The Watch - Ep. 127: Full Interview With Lena Dunham of 'Girls'

Episode Date: March 1, 2017

The Ringer's Andy Greenwald sits down one-on-one with Lena Dunham, creator of HBO's 'Girls,' to talk about the show's final season and the process of making her Emmy Award–winning show (2:00), the gray areas of the latest episode, "American Bitch" (10:15), and what she plans to do next (43:45). Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to the Andy Greenwald podcast. Hello, welcome to The Watch. My name is Andy Greenwald. Very special episode today. It is my full interview with Lena Dunham, the star, creator, director, writer, co-show runner of HBO's Girls. This was a real thrill for me to finally get a chance to sit down and talk to Lena. I've wanted to do this interview for a long time.

And I was really excited to do it this week right after the third episode of the season, American Bitch aired. I think it's one of the best episodes of, of girls to date. I think it's one of the best episodes of TV full stop in the last few years. Here's a thing about interviewing Lena Dunham in person. She is completely delightful. She's completely engaged. She's pretty inspiring with her devotion to the art that she makes and the way she thinks and talks about it. And what I really wanted to do here is talk to someone who is obviously very exposed. She's out there. She's writing books. She's out there on Twitter, on social media.

She's very in front of the camera on girls. And though we hear from her a lot, I feel like the conversation around her and with her very rarely is about the art that she makes. It's very often about the comments she makes or about politics or about the way she portrays herself or her friends or all the other stuff that comes with being a celebrity. This was a really great opportunity for me to talk to her about being a writer and a director. And more specifically, the creator and co-show runner of a successful television series entering its final run. So we talked a lot about this week's episode, American Bitch, because I think not only was it exceptional, but it really is a microcosm of everything that has made girls interesting, noteworthy, and excellent over the past

few years. But we also talked about her perception of TV business at the beginning and now her perception of how she's been treated as a female creator in the business and a whole bunch of other topics along the way. This is one of my favorite interviews I've ever done. I hope you guys enjoy it too. This is Lena Dunham. 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's an honor. Thank you. I know. I know We're sitting in the Ringer Studios. We have the smiling faces of the original U.S. dream team looking down on us, and hopefully they'll guide our conversation. Yeah, and I told you that before we came in that I'm only comfortable when there's a tremendous amount of sports paraphernalia around me.

Yeah, we redecorated for you. We took out all the cultural things. You know what my interests are. There are obviously many things to talk about public transportation, chief among them. 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. But also, in general, I want to talk to you about this TV show as a TV show and you as the creator and co-show runner and writer and director and star of the show. Because I feel like I can only imagine you feel similarly at times. the show is often the least discussed part of your career and the show itself.

Yes. You know, when I was watching the new season, I was thinking about how throughout the run of the show, Hannah always wants to become a writer. The word has this sort of holiness to her. It's a very important thing. And people are always trying to conflate you and your character. But you are a writer. You write episodes of this show.

You are not just writing tweets or pithy blog posts. It's an Emmy Award-winning television show. ending after six seasons. Does this still frustrate you? Yes, and it's interesting because this is the first year as the show's ended that I've actually felt comfortable having that complaint. I think that we as people, and especially we as women, are so trained to say thank you, thank you, thank you for our blessings that I felt that if I complained about the conversation around the show or the, you know, if I complained about any aspect of this incredible gift, which is getting to have a show of your own that runs for six seasons on, it's not to,

it's HBO, that, you know, that was the braddiest thing you could do. And I eventually realized that by just nodding and going with it, I was actually doing myself, the show, and other female creators a disservice. Like, that by saying, actually, can we guide this conversation back to the fact that I'm a creator, I'm an artist, I'm a craftsperson, and so is everybody that I work with, that I was protecting the show's legacy, not just like being a little twat. And so this has been the first season in interviews where I've gone, actually, you know, I don't think it's fair the way the show has been discussed. And I think if we were to take, if we were to do a side by side, side study of me and say, Larry David, or me and, you know, Chuck Lori, or me and any television creator

whose sort of reputation has at times preceded them, you would find a very different conversation. And I think it has to do with gender. I think it has to do with age. I think it has to do with the political climate in which the show hit. But at the end of the day, I was like, I kind of don't care what it has to do with because it's not right anymore. And it's not fair to everyone who shows up on our set every day and works their ass off. And to all of the girls who show up, act with so much bravery and intelligence, Allison, Zasha Jemima, and then get treated like they're basically on the hills.

