Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here before we launch our next season of Here's the Thing at iHeartRadio in January, I thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives. Three years ago, twenty three year old Lena Dunham made a low budget art house film called Tiny Furniture. She filmed the movie in her parents' house and basically played herself, a recent college graduate moving back into her childhood bedroom while making plans for her future. Dunham was proclaimed a
fresh original voice, a director with a bright future. Writer director Judd Apatow was one of those who took notice, and today he and Dunham executive produced Girls, a show she created for HBO that premiered its second season on January thirteenth. You're good.
I am so good at you kidding? I have never been as well in my life.
No, I know. I mean you've seen good that. The wedding was so quick and unexpected. I kind of even know how to process it.
Yeah, well, you tend to overthink things, and that's an issue for you. This is what it's like when the hunt is over. I think Sandy really likes me.
I really like him too.
When you's so nice, and funny when you have sex. There's no part of me that wants like pretend they don't exist, which is a rarity.
That's awesome. He's kind of a Republican, which feels weird.
What's wrong of the Republican?
It's just the same as a Democrat. They're old bags. Lena Dunham has achieved an astonishing amount in just three years. Her portrayal of Hannah Horvath and Girls recently won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. This past October, she sold a book of essays and advice to Random House, and her boyfriend is a rock star. Today, she hardly resembles Aura, her character from Tiny Furniture. I
thought I wouldn't have much in common with Lena. She's half my age and has been fiercely embraced by my daughter's generation. But oh, how quickly we realized there was common ground between us us.
Literally, my show is moving into the thirty rock stages.
No, yes, we're taking you guys are moving to Silver Cup. Yes, you and Michael Fop.
We were in Silver Cup. Then we went to Steiner because we couldn't get our stages back because some show that has one word that's about murder took it. And then we are coming back because you guys are leaving, so we're going to be on your stages and in your offices.
No, no, I thought, isn't Michael Fox coming there too?
He is. We're I think we don't take as much stage space as you guys did, so we're going to have because we have fewer sets. So I think it is gonna have We're gonna have a piece and he's gonna have a piece.
Wow.
Now, as I'm sitting here meeting you for the first time and talking to you for the first time, you are nothing like I imagined you would be. Really nothing. I'm a bit thrown here because you play someone who is a guess in your mind that I want to talk about. Your a vision of what kind of character you wanted to create is a little bit a beat
behind everyone else. Or I'll let you articulate that what you think she is though, But what I want to say is you when I meet you, you seem like you could be like a senator or the head of the corporation. I mean, you're really very, very You seem so together and smart, and you look great, and you cut your hair, you look gorgeous. That is firstly, very meaningful.
And I have to not turn red and get excited because you said that's radio.
So I don't care. I don't care.
I'll get good, perfect, and I'm wearing my crew jacket and I really I should have dressed up more for you. But that being said, you know, it's funny. Firstly, a beat behind idea really speaks to me because I'm always sort of saying when people ask about Hand, I'm always sort of saying, she's a version of me, but she's a few years behind me, and she's also sort of
a few minutes behind everyone around her. So you really picked up on a concept that I'm sort of always thinking about a little bit when I play her and when I write her.
But she's who you used to be.
You know, it's funny. I think I used to I think I in order to convince myself that I should play this character, or that I should even write this character, I had to say, well, I'm just writing my It's that easy. I'm just writing myself. Because the idea of sort of creating an entire other human can be so intimidating and Who are you?
Though?
In real life?
In real life, who are you?
I think that Hannah is someone who I'm very capable of being, who's wounded, ambitious but doesn't know where to place it. Hannah sort of the version of myself if I'd had less understanding parents and sort of less drive to get things done. And I think who I am as a person who was always sort of if I had to describe the war within myself that exists currently.
It's sort of the challenge of trying to reconcile the part of me that that always thought I would be, like, you know, a weird gender and women studies teacher who occasionally showed movies at film festivals and hung out in my strange apartment that was stacked high with books. Trying to reconcile that with the part of me that has to like figure out a dress.
The cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
Exactly it was to shoot the Rolling cover of Rolling Stone Magazine was to figure out a dress to wear that for an event that and everyone seems to be worried about whether or not the dress is in st because it has to be my own dress, and so I'm dealing with all these sort of this strange echosystem and all these weird politics that I kind of never imagined would happen to me in my lifetime.
You never imagined, No, you really never imagined it.
I think I my dream situation was that I would be someone who people thought, oh, she's doing important work in her own little corner.
