was just sort of haunting me day and night.

• 7:22Speaker 06

  And so, it was COVID, the middle of COVID, and I was really isolated at the time. And I was barely seeing anybody. My dog, Ingrid, like, I started to truly believe she could speak, you know, in a way that no one had to be concerned about.

• 7:35Sam Fragoso?

  She probably can.

• 7:36Speaker 06

  I mean, I know that she can think words. But I would look at her and I would just say, just say it. Just say it. I can see you're trying to say it. Just say it.

• 7:43Sam Fragoso?

  Just like my father.

• 7:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:46Sam Fragoso?

  I'm sorry, Dad.

• 7:46Speaker 06

  I'm sorry, too, to Sam's dad.

• 7:48Sam Fragoso?

  Totally not true. Emotionally available, articulate person.

• 7:53Speaker 06

  Yeah. The amount of times that I make jokes at my parents' expense and then realize that the joke that I've made has absolutely nothing to do with who they are as a person is innumerable.

• 8:01Sam Fragoso?

  The joke was just there. I just took it.

• 8:03Speaker 06

  It's there, like a little grape. You just have to pluck. And I'm glad you fall prey to that instinct, too.

• 8:07Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 06

  So I wanted to make something, I was like, I want to make something small, on a scale that can be created during COVID. And it was like, the same instinct when I was younger, where I would go, like, I have three friends in my bedroom, this is what I can make with three friends in my bedroom. Or if my mom and my sibling and me and our apartment, what does that look like? I mean, the budget was bigger than the budget was on Tiny Furniture, but it was, you know, very small indie. And we made it in December of 2020. Another lockdown had just started. For some shocking reason, the film industry was considered essential workers, which is...

• 8:42Sam Fragoso?

  Well, after they see this film, you'll understand why.

• 8:44Speaker 06

  They'll really get it. They'll really get it. Yesterday, I was, I have a very close friend who's also very Christian, and she wanted to send her daughter to the premiere. And I said, I just want to warn you, it has some adult content. And then I said, sex, but no nudity. I think the message is ultimately empowering. And so that should be my logline. Sex, but no nudity. I think the message is ultimately empowering.

• 9:06Sam Fragoso?

  So the sex of this film, it hearkens back to American cinema in the 70s. You mentioned Looking for Mr. Goodbar. I'm also thinking about An Unmarried Woman. That period of films about complicated, sexually liberated women. Did you feel like that was missing in 2022?

• 9:25Speaker 06

  I mean, I feel like that's been missing since then. I feel like that complicated, sexually adventurous woman of the 70s. There was this incredible moment where even, I don't want to say even male directors, but even male directors end at that moment, especially male directors. Everyone from Paul Mazursky to Cassavetes to Hal Ashby. I mean, people were writing these really interesting, thorny, weird, sexy. And then it was almost like that gave way to the archetype of like female sex villainous of the 80s. That was more of like an Adrian Lyne and Brian De Palma move. When I started watching those movies in college, when I sort of, like every other college student, was introduced to the Criterion Collection.

• 10:07Speaker 06

  At that point on VHS at my local college video store and referred to as Janus Films.

• 10:12Sam Fragoso?

  At Oberlin.

• 10:12Speaker 06

  At Oberlin, at what was known as College Video. And when they went out of business, I bought all of their Janus Films VHSs, and they are in my parents' attic. And my mom asks every year if she can throw them away, and every year I say no.

• 10:26Sam Fragoso?

  There is some arthouse programmer listening to this thinking, I gotta get in touch with you.

• 10:31Speaker 06

  By the way, if someone was like, would you donate these? I would be like, it is my honor. Like, I would love to feel like I could hand my complete collection of Janus Films VHSs, which includes such gems as Vagabond by Agnes Varda, my personal favorite, to someone who needed them. Because I don't even have a VHS player. But at that moment, I had a combo VHS DVD player, and I was so hungry for it. And when I started watching those movies, like, it just. Exploded my mind. And I think that in a way, that's the era that I've always been grabbing at. But that is like a way of making movies. They're also, those movies don't have the same kind of focus on plot and three act structure that we often do now. While I have great respect

• 11:15Speaker 06

  for plot and three act structure, I wouldn't call it my gift.

• 11:18Sam Fragoso?

  I actually have that in my notes here.

• 11:21Speaker 06

  That's not her gift.

• 11:22Sam Fragoso?

  Not her gift.

• 11:23Speaker 06

  How do I ask her about that in a polite way? The first note I get on a script is always a structure note. I feel like no one's ever like, said this dialogue feels clumsy and unrealistic, but they have said, this is 82 pages of two women having one conversation.

• 11:37Sam Fragoso?

  I think there are worse criticisms. Who watches a movie and is like, God, can't wait for the exposition?

• 11:44Speaker 06

  That's a really great question. Apparently, some people, because of how movies are getting made.

• 11:49Sam Fragoso?

  Can't wait for the scene where X guy explains the seven things that they skipped over in the story before.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  I know. There's always a moment in a movie where I'm really excited because I think they're not going to do it. And then someone comes in and explains to me what I've already seen.

• 12:02Sam Fragoso?

  In the beginning of this talk, you mentioned the sort of triptych of these three women and their different experiences.

• 12:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:10Sam Fragoso?

  And I wonder, how do you wrestle with all three of those people that came from you and are each a part of you?

• 12:17Speaker 06

  Well, it's interesting you say that because I just was kind of realizing the other day, how much the three women in the family, there's a mother, played by Jennifer Jason Lee, and her two daughters, Christine Frose, Seth and Taylor Page, one of whom is adopted, one of whom she gave birth to, but she actually seems to have more of a sort of emotional connection to her adopted daughter than to her biological daughter. And all of those characters, all of whom have totally different relationships to their sexuality, to their bodies, to their presentation, feel like Me, like the one who's like a sort of performative influencer who's trying to be sexy, the one who's kind of like retired from her relationships with men and wears her pajamas all the time and literally is addicted to Benadryl.

• 13:01Speaker 06

  And then also this character of Sarah Jo who has dealt with this kind of illness that's given her a sense of separation from her own body and a lack of self-awareness, coupled with certain kinds of awareness that are much more acute. And so it's an interesting thing because having written a lot of sort of ensemble pieces for female characters, I always have to find a way to feel like I can be in each of their experiences so that I can make it feel human and relevant. But this was a uniquely specific situation where I felt like I was almost like splitting myself into a triumvirate. And then on top of it, playing a fourth woman who also was dealing with her sexuality differently. She's, you know, heavily pregnant after IVF, she's gained weight, she's dealing with a

• 13:45Speaker 06

  husband who you find out has not been faithful to her and you're navigating that with her.

• 13:51Sam Fragoso?

  And hasn't been faithful many times over.

• 13:54Speaker 06

  Many times over. It didn't really matter if that was a surprise to the audience, the idea that he hadn't been faithful many times over, but it mattered that it was a surprise to the character. Because part of the heartbreak is discovering that, which I think every woman, every person has had this feeling of discovering that sort of you are in some way less special than you thought you were.

• 14:13Sam Fragoso?

  You've said that Sharp Stick is more autobiographical than Girls. The medical connection between you and Sarah Jo, you yourself having hysterectomy, are pretty clear. But I'm thinking about your character in the film Heather, who makes good money as a real estate agent, but is incredibly busy and consumed with her work. And that busyness, it reminds me of what your life must have been like when you released Tiny Furniture into the world. In 2010, when you'd release it, you receive an email from Judd Apatow. And I feel like from that point onward, you're on this all-consuming trajectory.

• 14:56Speaker 06

  My dad always likes to say, "Shot out of a rocket." He always goes, "She was shot out of a rocket."

• 15:01Sam Fragoso?

  Is that how he sounds?

• 15:02Speaker 06

  Probably he would be upset by the impression, but everyone else feels I do an excellent impression of my father, so.