Right. You made the show in an era where the process surrounding television has become as big of a story as television itself. and yet almost until that great vulture piece about your writer's room that ran, I think, a week or so ago. Yeah, which was amazing to have that. It was amazing to have our writers room even acknowledged because so many people act as if the show exists in like a bubble of my own narcissism, as if the show is something that I tweet out every week. Right.

That's what's crazy to me is that your life for these past few years hasn't been consumed by tweet wars. It's been consumed by production for a television enterprise. Yeah. separate and apart from the art that you're making within that enterprise, like this is a job. And it's odd. It was surprising to me, although I guess to your point, maybe it's actually not surprising in a depressing way, that you're doing these jobs. You're working.

This is a job. And I know how Chuck Laurie's writer's room works because there's a legendary story about it. I know that Larry David, the style, the loose attitude he brings to said and the outlines he writes and the improvisation, I realized I didn't know your writing process when you sit down to write when you bring it to draft to the room, who contributes what you do on set when you're acting and directing. This all fell through the cracks of the larger conversation. Well, it's been interesting because since the first season,

we've really tried to do it differently. Like, I came in as an independent filmmaker. I brought my director of photography, Jody Lee Lipes, who had to join the guild just to do the show. I mean, he had been working in indie film. We'd met at South by Southwest. That's where I'd met Alex Karpowski. Jemima was my best friend from childhood,

and we decided to try to bring the energy and approach of an independent film to the medium of television. And, you know, we worked really hard to try to make these episodes feel like mini-movies to make strong cinematography choices. The DP who then came in after Jody, Tim Ives, he also did Stranger Things.

He's an incredibly creative, inventive, electric thinker. And, you know, Michael Penn, who's my composer, and I have been in this very intense relationship for years in which we're constantly thinking about forming new musical palettes to reflect each character's journey. And can I just jump in and say he's one of my all-time favorite songwriters, that his first album was the most important thing to me when I was 12 that I listened to my boombox forever?

How could you not? He's so talented. Can you tell him to make another record? I beg him all the time. And he's done three songs for girls that have been so beautiful. Like each to me is like, I actually always compare him to Joni Mitchell. I don't know if he appreciates that. But it's like he has the, I mean, to me it's the greatest compliment you can

give a human man or a woman. But yes, his abilities are wild. And so it's like, I get frustrated because there's all these incredible crafts people. And we're thinking we're constantly looking at film references. I mean, like, for example, the second episode of this year, we based a lot of it visually on Sam Peck and Paw's Straw Dogs. And so that involved a really long conversation with our DP about the best way to sort of mimic the shots without getting too stylized, a conversation with Michael, about how we could

capture the tension of that music. making the actors watch the episode and kind of like shift their performance a little bit to reflect that kind of weird you know, error. It's a tightrope in that episode because it's very funny and it's actually a little scary.

That was the goal was like you kind of think a murder is going to happen but you can't really think a murder is going to happen because this is a half hour comedy show. But yeah, those are the conversations we've never gotten to have and those are the conversations I want to have and I also grew up in the New York art world

where literally like all I did was sit around and listen to my parents talk about like craft and form and, you know, how many studio assistants this person had and how this person was hanging their show. And so I think I expected to come in and be asked those kinds of questions. And literally, like, I will never forget the first question I got on the press cycle for Girl Season 6 was, what does it feel like to be hated by both the left and the right? And I went, so I told my dad, and now my dad texts me like once a day, what does it feel like for everyone to hate you? Or like, what does it feel like for your dogs to hate you? He thinks

This is the funniest thing that's ever happened. But I was like, oh, I'm coming to the end of six years of something that, you know, I feel like I can now confidently say was an important cultural moment. And as a creator and an artist, that's the first question that you were going to ask me. And it's not even an answerable question. So thank you for letting me unleash my rage. No, please. This has always been the venue for it. This is a rage-filled podcast at all opportunity.

And you definitely seem like a pretty angry guy. Just wait. It's 30 more minutes than what gave you. do it. Well, I'm glad you mentioned the second episode, too, because as I want to 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, two of my other favorite episodes, thank you. Seem to exist in their own artistic reality in a really wonderful way. Well, the common theme with those episodes is that Jenny and Jeh, I have a loose idea, I 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 Jewell. would call a vomit draft. Like, 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. decide 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 writers 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. Right. There's that misunderstanding,

that fundamental power imbalance that you address very well in the episode where Hannah says to Chuck, Matthew Reese's character. By the way, as an Americans fan, thank you. By the way, I actually have to admit, I had not watched the Americans. I had seen Jenny and Judder obsessed. It's their favorite show. They're people of taste in erudition.