Like a ras Chaste cartoon character, exactly like a Ra's Chast cartoon character, or like I think because I went to pretentious private school, the biggest dream you would have is you'd be.
Like I'm going to be Joan Diddyon. That was kind of where your brain was allowed to wantry maybe Nora.
E from Maybe You'll make films, but you're not going to be in films exactly.
And I don't think when I first started acting, I mean I never got parts in high school. I never even I never was able. I think I had a twofold thing about it. One is that it came from a family of artists, and so the idea was sort of like you made your work and then got out of the way of it. Like part of what was I think I internalized the idea that your work was
supposed to speak for you. You were not supposed to speak for your work, and so I think I was conscious about the idea of being anything so self promoting, and although that's not what acting is, it is now it's become that. And then I also think that I thought, well, there's people who are professionals who can do this better than me. So I'm just going to act until I have access to the people who should be acting. And
sometimes I still feel that way. Sometimes I think, like, you know, I'll do this a little longer and then Michelle Williams can play me every day till I die. Something that's really nice about making the show that isn't that is a comedy that isn't stuck in any sort of I mean, thirty Rock was able to bust out of a lot of network sitcom tropes, but a lot of the time when you're on a I think one of the biggest things that networks prevent, besides curse words
and showing your breasts is development. I think that when you play, I think so many sitcom characters end up playing the same version of themselves in various scenarios.
This is the thing as God as my judge. This is the thing that we talked about in the meeting to prep this thing with you, which was shows I've seen where the protagonists male or female, they're going through the same set of problems in season six that they were in season one. It's just different lines in different coasts. Yes, And with you, I'm wondering, do you have a Bible on the show? Do you have an arc in your mind?
Not even on paper, not even approved with your other Could you do this with jud correct.
I do it with Judd and a woman named Jenny Connor who's the other executive producer.
And we have a great little writer's room.
But our writer's room doesn't really work like It's not like we write a script and then all sit together punching it up. It's much more we sit together at the beginning of the season and really talk through It's like a giant therapy session where we work out the emotional arc and then we go to it.
And when you work out that emotional arc, do you think to yourself are the things that she's going through? Now your character and the other characters where you're saying to yourself, let's make sure they're not going through this, that there is growth a season from now or by the end of the season completely.
And that's why I feel like it's okay for me to cut my hair, or it's okay for me to start spinning, or it's okay for me you know whatever I whatever to change to change, because I feel as though so much of what this show is about is about seeing these girls off into their adulthood. Like in my Bible, the ideal finale to the show would be a feeling like, you know, they don't have to have kids, they don't have to have husbands, but you look at them and you kind of go, they're on their way.
They're more okay than they were when they started, or they're less okay, but we have an understanding of what kind of adult we think they're going to be.
So describe to me how that works. Because the theme here is control. And you are, like other brilliant comedy writing chicks I've known over the years. You have this is your show, this is your thing. So how does it start? How does whose idea was? Girls? Was it yours?
It was mine? Because I basically I went in, I made this movie tiny Furniture, and I made it. You know, my mom and sister starred. We shot it in my mom's house, my mom and dad's house. It was totally populated with friends, some of whom have made their way to Girls with me.
And what motivated you don't want to do tiny furniture.
I had always wanted to be a writer, and I used to think I wanted to be a playwright, and then in college I sort of had this revelation where I thought, like, plays, you rehearse, and you rehearse, and then they happened twice. Like I just felt so frustrated by the lack of permanence. Like I'd always been sort of turned on by the fact that when my parents as artists, made work, like they had these material items that would outlast them. And I was frustrated that that
wasn't a part of the theater experience. So I started making short films and I made my first feature and went to south By Southwest Film Festival with it, and then I just had and I'd been making web TV, and I just had this itch to sort of tell the specific story, and I wrote the script and the kind.
Well, that's what I want to talk about, is is that itch meaning beyond the arc of the shooting and the and the career aspects of it or the burgeoning career. What was it about what was going on in your life that you want to do that movie?
On a practical, real life level, I wanted to talk about that moment between college and adulthood that felt so flounder and so every day I felt like I was walking through the strangest, most surreal soup. That would mean that on a deeper level, I kind of wanted to talk about change, which is what I always think is sort of the most interesting place to find characters is
in a time of intense change. And so I sort of also wanted to capture this moment where I was I knew that I wouldn't live at home forever, that my little sister wouldn't be sort of seventeen and ambitious but also stuck in her bedroom forever, that my mom was sort of looking in this beautiful moment where she kind of was I mean, she'd murder me for saying this, but she looked that kind of beautiful way where it's like you're not quite old yet and you just look
kind of She just looked kind of perfect to me, and I just.
