The Watch - Ep. 126: Lena Dunham on 'Girls' Episode "American Bitch"

Episode Date: February 27, 2017

Andy Greenwald sits down with Lena Dunham, creator of HBO's 'Girls,' to talk about "American Bitch," the astonishing episode that aired February 26. Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the Ringer.com and joining me in the studio with his copy of When She Was Good, it's Andy Greenwell! Chris, this is a very special bonus episode of the Watch today because a couple crazy things happened on TV last night.

And prior to our nine of the Oscars, I thought it was just going to be my main man from the Americans' Ding Dong coming. out of his pants. But no. This is our special bonus episode. It's a snippet of my interview with Lena Dunham talking specifically about the third episode of the six season of Girls, American bitch, that aired last night. And again, I really would have said that that was the most spectacular thing that aired last night until the Oscars went nuts. Right. So this is Andy talking with Lena Dunham specifically about last night's episode of Girls. We'll have you the full episode, your full interview with Lena Dunham on Wednesday on the watch feed. But this is a great

opportunity to hear a little bit more about what went into this episode. Obviously, a unique episode, a Bottle episode, if you will. Did you guys talk about Rihanna flute? We talked about the flute. And I'm not referring to Matthew Reese's penis. I'm actually talking about the flute. That is what Carrie Russell calls it. No, it was a great conversation about an episode that I think is one of the most impressive and artistic episodes of television this or any other year. So excited for you guys to check out this snippet. And if you're wondering why Andy and I didn't get a chance to talk about girls today when you're listening to it, it's because we were so mind-melted by the Oscars

that we have like a pretty expansive Oscars podcast that you can listen to. So today on the watch feed, me and Mandy, me and Andy and Amanda talking about the Oscars right after the Oscars ended from our podcast last night, from our live show last night. And then Andy with his interview with Lena Dunham about American Bitch Wednesday,

Andy's full interview with Lena Dunham about girls and everything else and Thursday with Alvaria. Yeah, we just flood in the zone with the content. Let's do it. Lena Dunham, thank you for joining me. Andy Greenwald, it's an honor. I'm such a big fan of yours. I love your writing.

And to be in this space with you is an honor. There are obviously many things to talk about, but I'm very excited to talk to you about the television show girls. Oh, thank you. For a number of reasons. One of which is we're going to be running this after the third episode of the sixth season

airs American Bitch. I think it's one of the greatest episodes of the show to date. One of the more remarkable episodes I've seen in TV in a while. It means so much to me. So we're going to talk about it specifically, if you don't mind.

I'd be honored. I do, I do want to talk specifics about the third. I thought those two in particular, 602 and 603, I think, are like two of the strongest episodes you've done on the show. But particularly because they're incredibly strong in the two modes of the show as I like to segregate them, which is 603 is very much, as you said, the sort of the independent film. It is a contained, the TV word would be almost bubble episode, but a completely contained story. And much like the Panic in Central Park and much like one man's trash, which is my other favorite episodes, seem to exist in their own artistic

reality in a really wonderful way. The common theme with those episodes is that Jenny and Jet, I have a loose idea, kind of mention it to Jenny and Judd, and they say, go home and bring us a draft tomorrow. And I literally go in with all three of those episodes. It involved

getting into my bed with a heating pad and a bunch of green tea and just writing until it was done. And it doesn't mean it doesn't change, but the first draft is what Judd would call a vomit draft. It just comes out and I hand it to them and they sort of receive it on its own terms.

And then we have lots of debates about the specifics and the group mind kicks in. But the first draft of the first draft, and these are really the three episodes that happened with, was one man's trash, Panic in Central Park, and American Bitch was that the first draft was this incredibly private,

almost like live journal entry that I then took to the writer's room. Wow. Well, that's amazing to me. That's almost the opposite of what I expected you to say because this episode, just getting one's arms around it, I don't even know how to do it because, I mean, I wrote down it's an episode about privilege, victimhood, power, sex, Tumblr, all the major pillars of our existence today.