And I obviously am a huge Felicity fan, so Kerry Russell is very meaningful to me. But I had seen Matthew in a play with Adam Driver. I had seen him in Look Back in Anger, an amazing production of this Welsh play with Adam Driver and just thought, like, what a man. And then when Jenny pitched him for this character, I didn't really have, she was like, I was like, but he's this like Welsh tough guy. And she's like, you don't understand. He plays 13 characters an episode on the Americans. He can do this.

And I mean, from the first day he came to set, there were hearts in the eyes. Like, even our like toughest male teamster was like, that Matthews are really charming. He's a delightful man in person. He's so delightful. And he also was, I've never had somebody treat me. You know, as you don't realize until you're treated with so much respect, what it, you don't realize until somebody. treats you in your writing with so much care and respect how often as a young woman and as a young woman showrunner you have people pushing back even in subtle ways.

And Matthew's, the fact that Matthew was like, this is your story, this is your truth, and I'm just here to serve you was, and of course he brought so much to it, but like the fact that he just totally surrendered his ego in service of the episode and didn't feel like, because a lot of male actors like want to play a nice guy or a cool guy or a sexy guy. And like Matthew was just like, no, I just want to play this guy the way he feels real. to you. It's interesting. 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, you know,

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, like, there are truly men who don't want to engage in that kind of power play. Like, I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for actors. I think, as you said,

it's a really vulnerable position. And any time that an actor sort of, quote, unquote, misbehaved with me, I really understood that it came from a place of fear and a place of feeling like they didn't have control. And I think whenever you hear stories about actors doing weird eccentric stuff or playing mind games, it's because at the end of the day, they feel like they're a tool and they need to find some way to seize their power again.

And Matthew has so much inherent confidence and so much charisma and so much talent that like for, and he's just such a good guy that he had no interest in playing those games. And so it was so refreshing to not have to, deal with any of the games off screen. Right, in addition to the game you're playing on screen. Yes, which was its own weird dance.

And 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's 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 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 of 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.

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, said, 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 was 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 above 14th Street was like going to Disney World. 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 Barney Greengrass. 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 go to temple. we go to the museum every Sunday. It's 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, wanting the medium 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 gray areas to exploring the parts of human experience and the parts of art that actually are 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 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 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 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 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 we, how, 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 violated is the pain of having been participants in their, their own violation. Yeah, and the way you end the episode, there's an incredible moment.

His daughter's playing the flute all of a sudden. Yes, the 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. 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 out 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? Yeah. 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, glowy, 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 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, Caroline will.

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, 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, 100 more women are walking in, which is a beautiful shot. Another Richard's Shepherd special.

Well, 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 Jed 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 write up.

off into the sunset together, not out of love, but because, like, you know, they both are getting something out of the equation. That leads me directly to another specific scene I wanted to talk about, which I think is related to this overall conversation we're having about gray areas in the show. It happens in 601. It's the Desi and Marnie scene, it's the season premiere. Yeah. And so in this scene, these characters, I think, both of whom, I mean, what's happened to

the Desi character is hilarious. We could just say that. I truly believe him to be the greatest comedian since Lucille Ball. He commits. He commits so hard. And the other thing about Evan Moss Backrack is he's such a good actor. Yeah. But it's like he can't, he's incapable of an inauthentic moment.

And so he's just created this character who has this incredibly consistent internal logic, even if it's fucking that shit crazy. I was watching it, 6.02, and I was like, I don't know if anyone is having more fun on the show than he seems to be. He makes me laugh so hard. I mean, he makes me laugh so hard. And so many, like the part in 601 where he quotes Shakespeare and he's like, be careful of jealousy because it is a green-eyed beast that doth eat the meated feed on or whatever. Like he literally came in with like that Shakespeare quote ready to go and I was like, you're a fucking lunatic. But in so in the scene when he's with Marnie and basically he says to her, you are an artistic person. Yeah.

And she says, and that means everything to her. And what's interesting about that scene and valuable to the scene about that scene I think is an audience is it doesn't matter if it's true. You know, there's this feeling that we all have, and whether it's Twitter or whether it's the way we watch TV or just the way we are in general, to have definitive answers, you know, that it matters somehow that Allison Williams is a good singer or Marnie's a good singer or that we're taking this seriously or we're not. And we're often looking for signifiers in the show to be like, well, was this good? Because if it's good, then I'll get behind it. Totally. Kind of doesn't matter. What was interesting about that moment was that this lunatic is telling the other lunatic that she's valuable. And that becomes the connection. And you understand why she wanted to marry this person is because even though he's, you know, like a drug addict and a psychopath and completely incapable of normal human interaction, he's the first person who's taken her seriously. And, you know, I think like Charlie has a line in the first season where they're breaking up. And he says to her like, he goes, people, oh, no, it's a Desi line actually. He's like, people used to always make fun of you and say, that's so Marnie or this is so Marnie. But I love when things are so Marnie. And, like, he's the first person who's not making her into a joke. Yeah. And he's feeding her, like, in that way.