• 15:07Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, can you do it again?

• 15:08Speaker 06

  Well, he'd go like this, "You know, it's a complicated experience, kid. You were shot out of a rocket."

• 15:12Sam Fragoso?

  I love that. What was in the email?

• 15:14Speaker 06

  The email said something along the lines of like, hey, this is Judd Apatow. I watched your movie. I really liked it. And then he said something really funny. He said, if you ever want some help making big movies that are a lot less fun to make with a lot more interference, get in touch with me with this office phone number. I thought it was a prank. My friend Isabel and I were like into pranking each other. She'd like done a prank where she had like saved her number in some our friend's phone as like Mark Skateboard, who's someone they'd met and was like sending her strange messages. So I wrote back like, if this is Isabel, go fuck yourself. But if this is actually Judd, oh my God, I don't know what to do. And he wrote like,

• 15:54Speaker 06

  it really isn't Isabel. And then when I called his office, he and I got asked to be transferred to him. And I thought it was gonna be like, Mr. Apatow will call you back in 19 days. And they transferred me right into his office and he said, hi, it's Isabel. And it was like the best.

• 16:09Sam Fragoso?

  Was there a specific conversation you were thinking about?

• 16:11Speaker 06

  I actually was just having a really strong recollection the other day of when I sent him the first draft of the pilot of Girls and I was so scared. I'd not written a TV pilot before. I didn't know how it was supposed to be shaped. I didn't know. And there was still a lot of shaping left to do, but he sent me an email and he said, I'm 10 pages in. You're so funny. And I just like, it was just the best. Like, I just remember being like, I, it's amazing how all the, you know, support and affirmation you need is like someone that you deeply admire saying, I'm 10 pages in. You're so funny. He's always a person that makes me feel safe and is always a person who's been just a place that I could return to. I mean, obviously, Girls was just a gift through and through.

• 16:53Sam Fragoso?

  So it premieres in April of 2012?

• 16:56Speaker 06

  April of 2012.

• 16:57Sam Fragoso?

  When you begin to develop Girls at Silver Cup Studios in Long Island City. The New Yorker described you at age 24 as the person in the office with the most authority and the least experience, half boss, half intern. Did you see yourself like that at the start of the show?

• 17:15Speaker 06

  I think at the start of the show, I just saw myself as an intern. It was like I was an intern to myself.

• 17:19Sam Fragoso?

  The intern that's on the poster?

• 17:21Speaker 06

  Exactly. Like I did the intern. The intern who's in the trailer and who also has like is editing the show. I didn't know anything. Like, I remember interviewing assistant directors by asking them, what does an assistant director do? Like, I thought an assistant director was just someone who directed, but a little less than you. Like, I had no sense of any of these jobs because I'd made a movie with six people and now I was going to make a movie with a full crew.

• 17:46Sam Fragoso?

  By the way, I thought that for like way too long.

• 17:51Speaker 06

  Well, you're very precocious, so you probably thought it till the same age that I thought it.

• 17:55Sam Fragoso?

  Wait, I'm precocious? You had a show at HBO at 24.

• 17:58Speaker 06

  I mean, it's so, I remember my friend Isabel, the same one I thought was doing a prank to me when we turned 25. She said, Lena, this is so sad. We'll never be precocious again.

• 18:08Speaker 06

  It really made me laugh. But I did, I felt like I was an intern to myself. I think even though I watched HBO, and I know this sounds naive, part of me thought it was gonna be like 300 people who thought that the show was pretty funny and we'd get to make 10 episodes of it. And then I would like go back to my life. Like, there was no part of me that could. And then each thing that happened, I was like, well, this is interesting. Well, this is interesting. And then suddenly I'd been on a hiatus from my life for seven years, or what I had previously thought was my life. And then when I returned to it, it was like coming back from outer space. It's like one of those movies where like a guy comes back from a seven-year space mission where they think he's lost and he's like, my wife married someone else.

• 18:49Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, they were in a coma, they wake up.

• 18:51Speaker 06

  Exactly. And everyone's like, we didn't think you were coming back. And you're like, I told you guys I would be.

• 18:57Sam Fragoso?

  They left you for dead.

• 18:57Speaker 06

  Yep, fully.

• 18:59Sam Fragoso?

  When you look back at this time, what were some of those challenges you didn't anticipate or couldn't foresee that you now know?

• 19:06Speaker 06

  I knew at the time that the stuff that I was dealing with in terms of sort of grappling with public conversation around the show, I knew that that was unusual.

• 19:16Sam Fragoso?

  Which parts of the public conversation?

• 19:18Speaker 06

  Well, I used to think just the negative ones, but now I understand that anything that puts you in like an echo chamber feedback loop with yourself and then a perceived version of yourself and then back to yourself is just a challenge to the self that bifurcates the self. I knew at the time, okay, this isn't quote unquote "normal." And I even knew to a degree that the public conversation around the show didn't necessarily resemble the public conversation around other things because it was so frenzied and also it was like A conversation about a conversation about a conversation. Like, it got pretty meta there for a while. But the thing that I didn't really recognize when I was doing it is I had gone from being someone who was a pretty big loner, who spent, you know, all of my teenage life shut up

• 20:00Speaker 06

  in my room and a lot of my life till I was 24 shut in my room, to being a person who was quite virtually surrounded by people all the time who had questions for me, had needs for me, needed responses for me. And parts of that, like the directing process, are really sacred and incredible. And parts of that, like being put in the position of being a manager of people when you're 24, you know, going to work at 5:00 in the morning and coming home at 9:00 at night, how much it also took me out of the social universe that I was ostensibly writing about. So it was like, I was supposed to be this, like, reporter of millennial foibles and actually didn't see another millennial, basically, from the time that I was 24 unless they were

• 20:45Speaker 06

  being paid to perform with me.

• 20:47Sam Fragoso?

  You have this quote, "It's almost like I took the few nights of my life that I went wild, got wasted, threw up, and expanded them into six years. I was definitely much more of a millennial documenter than I was present in my millennial life."

• 21:02Speaker 06

  That's for sure accurate. It's not like, oh, sometimes when I had an amusing social experience, I wrote about it. Every amusing social-- because I was having to squeeze that lemon for all it was.

• 21:14Sam Fragoso?

  Of course.

• 21:14Speaker 06

  All its juice.

• 21:15Sam Fragoso?

  You had six seasons.

• 21:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, you got six seasons to do. So it was like, I'd go on one date and it would provide fodder for seven episodes. And also, I was not, like, on the dating scene during my 20s. I was in one relationship. I was not going out because I was working. And then all of the social experiences that I was having, which were sort of surrounding the, like, publicity around the show, like, the show can't then turn into, like, "And Hannah met Ben Affleck?" Like, that's not what--

• 21:41Sam Fragoso?

  Hannah met Mike Nichols?

• 21:42Speaker 06

  Yeah. Hannah had lunch with Mike Nichols and then saw him embrace Diane Sawyer across a restaurant and thought, "This is the most romantic thing I've ever witnessed."

• 21:51Sam Fragoso?

  Wait, Hannah's mentor was the late Nora Ephron?

• 21:55Speaker 06

  I feel like Nora Ephron herself would like that joke.

• 21:58Sam Fragoso?

  Rest in peace. Right before season one came out in 2012, you had what you described as a meltdown that mirrored the OCD relapse that Hannah has in Girls. You then had to make the second season of the show, which you said was hard to perform because you spend so much of your life as a person with OCD or any kind of mental illness, trying to camouflage your habits, trying to appear normal. Despite that, you decide to do the opposite. You put your tics, your insecurities into this character on the screen for all of us to watch. And when I look back on your performance in the show, I can't help but wonder,

• 22:44Sam Fragoso?

  how the hell you manage that?