Yeah. How, more specifically with this episode, what did you say to them the day before the vomit draft appeared? Like, what did you want to do, hopefully, and before you even began to try to gather all those things together into a coherent narrative? We had been talking a lot. I mean, obviously Judd was very vocal. about Bill Cosby and about sort of how Bill Cosby, the issue with Bill Cosby was bigger than Bill Cosby, which was a willful disregard on the part of Hollywood

and a willful denial of the kind of abuse of power that has always been woven into legacy. Hollywood has always been incredibly liberal and often on the right side of history, and Hollywood is also allowed for insane human rights abuses that people sort of want to cast aside as mutually beneficial, but the amount of women who have been sort of broken by this system is really remarkable. And so we were talking a lot about that in the writer's room and a lot about that,

but also a lot about the experiences that we've all had that aren't as cut and dry as what women experienced with Bill Cosby. You know, being drugged and raped is a very, very clear crime. We talked about the complexities of being a young woman, a young creative woman, and having your sort of excitement and passion fed upon by an older male figure who knows that they can get something back because of your interest in them and you're interested in being seen and heard. And everyone in the writer's room, every woman in the writer's room, seem to have an experience with that, seem to have an experience with,

and I'm not saying this doesn't happen to guys. We hear plenty of stories about predatory older male producers or even women who have, you know, misused the casting couch. But every woman in the story had, every woman in the writer's room had some story about a way that their young enthusiasm and desire to make work and desire to be acknowledged for their work had translated into some kind of misconduct from a powerful, from a guy who was in a position of power. I was going to talk about the fundamental imbalance in these relationships as expressed

in the episode where Hannah says something about how you have the New York Times op-ed page at your disposal. And in these relationships, younger women, especially who have desire, even before talent, the levers of power they have access to aren't as direct. But you just spoke to something that I think complicates it in a way that this episode complicates everything we're talking about, which is actors are incredibly vulnerable. Yeah. And you show up on set, especially someone else's set. You've never been before. Someone else's words.

You know, I can begin to empathize with anyone who shows up and has to suddenly be someone and be their true self in front of them. So to give that up in the way that he did, I think, is. And he sort of spoke to the fact that there are truly men who don't want to engage in that kind of power play. Like what I really loved is that Matthew sat down with me. I mean, for those who have seen the episode, you know that it's about, it's a character trying to sort of defend himself from accusations of sexual misconduct who is very prickly complicated and it's really unclear where your allegiances should lie. But what I loved is that Matthew just sat down and was like, tell me everything this. Tell me every story that you know that inspired you to write this. Tell me what you've experienced.

Tell me how these men have dealt with you or dealt with your friends. And then all do the work of figuring out why. Well, Hannah says something in the episode that is, I was going to say, is like her. It is a very on-brand remark for the character, which is when she says she's sick of gray areas. The episode exists in a gray area. That was actually a line Jenny Connor wrote, like, speaking of how we work, is like, I wrote this. this episode in a fever dream brought it to her. And she said, like, I think we need to really acknowledge that what's happening in this episode

isn't a Bill Cosby situation. It isn't even a Roman Polansky situation. There is a painting of Woody Allen with a gun to his head in the background, which is very choice. I'm so happy you like it that actually I have to shout out my friend Teddy Blanks, who is a good friend of mine. He's a film director and a graphic designer. He designed the cover to my book and did the credits to tiny furniture and all my early

work and he also scored tiny furniture. He's had that picture, which was painted by one of his, I believe, high school art teachers. He's had it in his apartment forever. And we were figuring out what should exist in Chuck's apartment. And I texted Teddy and I was like, is it okay, if I borrow your Woody Allen with a gun to his head picture? And he was like, I'd be honored. So we sent someone to pick it up. He filled out a little form. We returned it. And so now I think he's proud that his painting has such prominent placement. It's perfect. I mean, As a Woody Allen fan who has to exist in the world, that's movies, it's like, thank you for putting that.