He loves when things are so Marnie. And, like, we all, I mean, that's one of the reasons I feel really lucky to have my boyfriend like them. Last night, he watched. He somehow hadn't seen the clip on Friday where I accidentally not, where I said penis to Maria Shriver and the whole Today show basically like shut down. Like, I don't know what happened. I'm still in a blackout about it. You can say it here. It's a safe space.

Thank you so much. I basically said penis. Maria Shriver looked deeply shaken. The camera went to Matt Lauer, who went, what? Then the camera like spun around and didn't know where it was going. Basically, like, for like about 35 seconds, the Today Show just shut down. And then, like, the reaction on Twitter was kind of like, that was crazy. And why did Lena done to me to say penis then?

And why did any of this happen? And I felt so lucky because my boyfriend watched it. And he was just like, in the night, he was like, you are fucking nuts. And like, but I was like the fact that he is like, you are nuts. and I choose your nutsness is to me the most romantic thing. It's more romantic than any diamonds or gold. You're nuts and give me a big bowl.

Yeah, and give me a big bowl of nuts. You're crazy. One of the things that has always really interested me about the show as a project, ongoing project, has been the relationship between your muse, what you want to do and TV. And TV is a structural entity that exists

with a certain way of doing things, a writer's room, the way characters interact. Yeah. You know, in the beginning, one of the things that was so, felt so radical and freeing was that, and please correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth here, was that, you know, you weren't from that world. You didn't. And so your sensibilities were coming from independent film and things, I reread my review

of the first three episodes from, you know, shockingly with four years, five years ago now. Yeah, five years ago. And I likened it to like riding the G-train on roller skates. That's positive. That's so nice. And, you know, there were moments in the early seasons where I'm like, well, How do these people even know each other? Like, why do they even know each other?

I remember I showed the pilot to my younger sibling, Grace, who's one of the smartest people I know. And Grace's first thing was like, why are they friends and do they have any other friends? And where did they meet? Like, Grace was suddenly just like overcome with confusion about the internal logic. She was giving you network notes.

She was full on giving me network notes. Like CBS notes. Oh, yeah. Grace was like, do they have any other friends? Who, like I remember when Hannah had a birthday party third season, we were like, who would come to Hannah's birthday? party. Who does Hannah know? Because we'd spent so much time invested in these hyper-specific relationships. I'm, there are moments where I'm still like that. Like this season where I'm like,

Array and Adam friends? He has nowhere else to go? It's the weirdest thing. But it's like, as Jenny's always joked, she's like, I wouldn't say plot is our strong suit. Like, but the thing that would surprise people is like, we've always kind of known where we were going. We've just kind of taken the funny, it's like if you chose to like walk four blocks out of your way, even though you were headed home. Like, we know where we're going, but we're just always kind of like, you know, getting distracted by something shiny

in a store window on the way there. That said, I think one of the real triumphs of the show, especially the second half of the show's lifespan, was something that, to me, felt purely TV, and I mean that in a purely positive way, which is Jess and Adam pairing. And I kind of want to know a little bit more about that thinking because to me that seemed like often sitcoms,

your show's not a sitcom, but half-hour comedies. They can't stop putting people. Who can we pair people off? Like who hasn't been together? And then sometimes they spark and sometimes they don't. And the beauty of TV is that if it works, you can keep writing to it.

And if it doesn't, you can back out quickly. Yeah. As a viewer, boy, did this work. And it even lit a fire underhand in a different direction too. But we, I think it came from the fact that we wrote a scene between Jess and Adam and they hadn't really been on camera together before.

And it was just, it was a completely mundane scene I think it ended up getting cut. That's how mundane it was. They were just walking down the street, coming from an AA meeting. But we were like, holy shit, we need to watch those two people on camera together a lot. And Jenny specifically was very resistant at first

because she was like, our whole premise is that these girls, they may be fucked up, they may be disasters, but there is a code of friendship and they are following it. And like for Jessa to get together with Adam would really be taking away

her sort of almost last redeeming quality, which is that she's loyal to Hannah. And so at first we started writing this friendship for them. But it was just like, it was almost as if what happened to them on the show happened to us, which is like, we just couldn't resist. We were like, we know it's mean to Hannah and we have to do it anyway. And I remember I directed their first kiss, which was in the episode where Marnie gets married in 501.