• 22:47Speaker 06

  Well, a very nice way of putting it because someone else would be like, why did you do that? And why would you put yourself in that situation? And I think I thought like, my tendency is always to try to spotlight whatever it is I'm feeling shame about. And what that comes from, you know, I've spent a lot of time trying to understand what it is to kind of be afraid of something and so therefore feel that you need to do it. Someone once described it as being counterphobic and I found that helpful term. But I think at the time, my OCD was something I thought I had sort of like beaten. You know, I didn't understand at that point that like, mental health is a ride that you're on for your whole life, for all of us, no matter what form it takes. And so when it reared its head again, I was so afraid that I was going to like be discovered.

• 23:31Speaker 06

  Like I kept having these like obsessive thoughts that I was going to be like carried out of the girl set screaming on a stretcher, which never happened.

• 23:38Sam Fragoso?

  I don't mean to laugh at that.

• 23:38Speaker 06

  No, it's a good image.

• 23:40Sam Fragoso?

  It's a funny image.

• 23:41Speaker 06

  It is a funny image. And I remember like literally calling my parents and being like, I need to come home. Like I remember my dad picking me up at the airport and I was so anxious. I had literally not eaten in three days. And I was just so wound up because it was almost like OCD returning triggered then a fear about the fear and a fear about getting discovered and being kind of caught out as a fraud or even worse, someone who was just incapable of doing this job. Like they'd be like, well, this is why we don't give shows to 24 year old girls was kept kind of echoing in my head. And so, you know, the first season was so much about my shame around men, sex, dating. And the second season then.

• 24:21Speaker 06

  I shifted to where the shame had shifted, which was back to this feeling that I in some way had like a defective mind. But I do remember feeling when I was performing those scenes, the ones that involved OCD stuff and the tics, like it was so much more vulnerable than being naked in front of a crew or doing a sex scene because there's some like model there for what they're seeing, but like those tics and those OCD moments are so specific and so specific to who you are, they can appear so alien that my fear around it being looked at and seen was so great. And I remember just having to like almost just tell myself that nobody was there. What would

• 25:02Speaker 06

  you be doing if nobody was there? And the experience of doing it was really interesting in a vacuum and just overcoming that fear of doing it in front of other people and finding that it would be okay. And also in a way focusing on writing about it and performing it removed my focus from it in my own life. I mean, I was healing in other ways with therapy and medication, etc. But like it removed the obsessive focus on the obsessions. I mean, my biggest fear when I was like, you know, in fifth or sixth grade was that kids would know that I went to therapy. I remember like taking an ornate route like to the therapist's office as if I was gonna get caught like a weird twice around the block. And then I remember once like that my therapist's office was in the same place as the pediatrician's office. And so I ran into a girl and doing this

• 25:47Speaker 06

  like whole song and dance about how I had the doc, I was at the doctor because I had strep throat. And I'm like a terrible liar. So like, you can only imagine how much this girl was like, mm, I'm only in fifth grade and I know that she's going into a therapist's office. And my biggest fear was that other kids would know I took medication. And so it wasn't really until I did that OCD stuff on girls and people responded, I know exactly how you feel. This is me. I did, I've done that too, that I realized just how kind of not alone I was. Like there's this AA term, which is like term, people experiencing a sense of terminal uniqueness. And I think until then I'd experienced a real sense of terminal uniqueness. And then it was so comforting to realize how actually run of the mill it was. And now people come up to me often and go like,

• 26:32Speaker 06

  I have OCD. Thanks for talking about this. Or, or just say they have, you know, a health issue, a mental health issue, whatever, or grappling with something. Now people get off of Zoom, work Zooms to say that they have to go to therapy. Like, we live in a different world, but the different world started for me with that moment.

• 26:48Sam Fragoso?

  Started in public.

• 26:50Speaker 06

  The Different World started in public and it is, does sort of mirror the fact that like, I wasn't like a kid with like a true gift for making friends. I had, I had some, but not the most and I never quite knew what to do with them. And so a lot of things for me started in public, a lot of things.

• 27:10Sam Fragoso?

  I don't know. I, uh, I hear that and I go, that sounds like a lot. And it sounds like a lot to, the weight of that sounds like a lot to me.

• 27:22Speaker 06

  Well, thank you. And thank you for having such an empathic way of hearing it. And I think there were so many things that I didn't let myself know throughout my whole life, but particularly once my career started that I didn't, or maybe couldn't let myself know or a lot. And, you know, I'm finishing a book now that I've been writing for four years, that sort of four years ago, I started writing a memoir of sort of the past six years. And now it's turned into a memoir of the past 10 years and the past 12 years. And it is wild to me how much life it contains. And everyone's life contains a lot of life. But I did have what I hope were the most, in many ways, eventful years of my life.

• 28:06Sam Fragoso?

  Well, let's get into some of that because the whirlwind of making this show, it's interesting because when people talk about girls, so much of the conversation is not about the content of the show or the characters of the show, but about the character of Lena Dunham. That's like, you've heard this before.

• 28:24Speaker 06

  I mean, not maybe articulated as beautifully as you just did, but yes, totally. And it's something I sort of definitely experienced. And it's why it's such a relief to me when I get to have conversations that are sort of about, I mean, that have this level of depth or also touch on like the qualities of being an artist, because there were so many conversations for so long that almost didn't even need to require me. Like, I was in them, but it was like, you guys could absolutely do this without me.

• 28:50Sam Fragoso?

  Mm hmm. I read all those.

• 28:54Sam Fragoso?

  Since we have some distance from the show itself, is there a scene or a specific episode that you can now, at 36, say, "I'm really proud of that"?

• 29:07Speaker 06

  That's a great question. You know, I think the one that I wrote that I look back and I go like, that was sort of interesting and you were like really trying some stuff, young lady, was the Panic in Central Park, which is when Marnie and Charlie meet again.

• 29:25Sam Fragoso?

  It's, yeah, unnerving.

• 29:27Speaker 06

  I think it is an arena. I think it was also like, I'm sort of proud of my younger self that I was able to sort of step outside of like genre and expectation and write something that was, by the way, which was, again, inspired by a movie from the 70s, Panic in Needle Park. And it was an attempt to also kind of talk about, I think I didn't know this at the time because it involved this character who had left the show and this actor who had publicly left the show coming back. It sort of involved like an attempt to kind of like grab back at a previous time when making work felt easier and more intuitive and less dragged down by the conversation. And just like these two characters are kind of spend a night in nostalgia and then wake up to where they actually are.

• 30:11Speaker 06

  That's sort of what the, I love the shiver that you just did. That's sort of what the...

• 30:17Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, because I rewatched it a couple of weeks ago and that's how I felt. That's how I felt when I watched it when it came out. And it's how I felt years removed. It's unnerving.

• 30:26Speaker 06

  I'm so glad. And so I think I'm proud of that because there were moments where even when I couldn't be, maybe for my own survival, completely aware about what was going on for me, that I could write about it. I could still write about it. And also, I'm proud that even at that point, you know, season five, steeped in all of it, I was still finding that private space to like spin off into something and take chances.

• 30:52Sam Fragoso?

  This is from season five?

• 30:54Speaker 06

  It's from season five. It's when Chris Abbott's character Charlie, who left the show after season two, came back for one episode. And it was this kind of beautiful meta thing where we kind of got to close up this story with him that we hadn't gotten to close up both personally and professionally. And it had a real sweetness to it, even if the episode is ultimately not that sweet because he turns out to be an injecting heroin junkie.

• 31:18Sam Fragoso?

  All right, why don't we take a look? This is from season five, episode six of Girls, titled "The Panic in Central Park", starring Christopher Abbott and Alison Williams.

• 31:33Speaker 07

  You live here?

• 31:34Speaker 08

  I do.

• 31:36Speaker 07

  There's a garbage bag on the window.