Look a great car.
Yeah, And I just thought I could say that exactly, and I just thought, I want to capture all of this. I want to capture our cats, I want to capture our house, I want to remember all of this. And so, so you really love your mom. I'm obsessed with my mom. Okay, I love my mom.
But I'm saying, that's interesting that you have that feeling and that's what makes you survey what's around. You wouldn't want to capture that because I find typically people who are not happy they got to wait a while until they can negotiate the pain to go back and talk about that.
It's one of the biggest things that inspires me to make work is this feeling of looking around and going, even if you're not perfect, you're all so perfect right now, let's capture this and then, you know, I'd love the feeling. I was just watching like Panic and Needle Park last week, that movie which is you know it, Kitty Win, Kitty Gosh, She's so good. Where did Kitty Win go?
Yeah? Let me get that vile out for Kitty Win. She's incredible.
But so I was watching that and I was just thinking about how exciting it was to be able to watch sort of like al Pacino at that first moment when he was sort of like he still almost looked a little adolescent, and he was still and he was learning his craft and just behaving on film. Yeah, and I just love capturing that. And that's something that I've tried to do with girls too, is sort of grab people and go, let's just let's just see you as you are right now.
Now.
So the film did well, So then how does girls Happen? Girls happened? Because so then I went to LA and kind of did that. I went like, Okay, I guess what you do next is get an agent. And I guess what you do next is try to figure out what you're doing next.
You, I mean, you're on the runway.
Now, Yes, I was. I was on the runway, and I was going around LA doing the sort of what I call the couch and water bottle tour of LA, where you meet everybody and have those kind of general meetings where and I remember it was so funny because at first I didn't understand that everybody says to you at the end of the general meeting, oh, I'd love to find a way to work with you. And so I would call my agent afterwards and go, oh my god, it was amazing, and he said he wants to find a way.
To work with me, and he meant he what should come clean his pool?
Yeah, basically, I'd always been obsessed with TV. I'd always loved TV and found it to be the most sort of comforting medium and.
The one that what comforted you on TV?
What comforted me on TV was there's a range of things that comforted me on TV. I loved having weird what was the most what was the weirdest? I mean, my favorite show when I was little was Under the Umbrella Tree, which is a Canadian show about a woman who lives with three puppet and it was on every morning at seven am. God there were three of them named Iggy, Gloria, and Jay, and Iggy was an iguana. Gloria is a groundhog and Jay is a blue jay
and he lives out back in a birdhouse. They like talk to you about recycling, or like help their old elderly neighbor who fell down in the street. Like they're just like nice puppets, But looking back, it feels like a child molester who's on the lamb with her three.
My my guilty pleasure. Like that was when I was in my twenties and I go to my friend's house and we just had this weird habit where like at four o'clock in the afternoon, we'd like make a drink and we'd roll the biggest joint and we'd smoke pot and watch a show called Stairway to Stardom that was on Public Access TV. And Stairway to Startom was this older man and kind of looked like Rod Steiger. He
was like a burly looking, tough looking older man. And his wife and she kind of looked like like Tammy Faye Baker. She was like a big, big honey combed shellacte hair and she was like this big bosom me older woman. And the guy would come out and he had the funniest voice. He'd be like, welcome everyone to sell and use, and they'd sing a song and opening so and they would bring out acts that would perform. They were all like local queens Brooklyn talent parakeets.
It was like it was bizarre that sounds like the best thing in the world. It was the best show in the world, especially if you've smoked.
An enormous amount of marijuana an enormous joint, so you're on the Sofa water Bottle Tour and what happens on the sofa water bottle.
Tour and my agent, who I feel like you're not supposed to say you love your agent because it makes you sound really Hollywood and everyone. I love everyone, And also I have the best agent. He's like really been at it for a long time. He's like a cigar smoking you know, he's what I imagined. His name's Peter Benedeck.
Peter Benedict did know Peter Benedeck, And he smoked cigars.
He's old school, he's old kind of a hectemic gothapy exactly.
And he belongs to a cigar club. Which one does he belong to? I think it says it has a Cuban flair. I think it is.
I'm on the board of Grand ev are you. I know Peter and I probably have seen him a Granda that Wow. He always plays on the out there and smoked the goods with him when you were still a gleam in your parents. Aye, you weren't even around God. Damn with the way this business works. No, no, no, So he's your agent and you love him.