And I remember I was sitting on set. And like, it was so, and this is not, when you talk about chemistry between actors, I feel like people always want to impose, like there was hot chem between the people. like, Jess and, Jamima and Adam are friends. They get along fine, but it's not like we used to see them on set and be like, those two people, what, you never know was going to have. They weren't smoldering over Krafty or whatever. No, like they were just like checking their phones between scenes.

They didn't give a shit. But I, well, Adam doesn't check his phone. But Jamima was like on her phone and Adam was like pacing wildly. I would imagine he was looking for the carrier pigeon he sent out to return. Like literally, I never know what he's doing. His life and his dressing room was a complete mystery to me. He reads the New York Times. I know that.

He's always got a Times. but um but and i always know what jemima is doing because she's always knocking on my door and bugging me and i hope she hears this um but and knows that i have a job and i can't always hang out um but we i directed that first kiss and i remember i i had to turn away from the monitor because it was like i felt like i was watching something that was private and sexy and kind of too much for me to hand like i remember just like the kind of gasp of like oh not only does it work, it works. And then we knew that's where this had to go.

If I can put on my now retired critics hat for a moment, it strikes me what you're saying, the note Jenny gave you is true in terms of the redeeming qualities of these women as friends and what that means about them and sort of one of the things that's not breakable in a show where so many things aesthetically and otherwise can break. But it strikes me that doing that allowed you to break through something and go even deeper on a level that works for the characters in the show

because we get to this point now, and there's a really remarkable scene between Hannah and Marnie and 602 where they basically are like, I have no idea what I'm doing. I have no idea what's going on anymore. And I rewatched my previous all-time favorite scene, which is the dancing on my own scene,

the Robin scene from 103. And I'm thinking about the contrast in these scenes and how we often think in a vacuum, we would think about characters being, if a character's like, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know anything. My go-to is, oh, it's a young character. But it's, in fact, that's not right.

A young person thinks he or she knows what she's doing. An older person realizes I have no fucking idea what's going on. There's a maturity to understanding that you have absolutely no control over your existence. At all. And you have to admit that ignorance. And so to go from a scene in 103 where it's actually a very, it's a beautiful scene about youth and friendship, but they're in an apartment. She tweets about adventure and they're together. And then you fast forward basically says,

six seasons, there's blood on the floor, there are pills on the floor, there's a crazy person outside who she's married to, and they've reached this place where they don't know. And there's a lot of power in that, which I think goes deeper than preserving a friendship that was an older friendship in an older form. Because sometimes friendships even have to be broken before they can be re-reborn. And I wrote that scene, I wrote both of those scenes as love letters to a specific friend of mine who I've been close with, you know, since before college. And I remember feeling in our early 20s, like the biggest adventure we could have would just be to smoke pot in her living room.

Like, we would be smoking a pot in the living room and it felt like we owned all of New York City. Sure. And like maybe later we'd go out to a bodega and like think everybody was looking at us. And I really wrote that scene to her, which was like, hey, I know we've done a lot of judging of each other, but like I'm done. I'm laying it down.

I don't, I just want you to be happy. And I don't think I'm any better than you. just like, I know you don't think you're any better than me because I think so much of what people do to each other, especially in their 20s, is try and position themselves based on, I know I did a lot of like, well, at least I'm not doing as badly as she is.

And even when you aren't aware or you don't admit to yourself that you're doing it, you're running the towel. You're running the numbers. Oh, yeah. Like, I remember being like, like, thinking at, like, 26, like, I've got a house, I've got a boyfriend, I've got a job doing pretty good so-and-so. And then, like, why is that necessary?

giving them so much power also because it's external. It's not about what you've actually have. It's about what they don't or in relation to what they have. I just said to Jenny yesterday, I was like, with the show being over, I'm having to look at some essential truths about, like, what I've actually learned over the last seven years. And it's not, I'm like, I know everything about making a TV show and nothing about interacting with other women my own age, which is shocking, considering I just spent seven years

talking about interacting with other women my own age. Well, the Jessie character particularly, like, when we first met her, she knows everything. She's cool because she is just completely. completely unflappable and knows what to do in any situation or the situations that are relevant to people at that age. And then you have her in 602 and she's literally plain dress up. She's wearing a power suit, a grown-up power suit that doesn't fit her. She's so funny in that power suit. She put it on and Jemima was like laughing so.