• 31:39Speaker 08

  I sleep late.

• 31:42Speaker 07

  So get curtains. Actually, you know what? Never mind, I'm not here to change you. I don't need to change anybody anymore.

• 31:54Speaker 07

  What am I gonna do about you?

• 31:59Speaker 08

  What if we ran away? I'm serious. What if like the last few years were just a bad dream and we ran away? And opened up a general store? Somewhere where they need a general store? I got cash, I got a bike. We can go wherever we wanted. We don't have to tell anybody if we didn't feel like it.

• 32:21Speaker 07

  I don't need any of my stuff.

• 32:23Speaker 08

  No.

• 32:24Speaker 07

  I don't, I really don't need any of my stuff. I hate a lot of my stuff.

• 32:31Speaker 08

  I'm serious, as soon as the sun comes up, let's go.

• 32:35Speaker 07

  What about all of the time?

• 32:38Speaker 08

  Does that have to bother us? If we don't let it?

• 32:43Sam Fragoso?

  You mentioned this tendency twice now, about keeping yourself at a remove from the goings on of the show. The sort of, I guess, machinations of making a show.

• 32:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:55Sam Fragoso?

  Was that out of self-preservation? Because you had to keep making these?

• 33:01Speaker 06

  I think that I tried. And for a while, I got to keep myself at a remove from it precisely because I was still making them. And so the show offered this kind of cocoon from the conversation around the show. But then at a certain point, when something gets loud enough, it's like, even if you don't look at the internet, like a friend will text you in the morning like, "So sorry, hope you're feeling okay." And you're like, "What happened?" It would just be impossible to keep things completely separate. And I think also, sometimes there was like the misperception that just by the way that I sort of responded to questions or spoke in interviews, which was always with sort of like a blunt and kind of unfiltered presence that I wouldn't necessarily have now just by virtue of age and where I am. I think people thought I was in some way

• 33:45Speaker 06

  attempting to continue to stoke it. You know, my dad always jokes that I would like make these sort of in-your-face, audacious things happen on the show and then be so surprised that anyone was having any kind of response at all. And even when Sharpset came out and I was like, Papa, it seemed like the reviews are a little bit divided. And he was like, what the fuck did you think was gonna happen? And I was like, to me, I'm always making something that feels just like a, like a natural extension of a dialogue that I want to be having. And then it's not until it hits some other people.

• 34:15Sam Fragoso?

  That you've already been having with yourself.

• 34:16Speaker 06

  That I've already been having with myself, as all the best dialogues are, except for this one. This one's really nice. And then, um, and then I'll be surprised at people's response because to me, it feels like such a natural conversation to have and such a natural subject matter. And then other people kind of remind me of what may feel provocative to them.

• 34:39Sam Fragoso?

  All these conversations that you're alluding to, these sort of meta-conversations about the show, you in the show, how the two dovetail between Hannah and Lena.

• 34:51Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 34:51Sam Fragoso?

  In that period, in those years, which of the criticisms do you think were fair? And which do you think were unfair?

• 35:01Speaker 06

  That's a great question. I mean, I tend to think that any criticism that was someone saying that something that I said made them feel hurt, or that it was insensitive to like someone else's lived experience, like those things, I tend to just take it face down and go, absolutely, I hear you. I'll do better. Like, that's just, I think that just should be everyone's response. I don't really understand a different response. It doesn't mean that you'll always nail it. But the other thing that I've learned is that I don't have to respond to everything, which means I say less things, which means that happens less. So that's a great, like, lesson of my first half of my 30s. And about how the show could have done better in terms of diversity and inclusion, yes. Why would I ever fight that?

• 35:42Speaker 06

  And I was so glad that the show was a generator for dialogue around that. And then I guess the ones that I would be like, a little more kind of, you know, when there's like, when it goes into like, all the like, Lena Dunham is a child of Hollywood. I'm like, that is a misunderstanding of what two artists in Soho's child has access to.

• 36:01Speaker 06

  The conversation around that just seemed to grow a little out of control. I mean, I remember I once went to Oberlin to give a talk and a kid said, what does it feel like to be a line item in the history of privilege and oppression? And I was like in a creative writing class and it was like Girl, Season Three. And I was like, oh my God, like something is happening that I was not prepared for. It was almost like a satirical piece of dialogue, but it was also, he was capturing something that was happening in the conversation around me. I mean, that one drove my parents crazy because they were like, oh my God, we've been like working our butts off here as two sort of like artists who are, you know, have interesting careers, but are not by any means, you know, like running Art Basel and rocking the Hamptons.

• 36:46Speaker 06

  And suddenly this is the conversation around our child? I remember like at one point, someone figured out that like I'm literally like 90th cousins with a member of the Tiffany family and was like, she's a member of the Tiffany family. And I was like, we're related, like two of our relatives had sex in 1412. Like, I can't control that. Everybody on the East Coast was having sex with each other in 1412. But, um, and I also think that obviously the conversation about my body was out of control and insane and no one, actually now we have enough education not to talk about people's bodies that way, whether it's to critique the way they use them, critique what they look like.

• 37:27Speaker 06

  But you know what's kind of nice is to realize that like, when you say to me which critiques were founded, which ones were unfounded, now my memory only flashes back to the ones that were helpful and the rest of them have actually kind of cleared away. But here's the thing I think was really my takeaway is that I was so lucky to get this chance to be heard that a lot of other people who feel strange, different, unseen, unheard in so many different ways get. And so many people feel so fucking silenced by this culture. And if I took any lesson away, From this, it was that. I've always said that the meanest thing you can say to

• 38:09Speaker 06

  another person is shut up. No one cares. And obviously, that's not actually the meanest thing you can say to another person. But the spirit of that, the spirit of making another person feel like their experience doesn't matter, their voice doesn't matter, and they don't exist, is truly, it's an evil thing to quiet other people in that way. And if I can be of service at this point in my life in helping anyone else have the kind of chance that I did to express myself. And that's the reason that I have a production company. That's the reason I produce, is because I just want to create that safe space around younger artists, or artists who haven't had that chance, and artists who are living in more marginalized spaces, to be able to do that.

• 38:55Sam Fragoso?

  Putting a pause on the conversation, we'll be right back with Lena Dunham.

• 39:07Sam Fragoso?

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• 39:49Sam Fragoso?

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• 40:22Sam Fragoso?

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• 41:03Sam Fragoso?

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• 41:53Sam Fragoso?

  So much of what we're kind of circling is this thing you had to do, to learn in public like this, to fail in public. You have this quote, "I think that if we look at our lives, we've all done things that don't necessarily gel with what we perceive our value system to be." And that's one of the most challenging parts of being human, is that you have an intact value system, and then you make decisions that might fall an inch outside of that value system, or in more dramatic cases, fall a mile. And I guess I wonder, for you, for me, for us, anyone listening, how do we grapple with that bridge between who we want to be and who we sometimes are?

• 42:38Speaker 06

  I mean, I think it's the hardest thing in the world. I think literally that, the bridge between who we want to be and who we sometimes are is like where shame lives and shame is the thing that generates so much of the pain. It generates so much conflict, generates so much addiction and anxiety and fear. And I've also always been interested in characters in my work who kind of are unaware of the difference between who they think they are and how they appear to others and how they think they're affecting others and how they're actually affecting others. Like, I feel like in some way I'm always writing about that. What people do with their shame, how it causes them to act, how it causes them to misbehave.

• 43:20Speaker 06

  I think the hardest thing that we have to do in life is have this, these two sets of understanding, one where we're being hard enough on ourselves to be able to like excavate and make change, and the other where we're forgiving ourselves for the places where we fall short and forgiving other people. And I have spent a lot of time both working on being, working, being my harshest critic in the right ways and being good to myself in the other ways because, you know, when you're not, it catches up to you.

• 43:55Sam Fragoso?