And for the episode in general, because it's, none of this is easy. No, and I think that, so when I brought the episode to Jenny, she was like, we have to acknowledge that this episode is about a gray area. And she's, and she came up with this monologue for Hannah, like, I'm fucking sick of gray areas. Why do they have to exist? And actually, um, before we came on, got on the mics here, I was telling you a story about a teacher who was inappropriate with me in fifth grade. and that story exists in the show, yeah.

In the show. And you've given Matthew this part to play where it's all performance, but that doesn't mean it's not genuine. And that's what's really compelling about his performance and the way you wrote the character because everything is staged, you know, from, and he's called on it with a photo of Tony Morrison to the call that he gets from his ex-wife to another thing that you acknowledge really well in the episode, which is the apartment's gorgeous.

My God, it was so, we shot in this building. You know, I grew up downtown, and, To me, anything about 14th Street was like going to Disney World. Like, I mean, we would go up there to go to the museum. Sure. But besides that, I had no relationship to, we didn't shop at department stores up there. We didn't go up to Barney-Bars? We didn't go to Zabars.

We didn't go to Barney Greengrass. Wow. It wasn't until I became like an adult with my own fancy adult friends that I was ever taken to any of those places. We would go. We went to the Museum of Metropolitan Art every Sunday. My parents, there was a two-year period in which they decided, like, we don't go to church. We don't, don't go to temple.

we go to the museum every Sunday. Nice. And then my younger sibling and I staged a revolution and we're no longer required to go. But so to me, everything up there's Fantasia. And I had initially written it

as like a West Village kind of Brownstone. And then I was like, we wanted to feel really different than Patrick Wilson's house and also where would this person see themselves as living? What would fulfill

their sort of literary identity? And so Eileen Landris, our executive producer, was like, I think upper west side is where this guy wants to be. And that building, it was like just the lobby. Like if you, I would be happy to be homeless and just sleep in that lobby. It was the most glamorous place I've ever been. We talk a lot. And when I say we, anyone who's engaged in television culture, you know, about wanting to be pushed, wanted the medium to push, to push the medium forward, wanting to be pushed by the medium. Yeah. And I do think there's sort of

an intrinsic resistance to, to gray areas, to exploring the parts of the, you know, human experience and the parts of art that actually are the spoke the express point in maybe more established mediums you know painting or theater or even I'm curious if you draw a line to independent film this episode leaves us in a very very gray area and I'm so grateful for it but it also strikes me that that's a place that you have been it's a place you seem you were comfortable with from the beginning from your background and what's interesting to you but the show hasn't always been allowed to linger there in the commentary that surrounds it. Well, it's interesting. I've always been comfortable with the idea of gray areas and it's gotten me in trouble at times.

I mean, every time that I've sort of, you know, every thing that from my book that became scandalous was because I wasn't willing to slap a hyper-specific label on things, whether it was my own sexual assault or whether it was, you know, people's insane. I don't know how anyone comprehended the idea that I, you know, had a sexually inappropriate relationship. relationship with my sister, but that's one that will follow me around on Twitter for the rest of my life. Twitter's not a place for gray area. No, Twitter, and we live in this, and we kind of say it in this episode, like we live in this crazy 140 characters culture where you need to have the perfect pronouncement and or nothing at all. And so this episode was a chance to really look at the fact that like sometimes it's about more than just, you know, a perfect defense. Sometimes. Sometimes it's really about the fact that we are all doing our best to live in, we are all doing our best to live

through the essential, you know, isolation of being human. And that causes some people to behave pretty badly. But also, like, I've never wanted to deny as a woman the role that I've played. We have a, we talk a lot about not blaming victims. And I'm a huge, I mean, obviously I talk a lot in my sort of life as an activist about the way that, how can we make women feel more safe to come forward? And that's by not blaming them for their own, not blaming women for being assaulted, not blaming women for their own victimhood. That being said, there have been a lot of times in my life where I've stepped away from an encounter.