Jemima is very bossy about her costumes as she should be because she's a painter and very aesthetic. And so I said like, I want you in a power look. And she was like, they showed me a couple. And she was like, just so you know you have options. but this is the one I'm wearing. It's amazing. And it's also an example of you as a filmmaker and your collaborators as filmmakers

to understand like the instruments that you have at your disposal because she's someone who can look very old, not old, but mature. She can look imperious. She can look so strong even when not wearing anything on the show. Totally.

When you've been writing these scenes that she's been rocked to her foundation by these things that you would think wouldn't rock a character like that, she looks so young. Like in that suit, she looks... She looks like a baby. And I know Jemima cut her hair off this year

and she looked, Jamima has a six-year-old daughter, and I was like, you guys look alike right now. Like, it's basically like I have a little six-year-old on my hands. And so much of this season for Jessa you'll see is about her giving up the notion that she is sort of the unflappable, sophisticate, and realizing just how broken she is. It's so hard to give up your own character, the character you've chosen for yourself. Deeply. And, you know, it's interesting. Jamima and I have been friends since we were 11.

So so much of our friendship and so much of working on the show together. has been about realizing that the roles we assigned ourselves when we first met in a bathroom at a school dance aren't applicable anymore now. Yeah. And it's funny, we were doing a press day the other day, and I was wearing like a, when I first met Jemima,

it was really cool to shop in something called the Delia's catalog, which was, yeah, it was very cool 90s hot thing. And I had a skirt that was made of, we were at the ringer, so it was made of basketball, like jersey mesh. So, like, it was supposed to look like a basketball jersey, but it was a skirt. I believe John Stockton's wearing it in that cut out above your head.

He looks great. But I remember Jemima, we first met and she was like, cool skirt, is that from Delia's? And last week we did press and I was wearing a long mesh skirt. And she was like, we've come a full circle, you know. You're back. Yeah, someone asked me recently about how I met Chris Ryan, my friend who I do the podcast with. And I was like, someone introduced us because we were wearing Indy Rock T-shirts. And it was 1996.

Totally. And it's literally, are you wearing the same team's colors? It's like introducing the only two gay people you know. Because of course you'll be friends. Of course you'd be friends. You're both gay. Why wouldn't you be? I'm not saying, I know that you're not gay, but it would be fine if you were.

In that moment, we were all gay for Indy Rock. It was the 90s. Totally. Totally fine. Well, I'm just so, these are such great questions on your part. It's so nice to be, again, like, it's so refreshing to be asked such thoughtful questions about the character's arcs. Well, I appreciate it because you put in the work, you know?

Thank you. And particularly, um, turning into a final season, like, was that, exciting or daunting to realize that there was whether it doesn't have to be a definitive end because we've talked about ambiguity already, but it's an end of the series. And that's a, I would imagine, a very different feeling to prep

than prepping a fourth season because what's a fourth season, right? This is a final season. There's something really great about it. I mean, I've said this before, but I can be clearer about it here, which is that, you know, first season, you've no clue if you're going to get picked up. So you just throw everything you have in there,

every story. I remember when they said we, could make a second season. I was like, shit, I think I just said every cool thing that's ever happened to me. That's first album syndrome and second album syndrome. Yeah. You have your whole life to make your first album and then, you know, three months to make your second. Exactly. And so it was really, and luckily, we had this amazing writer's room and Jenny and Judd and the show became about our collective experience and the actors gave so much to it. But then final season, like, I know that Jenny Judd and I felt this urgency of like, okay, everything we've ever wanted to do with

these girls, it's time and it's on. And so we felt, really excited to just kind of blast towards that finale and make sure that we were including, that we were really including every sort of emotional beat we had always wanted to. And we got that chance. And we ended up, you know, using the, we ended up ending the show the way that we'd always talked about ending the show basically since the second season. Is it with a snow globe? Is it the whole New York City was in a snow globe the whole time?

New York City was in a snow globe the whole time. And also all of the characters were a dream that was being had by Barry Bradshaw. It was purgatory. Yeah, exactly. Actually, kind of true. By the way, like, if we had pulled something like that, I'd be so proud of myself, but unfortunately know. Then you'd also be in hiding for six months. Yes, I would. But, um, but we ended it the way we wanted to with like, you know, a few, with a few surprises, a few things that surprised us. Along the way. Yeah. I do want to talk about a few, you've been very generous with your time, so I don't want to hold you. Please. I love being here in your beautiful space. Thank you. The space is beautiful. It's

Big. Airy. Quick lightning round, if you don't mind, about the show. Love. Love. What was the biggest mistake you feel you made? And that could, and it doesn't necessarily mean with a character. I just mean as a professional TV maker as you've been for the last six years. Biggest mistake I feel I've made.