  So that's what I want. When you look at that period, since you're writing this book, you look back on that time at the end of Girls, 2016, 2017, where do you think you fell short and where do you think, oh, I'm really proud of that?

• 44:07Speaker 06

  I think if I had been looking at myself and my life in a more serious way, I've could have gone, okay, I need a break right now. I need to take a minute. I need to go to ground. I shouldn't necessarily make anything and put it out for a while. I also have to remind myself that it was like, you know, a show like that ending that is, takes you from 23, you know, I was 23 when I started writing the show. And I was 30 when we wrapped it and, you know, 31, just turning 31 when it went off the air. And I knew that I wasn't, I feel like I channeled like all the energy I should have channeled into like grieving it and trying to understand who I was in that moment into like writing a really good Instagram caption about it ending.

• 44:48Speaker 06

  Like, I just didn't even know how to process it and then just tried to keep moving and didn't really know how.

• 44:57Sam Fragoso?

  April 16th, 2017 is when the show goes out there. When it ended, where were you at emotionally?

• 45:03Speaker 06

  I was really tired at that point. Let's say this was five months before I got my hysterectomy. So I was really sick and I was working on a lot of stuff to try to keep myself healthy, but also didn't really quite understand how bad things were. And so I was kind of searching for answers in that place. Everyone in my life who knew me really well was sort of like, you need a break. And I was like, what does that look like? Would I even know who I am? I mean, I just kept trying to generate and make and think about what I was doing next. I was terrified of real, I was just, I was just terrified to pause because the.

• 45:41Sam Fragoso?

  Terrified of real life?

• 45:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 45:43Sam Fragoso?

  Is that what you were gonna say?

• 45:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, terrified of real life. That is what I was gonna say. Thank you for seeing me start to form the R and then knowing what the rest of it was gonna be.

• 45:51Sam Fragoso?

  It was almost like you didn't want to say that.

• 45:52Speaker 06

  Mm hmm. I was like, I can't do it. But yeah, I was terrified of real life. I was terrified of what life outside of this kind of, I mean, set is a really, and the process of making a show, I now recognize because I'm back in love with making things. I should say that, like, now I'm in this place where it's like, I have an endless appetite for making things that also partially because I'm pretty focused on directing and writing and I'm not, I mean, I'm in sharp stick, but I'm not the majority of it. And not leading with your own visage is a really nice relief. And so I feel more hungry and alive and ready to make things than I have, I feel healthier than I did when I was 28. Like, I sound so old. I feel healthier than I did when I was 28.

• 46:36Sam Fragoso?

  No, but you're talking about re-entering life. When you re-enter life when Girls is Done, what did you find?

• 46:43Speaker 06

  I was like, uh, I have pretty much forgotten how to be someone's friend, daughter, sister.

• 46:53Sam Fragoso?

  What does that mean?

• 46:54Speaker 06

  There are certain just rhythms to being in, in the world with people. I mean, even the fact that in my twenties, you know, I was living in New York and I'd get recognized a lot. So I kind of tended to, because I'm actually not the chattiest person when I don't know someone. I would sort of avoid going out because I didn't feel like, I love when people tell me that my work means something to me.

• 47:15Sam Fragoso?

  I love when people love me.

• 47:16Speaker 06

  I love when people love me, but it was a little bit of like a kind of gawkier moment. And it was also when there was things like gawker stalker. So you were like, I don't want to be reported at the grocery store. Like it was just a, it felt like a very specific moment for me and for the culture. So just those rhythms to kind of just being a person in the world. You call your friend, you say, do you feel like getting a coffee? They say, no, I can't right now. Do you want to do it tomorrow? But because of the way my schedule was, I'd been like, would you like to get a coffee on Thursday between four 10 and four 25? Like, you know, where you go and hang out with your family for a week and you guys get back into the rhythm of loving each other and knowing each other. But because of my schedule, I was going in and I was going out. It was a lot of that kind of just not being familiar with the patterns of intimacy.

• 48:02Speaker 06

  That used to feel more natural and they had been disrupted at sort of like a pivotal age. And so I had to find those again. I had to figure out how to take care of myself when, you know, in an adult body, I had to figure out how to like, you know, I was never home. So I didn't even really know how to like grocery shop. Like it was very, it was very basic in a way, like in my twenties, I felt like I was like Tom Hanks in Big.

• 48:25Sam Fragoso?

  That's such a good image.

• 48:27Speaker 06

  Thank you. Or like, do you watch BoJack Horseman?

• 48:29Sam Fragoso?

  All of it.

• 48:29Speaker 06

  It's so incredible. And do you remember when Princess Carolyn dates that guy Vincent, who turns out to be two kids in a trench coat?

• 48:35Sam Fragoso?

  It's three kids in a trench coat.

• 48:37Speaker 06

  Three kids in a trench coat.

• 48:38Sam Fragoso?

  Of course.

• 48:39Speaker 06

  I was three kids in a trench coat. For my whole twenties, I was three kids in a trench coat. And when I saw that, I was like laughing, but I was like crying because I was like, oh my God, like BoJack Horseman understands that I was three kids in a trench coat. And that's why I had a BoJack Horseman wedding cake.

• 48:56Sam Fragoso?

  Oh my God.

• 48:57Speaker 06

  That's why we had a BoJack Horseman wedding cake. It was a shared choice. But um, but so yeah, so I was three kids in a trench coat. I was Vincent, three kids in a trench coat. And Princess Carolyn's always like, Vincent, you're always at your office. Do you just care about business, business, business?

• 49:10Sam Fragoso?

  If you were like Sam. I'm gonna give you a thousand guesses as to who I was like.

• 49:20Speaker 06

  Would you have guessed?

• 49:21Sam Fragoso?

  No.

• 49:21Speaker 06

  That?

• 49:22Sam Fragoso?

  No. I could have got Tom Hanks as big.

• 49:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 49:25Sam Fragoso?

  The three kids as Vincent and Bojack Horseman, it's so perfect.

• 49:32Speaker 06

  Thank you so much. Well, now that you understand via the Vincent and Bojack Horseman image, you'll understand why I had a little bit of trouble reentering life. And the thing that is hard to remember, especially when you're in a business that's as obsessed with relevance as the one that I have somehow found myself in, is that it's okay for things to take as long as they take. And it just took a minute for me to figure out how to manage my body, my life, my creativity, to do it in a way that was sustainable. And what feels so nice, even on this sharp stick, it's like I'm doing a reasonable amount of press, what's reasonable to me, which is smaller than what a lot of people do. And, you know, talking to people who I really admire,

• 50:17Speaker 06

  like you, and no longer feeling beholden to the kind of treadmill. Like, one time I did do that thing where you stop on a treadmill and get thrown off the back.

• 50:27Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, really?

• 50:28Speaker 06

  In a hotel gym. I just like got distracted by like an episode of Old Ricky Lake on the TV, literally, and just got hurled back and hit the wall. And I was like, whoa, I thought that only happened in like, bad sitcoms. This is real.

• 50:40Sam Fragoso?

  I thought it only happened metaphorically.

• 50:42Speaker 06

  Yeah. And I think, and it can really happen and you can really hit the wall. And I think that's what I was scared would happen in my twenties if I paused, or even when girls ended, if I paused. And, you know, it kind of did, but I also kind of survived, just like I survived actually hitting the wall when I actually fell off a treadmill.

• 50:59Sam Fragoso?

  Did that happen in 2018?

• 51:01Speaker 06

  Did I actually fall off a treadmill in 2018, or did I emotionally fall off? Because I think you might be referring to me getting sober and that did happen in 2018.

• 51:12Sam Fragoso?

  I was trying to be graceful.

• 51:13Speaker 06

  You were so graceful about it, but when I think of 2018, I think of getting sober, which is why, yep, I've been sober since 2018.