The thing I always say is like not to get too personal, but, you know, I've been raped. I know what that feels like. And I've also had totally unpleasant encounters with men where I've stepped away and known that I played just as much apart in it as they did, even if it left me feeling violated, gross, and sad. I still knew that I was, you know, a consenting member of the waltz and it was something that I had been taught to do by systems larger than myself. And I think that was what this episode was about was like, it's about something so much less clear cut in which one of the things that women have to live with in addition to the pain of feeling violence,

is the pain of having been participants in their own violation. Yeah, and the way you end the episode, there's an incredible moment that his daughter's playing flute all of a sudden. Yes, cutest actor, little actor, Caroline, she's the cutest person I've ever met in my life. And I was like, I'm so sorry to put you into an episode where your father is a possible sex offender. Possible. His smile, though, and I don't know if this is a directorial note or just something

he brought to it. His smile is the only pure thing in the episode. Beautiful. He loves this moment. He's alive in this moment. And then, you know, and we should give shout to the great Richard Shepard, who directed the episode. So talented. Cuts to Hannah, watching him, watch her. And then it becomes something else. And that scene with the flute was actually Richard's idea. That's how these episodes become what they are. I may go into a room and write it. But then Jenny has the idea about the gray area. And then Richard goes, how do we really, I think I'd written a

different scene in which Hannah's watching him talk to his daughter and goes like, oh, shit, this is a man with a child that he really cares about. And Richard was like, no, how can we make this visual? And that was his idea. And Matthew had just had a baby. And so, and he was not sleeping, but kind of in that kind of like joyful, glowing, not sleeping place of like, I'm experiencing more love than I've ever experienced before, but I'm essentially high. My body is shutting down. My body is shutting down. And I'm high. And I've had 11 cups of coffee. So he brought like kind of the knowledge of like a new parent. And I could see him, not to project too much onto him, but the way he was smiling at Caroline while she played the flute,

I felt like it was like, I got chills because I felt like it was like Matthew as a new father, really expressing like all the beauty of those sensations. And you're right, it was really pure. And then, you know, when Hannah leaves the building and you're almost relieved, she's out of this pressure cooker. Yeah. But in that pressure cooker, there were some truths that were starting to bubble up that were inconsistent, but were still true.

The way he acted towards women, the way he acted towards his daughter, the way he acted towards Hannah. out in the world, a hundred more women are walking in, which is a beautiful shot. Another Richard's Shepherd special. And there's a sense of like, oh, thank God we're out here,

but then you're back out there. You're back on the battlefield. You're back on the battlefield, and you sort of realize, I mean, that was Richard's idea, which is we don't do super stylized shots very often or sort of, that had an almost magical realism element to it,

which is like, and the game just continues on, you know? And my thing was, I was like, that Rihanna song was really important to me because if you listen, sometimes it's hard to tell what Rihanna's saying

because of her sexy, throaty voice, although she is my favorite musical artist of our time. But that song is about Desperado is about two people. There's a line in it where she goes, like, you and I have common interests. It's about two people who make the choice to align themselves sort of in a kind of love slash criminal relationship

because they know they're both getting something out of it even when it hurts. And so that was why I remember Judd being like, why are you using this Rihanna song? And I was like, no, read the lyrics really carefully. Like, it's the story of two people making a decision to kind of like ride off into the sunset together, not out of love, but because like, you know,

they both are getting something out of the equation. Hey guys, just want to tell you a little bit about the podcast on Channel 33. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Achievement-oriented the ringers gaming podcast hosted by our buddies Ben Lindberg and the god Jason Concepcio and the maister. You can listen to new episodes every Friday

by subscribing to the Channel 33 podcast on iTunes or wherever you get your pods.