I mean, if I'm being totally honest, I think, I mean, I won't point to like a plot thing or whatever. I think that I was not protective of myself and my balance. during the course of the show. And I felt so much guilt about my own success and so much guilt about my opportunities that I really just gave and gave and gave until I did not have anything left in me anymore. And so there were a lot of times where I was like felt like I was like crawling on my hands and knees where I could have actually been really enjoying my job in my life. And luckily I had Jenny and Judd who are adults who have a better sense of balance and who taught me a lot, but I think I wasted a lot of emotional and spiritual energy, sort of repenting

for my very existence throughout the course of the show that made me physically and emotionally exhausted, sick, tired, and I could have taken a lot less clonopin. Yeah, and you're also, making a television show, there's not much time to step outside of the bubble. No. You're in production for a limited amount of time, but you're working on it. You've been working on it for six years. Working on it for six years all the time. And I think that there was something about being a scrutinized young woman living fairly close to the site of where the show took place where I felt like I had to really prove to everybody, like, I'm a nice girl and I deserve this.

It was like, even if I was having the worst day, even if I had a terrible cold, if seven people wanted to take a picture with me at the macha place, I did it. Like I just, there was, I had no regard to be totally frank. It's one thing to have gratitude and we all should, but I had, this is my, advice to other people, other young women, no matter your field, I had no regard for my own boundaries, safety, health. I just felt like if I didn't offend anybody and if everybody thought I was a nice lady, then I had done my job for the day. And I look back and I just see all these moments where I could have gone to work and just gotten, I was surrounded by the

funniest best people. I could have gotten more pleasure out of it if I'd been taking better care of myself. And this doesn't mean, I don't mean like I was on drugs and eating Big Macs. I mean, like, better emotional care. Yeah, that you have to, I mean, the, the oxygen masks and the airplane thing, you have to take care of yourself first. Otherwise, you're not going to be good to anybody. I suck. I put oxygen masks on everyone, then was mad at them for having the oxygen masks. Yeah, then the resentment comes in. Yeah. Because you've expended all, you're in, you're running in deficit, you're running a deficit. And there's nothing left to fill your tank. Yep. That was my big thing. Oof, that's, that's, I feel like that as a common, uh, experience for many people

across creative industries especially. And imposter syndrome really plays in there too because you're like, but I want to prove to you that I deserve this, and I'm sweet, and I'm, you know, like, you know, I remember there was the moment when like I got my book deal

and I felt for a moment like the most hated girl in Brooklyn and I wanted to be like, but look, there's no one I won't take out for dinner and there's nobody who I won't allow to stay in my guest room and there's nobody who I won't talk to about their divorce for 55 minutes. And now I'm kind of okay being like, no, no.

Yeah. Well, it's just giving other people so much power over you and your own feelings and your own reaction to things. And it's like, I used to tell people, I used to tell people like I'm over it. But like, I could get, if I wrote something for Granland and I wrote, got like a hundred nice comments on Twitter, there's the one egg who says the mean thing. I'm like, oh, is an egg. Oh, that egg got me. That egg got me. That egg got it. The rest of those, the rest of these people are, I've tricked them. I know. I know. I remember one time there was a Christian Shawl joke where somebody, she said like someone had tweeted her at her,

like, I don't think you're talented or I don't like you. And she's, She was like, and she was like, I totally agree with you. You're the one who's right. You're the right. I get it. I agree with you. I'm not quoting her perfectly, but I remember feeling like, oh, it was too real. In the course of this show's run, other than maybe the magic that got it on the air to begin with, magic and talent, of course.

Well, thank you. But there's magic. There's plenty of talented people, and it's a magical thing when this actually happens. I was couching it in that way because I was going to ask about the luckiest thing you feel has happened. the luckiest thing that I feel has happened through the course of the show is that all of us ended up actually liking each other, the girls on the show. That's huge. And rare. And it's, we didn't know when I, I mean, I knew Jemima, but when I cast Allison and Zasho with Jenny and I had no idea if we'd all get along. And the fact that it's six years later and we actually enjoy seeing each other is a miracle. And I've heard about it like two other times.

Like there's always some, and especially with a cast of. girls who are all getting famous at the same time in their 20s. Totally in their careers, yeah. We could have become monsters. And so the fact that we still come to set and want to hug each other and take care of each other. And last week, I was really sick and I couldn't go to the Amfar Gala and I was supposed to present an award with my mom and Zasha went for me.