• 51:19Sam Fragoso?

  You get hysterectomy?

• 51:21Speaker 06

  In 2017.

• 51:22Sam Fragoso?

  You break up with your boyfriend?

• 51:24Speaker 06

  Yes, which now I recognize happens to everyone.

• 51:27Sam Fragoso?

  Yes, but it's someone you were with for a while.

• 51:29Speaker 06

  Totally, but at the time, you know what it was? It was a tonnage issue, as my therapist at the time would have said, which is like, any of those things might have been okay in isolation, but

• 51:38Sam Fragoso?

  All of them at once.

• 51:39Speaker 06

  All compounded with some public life stuff. I had to pause and I got sober, which was, you know, incredibly useful for me. And one of the reasons I've talked about it publicly is just because, again, it was one of those things where the minute it happened, I was terrified for anyone to find out.

• 51:56Sam Fragoso?

  This was from Klonopin.

• 51:58Speaker 06

  It's a benzodiazepine, which are, you know, for anyone who's, who's used them, know it's a very powerful anti-anxiety medication that is, I would argue, quite over-prescribed. And I don't think the dangers of its both addictive nature or how hard it is to withdraw from are really discussed much.

• 52:17Sam Fragoso?

  You were taking that since you were a kid?

• 52:19Speaker 06

  I'd been prescribed it for the first time as a kid, but until my sort of physical health really started to deteriorate in 2016, that's really when my dependence on it started.

• 52:29Sam Fragoso?

  Was there something in 2016 that precipitated that caused that?

• 52:33Speaker 06

  It was the last season of Girls. I had three surgeries, you know, my grandmother passed away. I was sort of trying to figure out where I was in my personal growth chart at the same time as looking at the, at the show coming to an end. I turned 30.

• 52:49Sam Fragoso?

  You talk about personal growth like almost sarcastically?

• 52:52Speaker 06

  But I'm really serio-, it's funny, I think I talk about it sarcastically because I'm actually so earnest about it.

• 52:57Sam Fragoso?

  And are you embarrassed about being earnest about it?

• 52:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, personal growth, like if you heard my sibling and we were having a conversation the other night and we're just like, I feel like I'm at a really positive place in my spiritual development. I feel very awake and I feel, but we're like 1,050% serious.

• 53:12Sam Fragoso?

  You can be earnest here.

• 53:13Speaker 06

  Like, okay, it really matters to me. My emotional and spiritual development matters to me deeply and it's something that I spend an enormous amount of time pursuing. And obviously, my work is a part of that, but I've realized that my work isn't all of that.

• 53:29Sam Fragoso?

  Mm hmm. You know, when you put your OCD into girls and since then, people come up to you and say, "Oh, my God, I have some of that."

• 53:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:40Sam Fragoso?

  "I've never seen that on a show before." The part where you make this big, dramatic turn in your life, where you decide to get sober, I imagine many people hearing this will feel the same, that they've had addiction issues.

• 53:57Speaker 06

  I hope so because, you know, I never planned, I was like, "I'm not going to talk about this because what if people think I'm unreliable or da, da, da, da, da." And I actually had, one of my agents was like, "Well, it's way more reliable to deal with a sober person than a not sober person, so you should say it." And I was like, "Oh, my God, that's the best take." But again, the response was-

• 54:15Sam Fragoso?

  This seems like a good thing to me.

• 54:17Speaker 06

  Really amazing, and it also is something to celebrate, if it's something that you need to do. And the other reason what I like to talk about is because as a teenager, I got drunk like twice. Like, I was not-

• 54:26Sam Fragoso?

  Really?

• 54:27Speaker 06

  Yes, I was a straight-up nerd.

• 54:30Sam Fragoso?

  Nerds can get drunk, too.

• 54:32Speaker 06

  Nerds can get drunk, too, but I was the kind of nerd who like stays home and watches the Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd romantic comedy, "The Object of My Affection," with my grandmother, not the kind who gets drunk. Like, that was literally my idea of a good time. And in college, I got drunk like three times, but always with disastrous consequences. So it's like that kind of thing where it was like, it was predestined. And then I think the fact that also so many people have a picture of addiction as something that happens because you're out, or you're raging, or you're partying, or you're unproductive. And any kind of person who's experiencing any kind of life can start to grapple with chemical dependency. And I also really love the people that I've met through sobriety, and I really love the

• 55:16Speaker 06

  conversation around it, and I really love how it makes me show up to every single day with the ins and the outs and the goods and the bads.

• 55:23Sam Fragoso?

  What does that look like? That shift from- When you did choose Klonopin and when you don't, what's that shift?

• 55:30Speaker 06

  Well, it's funny because it's not even the difference is like, oh, back then I was always, my mood was always dulled and now it's not. It's almost like even if you're not, you just always know you have an option to kind of like check out or move away. Like I remember telling someone I was dating briefly after I got sober, that I was sober. And he was like, well, what do you do if you like, want to relax? And I was like, I don't, I guess I like breathe or meditate or read a book. And he was like, what if it's like really late in the day? And I was like-

• 56:01Sam Fragoso?

  And that's who you married, right?

• 56:02Speaker 06

  And that's who, and that's the man I married. You know, my husband and I have actually been sober for the exact, he got sober right around the same time that I did. So we started talking about that immediately. And so the amount of talk about personal growth in our home would be exhausting for most. I'd come into the kitchen and say things like, I've had a huge revelation, both spiritual and professional. Would you like to hear it? And he's like, me too.

• 56:27Sam Fragoso?

  I just hope he's not offended by the joke I'm having.

• 56:29Speaker 06

  No, he's gonna literally love it.

• 56:31Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, good.

• 56:31Speaker 06

  And love you and love your hair.

• 56:33Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, on the other side of rehab, you seem to have rechanneled your focus towards writing and making and directing in a way that feels healthier to you.

• 56:49Speaker 06

  It does. My mom always quotes this one, Art Taylor, who she met, who in the 70s went, I'm a very ambitious woman. But I am a very ambitious woman, but in my own way.

• 57:01Sam Fragoso?

  Did you feel like you couldn't say that before?

• 57:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, because I also felt like I was always kind of doing this little dance of like, sorry, this happened to me. It was an accident. Like that kind of thing. And now I feel like I can say, but I'm, I'm an ambitious artist, which is different than being ambitious towards celebrity and which is different than being an attention hound. And so now I can differentiate all those things and also recognize- That being an ambitious artist is being a dogged artist, which is also not to, you know, spend all my time calling it misogyny, but it's like that's an admirable state for a male artist to be in. His dogged, obsessive pursuit of their creative truth, often at any cost. And I'm not an at any cost person. I care a lot about the cost. But so my ambition level hasn't changed.

• 57:48Speaker 06

  I was prolific in my twenties, but in this kind of like duck kicking under the water, wasted energy, exhausting way. And now I feel like I have a much more even understanding of my abilities, how to channel them. And the thing that's cool about that I, my dad and mom always told me about being an artist, but I didn't know is that it just gets more interesting. And you always continually feel like you're learning again. And you, it just never stops being interesting, which how many things can you say that about?

• 58:20Sam Fragoso?

  You have this quote I like. You said, "My parents taught me that you can have a creative approach to thinking that is almost scientific. You don't have to be at the mercy of the muse. All you need is your own internalized thinking process that you can perform again and again." What's the process now?

• 58:40Speaker 06

  Well, when I'm in process, I'm sort of always writing as I'm walking around. As I'm in the shower, I'm sort of like collecting dialogue. I'll keep, keep very extensive notes app with sort of like snippets I overhear. And so there's kind of like a pre-writing process. It's just like really filling myself up almost to the point where I'm just like bursting to write. And then usually I have an outline. And then I'll divide the outline up with like a certain amount that I want to achieve on every day. And something that I learned was I used to, when I was younger, write in these really long exhaustive spurts. And now I do something that's much more kind of humane, where I take a chunk and I'll go, okay, this is what you're going to write today. You're not going to write less than this. You're not going to write more than this. It's going to be exactly that. So when you stop, you're at a place where you're excited to keep going.

