In Lena Dunham’s second memoir, Famesick, the Girls’ creator details the highs and lows of creating the hit HBO series, which included contending with erratic behavior from her onscreen costar Adam Driver, as well as the accompanying anxiety that came with acting as head writer and star of the series and being alternatively praised and torn apart online.
In the memoir, published April 14, Dunham also reveals more about what happened in her five-year relationship with Jack Antonoff, as well as the falling out she had with her business partner Jenni Konner.
And, as the title implies, Dunham delves deeper into her Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and endometriosis diagnoses, which involved multiple surgeries and daily pain management, as well as a stint in rehab, brought on by an addiction to the anxiety medication Klonopin.
The Hollywood Reporter got its hands on a copy pre-release. Here are the five big takeaways from the book:
The erratic behavior of Adam Driver
Dunham describes Driver, who played her boyfriend Adam on Girls, as an incredibly present actor and scene partner, whose unexpected choices often brought out the best in her own acting abilities. But his behavior on and off set could also be unexpected, ranging from abruptly leaving post-filming to more. “Late one night, as we practiced lines in my trailer, I found that mine were suddenly gone. I knew I’d written them … But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a stammer — until finally, Adam screamed “FUCKING SAY SOMETHING” and hurled a chair at the wall next to me.” She also noted that during an early sex scene the “careful blocking went out the window and he hurled me this way and that.” Dunham said she did not feel violated but questioned whether she had “lost directorial authority.”
Even after that, she says the pair were close during the first season, to the point where she would go to him for advice about the show and he helped care for her after an ear injury (see below). But after growing close, Driver got engaged and the pair grew further apart so that by the time his last scene was filmed, “Adam and I had barely spoken in three years for reasons I could not explain and did not really want to analyze,” Dunham writes. His last day of filming was the last time they met.
Driver has not responded to requests for comment from THR.
The Q-Tip Incident and Scott Rudin
As Girls fans may already know, many characters and incidents from the series mirror Dunham’s life. In the book, she details a moment where she has just been asked to start a writer’s room for season two, and is facing remaining press obligations from the acclaimed first season. Because of the time commitment, Dunham had to step away from a job writing and directing Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, which she had previously been hired to do by producer Scott Rudin.
Her exit from the project unleashed “a torrent of emails” from Rudin, in which she says he called her a “spoiled little girl” and threatened to sue over the project. “I had been found out. I was going to lose it all,” Dunham writes. The next day, while in a dissociative episode, Dunham put a large Q-tip in her ear and perforated her eardrum. This storyline later appeared in the second season of Girls, as Dunham’s character Hannah is overwhelmed with the anxiety of writing a novel and similarly injures herself.
In real life, Dunham recovered and returned back to New York to write and receive counsel from mentor Nora Ephron.
Rudin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Her fallout with Jenni Konner
Konner acted as a supervisor for Dunham in the first season of Girls, guiding her through the process of writing a TV show for the first time, and ultimately acting as showrunner alongside Dunham throughout the series, as well as becoming one of her best friends and sitting by her bedside during surgeries, according to Dunham.
Dunham does not pinpoint one moment where the two stopped becoming friends, but lays out several where their relationship turns cold, including early on in shooting Girls, when she told Dunham that L.A. thought she was “too pretty” in her camera test and she needed to gain more weight order to differentiate the show: “‘It’s not that hard,” she hissed. “Just put food in your mouth.” The two were also tested as Dunham went through multiple medical procedures and addiction to drugs, with Konner remaining on sets and guiding their projects and questioning her illness, according to Dunham. Dunham also points to a moment where the two released a statement in defense of a Girls writer accused of rape, as a moment that further imperiled their relationship and one that she deeply regrets.
After setting a last-ditch therapy appointment for the two to work on their relationship, she writes that she wanted to remain friends, but Konner told her “Please don’t write about this immediately,” and walked out of the appointment.
Konner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The dissolution of her relationship with Jack Antonoff
After being set up with Jack by his sister, designer Rachel Antonoff, moving in together and hinting at marriage and children, Dunham’s and Antonoff’s relationship began to fray. Dunham details his frequent time away on tour and in the studio, as well as the toll of her frequent medical episodes and surgeries — she recalls Antonoff turning up two hours late to the hospital after she underwent major surgery — among the main contributors. The two frequently exchanged barbs: “He spent a lot of time telling me about the kind of person I was, and it wasn’t the good kind,” she writes.
Before the eventual breakup, the two entered couples therapy, with a shared commitment to stay together, even though they couldn’t envision a future together. “Looking back, it’s hard to understand why two people with seemingly endless options, financial freedom, and almost nothing that they enjoyed doing together besides talking shit about the occasional third party would not simply break up.”
Rehab and a surprise engagement
Dunham began taking Klonopin as a means to treat the anxiety she felt while writing and filming Girls, and then later became addicted to the medication after recovering from surgery to treat a burst ovarian cyst. As Dunham faced more procedures and an eventual hysterectomy to help treat pain from endometriosis, other prescription drugs were added to the mix. She entered the upstate rehab Center for Motivation and Change as her HBO Show Camping was in its first month of production.
Leading up to rehab, post-hysterectomy and just before officially breaking up with Antonoff, Dunham reconnected with a childhood high school boyfriend, Nick. Three months later, they were engaged (and hooked up in an ICU, she admits). This was short-lived, as she would later find out that he, too, struggled with substance abuse.