That's nice. Like, they're my sisters. And that could have really gone another way. What's the thing that you can't believe you got away with? I can't. I mean, honestly. like the fact that they even let me be the star of the show is insane. Like the fact that I got away with like getting on television and somehow I really can't

believe I got away with being on the cover of Vogue. That one's a real shock to me still. Yeah. Every time I see it, I'm like, that's hilarious. I mean, obviously it was like an honor and I'd like something that's amazing. But like I felt as though basically I can't believe that I got away with like sort of like standing in as like a as like a female like some version of an ingenue like it's shocking to me that that happened in any iteration what's the the biggest lesson you learned about making a television show

and how quickly did you have to learn it biggest it's a great question the biggest lesson i learned about making a television show is that you have to let go sometimes because you're making a lot of work and some things are going to slip through the cracks and it's not all going to be perfect and you can't, you know, sometimes if you focus too hard on making that one moment perfect, you're going to, you know, miss the forest for the trees and you have to just be ready to keep moving. And I think it took me about three years to figure that out. It's not film. I mean, TV is an imperfection machine. It's on the next one. And you just got to keep going. And I remember one day I was doing this scene and I just was like,

I kept doing take after take because I just wasn't happy with like, like the walk I was doing. And then I was like, and then they were like, we really have to move on. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to see that. I'm going to know I didn't like it. Just like there's going to be a million moments where I know that I wasn't at my prime. And that just has to be okay. Because we're, I mean, I can't even imagine people who make 22 episodes. But like, we're making a lot of things. We're making a lot of stuff here. And some of it's going to be great and some of it's going to be less great. And Judd had warned me about that. He'd been like any episode, like any season maybe has like five great episodes, three okay. and two that suck.

And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but not our show. And then, you'll break the mold. And I'm actually scared to rewatch the show and figure out which are the episodes, I think, suck. But, like, I think it took three years before I was like, okay, Lina, you're going to drive yourself. Like, I remember having a fit on, I had a fit on set one night. My version of a fit is pretty chill. I'm not like a yeller. But Paul Sims was on set.

And he had, I wasn't available and they had said, do you want Hannah pulling up to the apartment in a black car or a yellow cab? and he'd gone yellow cap, like, just said it. And I was like, it's impossible to get a yellow cab and grain point. It would never be there. It would be a car service. And he was like, who cares, dude? And I was like, totally right. Moving on.

Yep. Okay, super quick lightning round now. Favorite joke? There's no way you remember all of them, but off the top of your head right now, you think about laughing. Favorite joke in six seasons of girls? It's always Andrew Rannell's. And my favorite joke is one that he improvised,

and it's in the eighth episode of this season and it's a really hot day and he says and our air condition got broken and he goes, what are we gonna do? I'm too pretty to go to a cooling station. Finally. And it just ruined me. I didn't even know what a cooling station was.

But he's carrying it around up there. I know you can't pick your children but favorite episode. My favorite episode is Panic in Central Park because it was so personal but I wasn't in it. And it was like to see Marnie and Charlie, you know, when Chris Abbott left the show, I didn't know if we were going to get to have him back and it was painful and I was young and it was sad.

And it was beautiful on both a personal level. Life is long. You can find your way back to a friendship with people and to see those characters back together. And also it was so, it was like when I watched it, I couldn't even believe I had anything to do with it. It felt so lucky. It's also very TV in that something that you were unhappy about, turned into a positive later on because you were able to do that story. It really was like that was like a moment that made me realize like I guess there's a reason

for everything. Yeah. I should let you go. I feel like we haven't, I haven't even asked this and there's no time to, but just how are you and where are you going next? Such a great question. You can say that literally like you have to go get coffee or just biggest picture, where's your

brain right now and as they're waving at me with anxiety about getting you out of here. Well, I'm dressed like a full scale homeless person, which he, which you can describe later to your listeners if you want. And I'm going to do a little bit more girls press. and I'm actually on my way to Europe for three weeks to do. I'm finishing my book. I'm putting out a book of fiction in January of 2018. So I'm finishing that up.

And I'm going to go to Oslo with my dad because he's having a painting show. Then I'm going to go to England to do some research for a theater project. And so I feel like I'm going on a bit of a personal odyssey that I've wanted to take for a long time. And then I'm going to come back and keep working on Lenny and my podcast, women of the hour, and try to, you know, make some sense of what's happening on this planet and hang out with my poodles and my boyfriend. But the big answer is, I don't know, which is not what I thought when I finished the TV show, I'd be able to tell you everything about myself in the world.

But as you said, part of growing up is being able to say, I don't know. So I don't know, Andy. It's very freeing and very exciting and a good place to end. Lena, thank you so much. Thank you so much. That was a real pleasure. 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 Concepcion 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.