• 59:25Speaker 06

  And then I have a matter of days in which I get a first draft out. And then I have a matter of days. And, you know, of course, things go off plan. You get a cold, you get in a bad mood, you have a fight with your mother. Sorry, mom, we're both going to say things that we have to then apologize to our parents for. But like, I like having a structure that I can then deviate from a little bit.

• 59:43Sam Fragoso?

  That is scientific.

• 59:44Speaker 06

  It's taken time, but it works for me. And it's like, almost like I have this feeling like this kind of like balancing feeling with a script where I can feel like I reread pages and I can feel where the openings and the gaps are and feel it's very like um, a draft of something feels like a physical thing to me. And then, once I'm directing, what I like about when I then move into the directing phase is that, you know, writing is a long phase of being like, quite antisocial. And then you move into the directing phase and go into this phase of heavily social collaboration that sort of makes up for all the time that you spend.

• 1:00:15Sam Fragoso?

  Being alone.

• 1:00:16Speaker 06

  Being alone and being shut away.

• 1:00:18Sam Fragoso?

  You know what's missing from this conversation?

• 1:00:20Speaker 06

  What?

• 1:00:21Sam Fragoso?

  An understanding of how both your parents have not only shaped you, but shaped how you make art. And I want to understand that. So, growing up, you were extremely close to your parents. You still are.

• 1:00:37Speaker 06

  It's pretty involved.

• 1:00:38Sam Fragoso?

  It's involved. So much so that sometimes, when you were younger, you would joke to your friends and say, "Yeah, like, I may sleep in the same bed as them if I get scared." The joke was so convincing that some of your friends believed it for a second.

• 1:00:54Speaker 06

  They were like, "It would make sense if you were in college and still sleep with your parents." I wasn't, just you know, but it was that convincing.

• 1:01:01Sam Fragoso?

  To which your father said, "There might be the germ of a cautionary tale there for you. We've encountered this in the past, where your idea of the funny merges a little too convincingly with the real. It's funny to say, I sleep with my parents, but it's also too close to being massively weird."

• 1:01:25Sam Fragoso?

  And you will have to navigate this for the rest of your life.

• 1:01:29Speaker 06

  I mean, it's amazing, because my dad said that when I was 24. And like, my dad's understanding of me is so profound. There's a reason why I've always written movies that have like women and no dad, because it's almost like my father is such a mirror to me. I will write about him at some point, I know I will, because he's such a deeply specific and special man. I think he's a comedy genius, but he's so dry that people often can't tell whether he's joking or not. But that thing that my dad said about, you know, you're going to be navigating that for the rest of your life, like, that was a tremendous piece of knowledge on his part. That he was sort of saying like it was a joke, but he was also saying like, watch it. As he would say, "Watch it, kid."

• 1:02:13Speaker 06

  And my parents are both, I'm incredibly close to both of them. They're both very interesting and complicated people in their own right. And I mean complicated in the good way. But my father's a painter. He paints, sort of for people who haven't seen it, he paints pretty gnarly, like cartoonish figurative images that he very much like me, like, doesn't think are controversial. And then people will see them and will be like, "That is the most graphic image I've ever seen in my entire life, of like a bent over Neanderthal couple copulating or whatever." And so it's like when people see it, they're like, "Oh, duh." Like, I understand. And I think that that is something I clearly got from him. And my mother is a photographer who has always sort of focused on sort of surreal setups inside of her studio

• 1:02:56Speaker 06

  using dolls, toys, kind of like symbols of like children's play that are kind of like commentaries on the post-World War II faux Americana housewife thing in which she grew up. And the thing about my mom's work is like, almost everything about the way that I light movies, shoot movies, frame movies, and almost everything about my aesthetic is formed by my moms. Like, whether it's my interest in things that are, have like a candy-colored hue, but there's something weird or operating behind, whether it's the fact that I literally just love like a still frame with people moving through it more than anything, because... My real education was watching her take photographs.

• 1:03:39Speaker 06

  And so, and when Jodie Lee Lipes and I were shot listing Tiny Furniture, we did it all in these very still frames and really looked at a lot of my mom's photographs as sort of inspiration. And that movie Tiny Furniture is based on the idea of what my mom does in her studio. And then my mom also just being a radical woman in the seventies, trying to push her work in an extremely male-dominated art world. And the kind of inability to hear the word "know" that she had to have, coupled with like an extraordinary sense of self, not to be totally beaten down by the responses she was getting. And the way that she and her friends, who are like, you know, her best friends are artists like Marilyn Minter, Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler, Sarah Charlesworth, who's since passed away, like these women who were doing really interesting work

• 1:04:24Speaker 06

  and had to find a new space for themselves. Like those women's sense of how to navigate the world is totally like the reason that I had any sense of self-assurance whatsoever. I keep this picture on my desk that is an Alex Katz drawing that he did at a party in the seventies of my mom and her two best friends, and then walked up to her and handed her. And it's like my favorite thing. And you can just see like these three young women who are just like standing there, like making their own party inside the party. And I just love having it on my desk and looking at it while I write.

• 1:04:56Sam Fragoso?

  When you lay it out like that, it's hard not to think about your place in the long familial arc and footsteps you follow.

• 1:05:08Speaker 06

  It's funny because like, I remember like, you know, some kids have that feeling of like, oh, my God, my parents are going to be so disappointed in me because I want to be an artist or I want to be a writer and I don't want to be a lawyer. I remember thinking like, oh, my God, what if I grow up and I decide I want to be a lawyer? My parents are going to freak. Like for me, I'm always like, I'm not that impressed because it was kind of like a duh. Like it was just like with the parents that I had, with the way that they raised me, with the values they gave me, I was going to do something. And it's like, I'm just always amazed by people who kind of created it for themselves or like found it for themselves. And I mean, my parents did. I joke about the lawyer thing, but they did make me feel like whatever I did. Was gonna be okay.

• 1:05:50Speaker 06

  And I would hope that that would be something that I couldn't instill in my kids. It's like that there's truly nothing that they could do, choose to do with their life besides be unhappy, that would disappoint me.

• 1:06:01Sam Fragoso?

  You as a kid, second grade, you find Nora Ephron's This Is My Life, one of the movies that set you on this path. A path you're claiming is kind of predictable and obvious, but a path that, if this conversation is any evidence, was not that easy.

• 1:06:20Speaker 06

  If we're using the path metaphor, it's definitely been like one of those ones that goes like through the woods, down through a parking lot.

• 1:06:27Sam Fragoso?

  It's the circuitous path you took after therapy and avoided.

• 1:06:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, yes, exactly. You're so good at circling back. It's a circuitous path that I took off the M train, three times around the Bowery Mission, back over and then down Broadway to get to my therapist's office.

• 1:06:43Sam Fragoso?

  Well, when you walked out of that office, you'd find yourself back in high school at St. Anne's. And as a teenager, your dream was not to be a TV star, as you say. I was a weird theater and poetry kid. I literally thought I was going to be a film teacher at my old high school and make experimental movies on the side. And I guess as we leave, in some ways, is that what you're inching toward?

• 1:07:11Speaker 06

  Well, that's a great question. I mean, I'd love to be a film teacher at my old high school. This past summer, I taught a writing seminar to high schoolers at this amazing school in London that focuses on the film industry. And they were so awesome. I don't even think they knew what my job was. They were just like, okay, this lady's here to teach us some things. A couple of them did.

• 1:07:30Sam Fragoso?

  They probably saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and freaked out.

• 1:07:33Speaker 06

  By the way, like, three of them were like, I saw you Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And I was like, that's my street cred? Like, I was like, it used to be my 11-year-old friend, Ollie, who is so impressed that I was on The Simpsons. Like, he's so excited and he tells his friends at school, "My friend was on The Simpsons." And I'm like, if that's how I'm known to Ollie and his friends, what a delight. And if that's how I'm known to those teenagers, what a delight. As long as they're not like, we saw a picture for her on the internet looking stressed out with hair extensions, that's great. But, um, but listen, I love what I do and I love the opportunity to get to do it on a bigger scale. But I'm also... Really like making weird little movies and I really like having moved my life

• 1:08:16Speaker 06

  a little bit more out of the like white hot heat of whatever kind of public. Like I've realized that you actually, I used to think, okay, to make your work, these are the rules about how you have to promote it, about how you have to engage in public life. And actually I just realized like that much conversation with yourself, about yourself is not particularly healthy. I also feel lucky that my parents and my brother were always offering a critique of America's relationship to celebrity, the capitalization of women's bodies, what it means to think that you're actually promoting your work when you're actually tool of a capitalist media and promoting your own destruction. Like the amount of like conversation in my household that like involved them talking

• 1:08:59Speaker 06

  about like upholding hegemonic norms or whatever, it sounded like that boy at Oberlin. So I feel like I was, that was a gift to me and forced me to be analytical about it and to see it clearly. And also I feel lucky that the people who are closest to me were never overly excited by that aspect of what I did or proud of me because that's what I was achieving. Like recently someone asked me down in the New Yorker, they were like, you must be very proud of Lena and everything that she's done. And he was like, am I proud of her making her work? Yeah. Would I recommend that even my worst enemy have a child who is famous? No, it's a disgusting cult. And he like literally went into this entire.

• 1:09:34Sam Fragoso?

  I read the whole thing.

• 1:09:35Speaker 06

  Yeah. And later he was like, did that bother you? And I was like, no, go off king.

• 1:09:39Sam Fragoso?

  King being your dad.

• 1:09:40Speaker 06

  I call my dad king. Every, he thinks it's the funniest thing in the world. Every time he answers the phone, I say, what up, king? And one day he was like, why have you started calling me king? And I was like, well, it's kind of like a cultural thing, king. And he was like, okay, I like it. So I call my dad king.

• 1:09:54Sam Fragoso?

  Last thing I want to leave on, if we do this again down the line.

• 1:09:58Speaker 06

  I hope we do. This is so fun.

• 1:10:00Sam Fragoso?

  You have a standing invitation, you know that.

• 1:10:02Speaker 06

  Yes. I'll be back next week.

• 1:10:04Sam Fragoso?

  Well, maybe some distance, you know?

• 1:10:09Sam Fragoso?

  At thirty-six, if we do this again in three or four years.

• 1:10:13Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:10:14Sam Fragoso?

  Broadly, what do you want?

• 1:10:18Speaker 06

  I would love to have, you know, there are a few projects on a very concrete level. I'd love to have finished that book so that it's no longer darkening my desk and I can sort of literally close the book on a certain chapter.

• 1:10:32Sam Fragoso?

  Very excited for it.

• 1:10:33Speaker 06

  Thank you so much. I have some, like, some other feature films that sort of have different, like, play with genre in different ways that I'm really excited to explore and hope that I will have done. I'm really excited to make another TV show now with the amount of distance that I do have from girls. I no longer feel like I'd be making a TV show because it's what I know how to do and I just want to do that. I'd be doing it because I am so excited to dive back in there and see what the episodic medium has to offer now that I have these new sets of skills and new questions, new things I'd like to interrogate, as they might say in a graduate school program. Hopefully, there will be things I said on this show where I'm like, wow, that's sort of woeful lack of personal

• 1:11:14Speaker 06

  growth. Like, I hope that there were things that I've continued to push and try to understand and that I remain in like a continual state of amazement at how much you can know and still not know. And I recently made a list, made my husband make a list of personal goals. We understood the assignment differently. So I was like, things you want to do, they're just for you. They're not about work and they're also not about, like, serving anyone else. They're just your personal goals. And so mine were like, spend six months watercoloring, restore an architecturally significant home, doing many aspects of it by hand.

• 1:11:49Sam Fragoso?

  No.

• 1:11:50Speaker 06

  I know, that's deeply unrealistic. I've always wanted to take jazz and hip-hop dance class, not because I'd be gifted at it, but just because I think it would be pleasurable. There's some different things I'd like to try. And his was like, so nice. It was like, it was like, make more time on Sundays for us to watch movies, cook some food. And I was like, oh, yours is like generous, genuine, and in the moment. And mine is largely unrealistic goals that I'll never realize. But I liked the instinct in me to do it and I want to keep going that way.

• 1:12:20Sam Fragoso?

  Were kids on that list?

• 1:12:22Speaker 06

  1,000% and those I didn't think of as a personal goal because I hopefully if you have a kid, you're not doing it the same way you are saying you want to restore an architecturally significant home and or take six months off to watercolor. But I've wanted children for a really long time and I've written about that. But the thing that is amazing is like someone who I love once told me like, you'll come to be thankful for every part of your story. And the fact that I was not able to have kids when I was younger, the fact that my journey's been sort of held up at different moments by the logistics of not being a fertile person. I'm so glad about that because the person that I will be becoming a mom at 38

• 1:13:02Speaker 06

  is like, or wherever and whenever it happens, is like so much more. It's a job that of course, no one is ever entirely equipped for, as we are all evidence of. But I am so much more equipped and so much more understand why I want to do it, what is exciting to me about it, what I think that I will be able to offer, what I think I'm going to need support and offering. Like, all of that has clarified for me. I was just telling a friend today, I've always needed like really big lessons. Like, I was like the person who needed to get like hit on the head with a coconut to understand something. Like, it needs to happen big and loud. And I think I'm starting to have a more subtly tuned

• 1:13:44Speaker 06

  ear, but for a while there. And so like, I needed that big red stop sign and that process of analysis around that to get to the point where I thought I would make a actually pretty cool mom for somebody. And then in the process of also making peace with the idea that I'd probably do that alone, I met my husband. So it's just been, it's all happened just according to whatever the plan wasn't and is.

• 1:14:14Sam Fragoso?

  I so look forward to that. You talked about how you ought to be grateful for all the parts of your story, even, even the parts that are painful and hard and embarrassing, which you offered in your work.

• 1:14:30Speaker 00

  Which you'd offered just by the nature of doing work in public. And I'm so grateful that you've shared so much of it here in this conversation.

• 1:14:41Speaker 06

  I'm incredibly grateful to be here and thank you. And thank you for doing it on a Sunday and making me feel so welcome, considered, and also showing me a piece of yourself. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been Sam Fragoso.

• 1:14:54Speaker 00

  Lena Dunham, a true pleasure.

• 1:14:57Speaker 06

  Thank you, Sam.

• 1:14:58Speaker 00

  We did it.

• 1:14:59Speaker 06

  We did it. You made that so lovely. Thank you.

• 1:15:27Speaker 00

  And that's our show. Special thanks to Court Barrett and Sonya Hubbard at IDPR. And of course, our guest, Lena Dunham. You can watch her new show Too Much on Netflix. To learn more about her and her work, visit our show notes at talkeasypod.com. For more talks like this one, I recommend Jon Bernthal, Pedro Pascal, and Quinta Brunson. To hear those and more Lemonada podcasts, listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Caitlin Dryden and Adam Jamal and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Tricia Shannoy.

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  This episode was made in partnership with the good people at Lemonada Media. And I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here on Sunday with Ari Aster. Until then, stay safe and solo.

• 1:17:33Speaker 09

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.

• 1:17:41Speaker 10

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

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  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 1:17:47Speaker 10

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 1:17:50Speaker 09

  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 1:17:56Speaker 09

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be.

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