I love him, And he said to me, I was sort of saying to him like, maybe I could get I just wanted to move out of my parents' house, and I thought and make more movies. And I was like, maybe I could should write a spec how I met your mother, and I could get staffed on a show. I mean, I didn't know any I didn't know how
any of this worked. And he said that I should go for a meeting at HBO, and I did, and I said, well, here's what I'd want to see, is like a show about all my girlfriends, like sort of like Tiny Furniture, but there's more of us, and we don't live with our parents anymore, but it's still about that. It's like it was pitched so weekly, like a year after my movie, but there's more of us and it's a TV show.
So the conversation wasn't coming out of and Tiny Furniture in the indie and in the festival world had a very good buzz. There was no conversation, but you just going right into films and making more films. Normally they're going to want to steer some especially your age was very young. They're going to go just keep making movies.
Well, you know, there was a conversation, but I think I picked up on the fact very early going on the Couch and Water Bottle tour that the kind of stories that I wanted to tell we're not really being funded on a larger scale and film.
We're taking a break stay with us.
I picked up on the fact very early going on the Couch and Water Bottle tour that the kind of stories that I wanted to tell we're not really being funded on a larger scale.
And film Tina says that sometimes the Tina I would just finished working. Yeah, it seems like it's more difficult to ay to have the control you want in the film business and be to say what you want to say.
It is, And the fact is I could have kept saying what I wanted to say, you know, making twenty
five thousand dollars movies, but I wanted It's weird. The reason that I like having some budget is not because you know, I want to stagecarshes or I want to have you know, ten makeup artists on set, although those things would will would be lovely, But but it's more because of the fact that I do so many jobs, so so exciting to not have to worry anymore about answering the doorbell, about returning the equipment, about making sure that people had the pizza. Also, that's going to happen
in TV. And what I has money and has HBO is time Warner. But they have money, but they use it in this kind of amazing It's this amazing model, which is that they don't have to answer to advertisers in the same way. So HBO can sort of fulfill its odd little interests. And that's what I started out as and I what I didn't predict was how much I would love the opportunity to develop characters in this way and the kind of the fiber of TV itself.
And they believe in you. Based on my experience, I've never worked for them, but I've have many friends and colleagues over the years who've worked for them, and I've I've almost worked for them here and there. You know, HBO is one of those places like that, I think the most six testful studios and networks. The way they operate, which is that they vetted maybe to a fairly well, but if once they believe in you, they're all in
it's yours. They give you the money that they it's not too intrusive now, so the template of four women, and obviously HBO is no stranger to the template of four women talking about but obviously those women were older.
And you've been a fan of that show, Yes, I think that I can't find one girl who isn't at least secretly a fan of Sex and the City who's my age. And I loved it, And you know, I was very conscious when I was first writing the show. I thought to myself, should I put these girls in Boston? There was and I tried to make it three girls because and Shashana was initially not one of the girls.
Shashana was jess as Zosher Mammot's character was jess A's Jemim mc kirk's character's cousin, and she kind of came in and out as a kind of She was the more suring as a recurring in and out goofball who was sort of supposed to call to.
Be that.
She does. She plays it beautifully and but the reason that I wrote her was to sort of call out the Sex and the City thing, like this is the girl who came to New York to have her cosmos and her Manolo's and it's not going quite right. But she was so wonderful, and she added something that the three of us didn't have on our own, and so it became a four person delio. And so I tried to make it three women. I tried to put it
in a different city. But the fact is is that New York is where it was supposed to happen, and four women just somehow there's a symmetry to it that doesn't Gee.
Star, be damned, I'm going to do.
I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it. And so but the fact is that you know, sext and City is a specter that hangs over in a I mean in a positive way. Everything when female centric, and you know, in the writer's room, every there were so many episodes of Sex and City and they tackled every area of sexual function and dysfunction that there's almost nothing you can pitch that they haven't done.
But I found that the women on Sex in the City, that those women would have things happen, and they tended to brush off the consequences pretty quickly. Yeah, whereas the girls on your show, the tone seems very different. Everybody seems to almost be doubting what they're doing, or they have a kind of a sense of fear or anxiety about it. While they're doing it, it seems more real. Was that deliberate in your part? Well, something I.
Feel about being in your twenties, which is different than you know. Sex and the City was a show about women in their thirties who had successful careers pre recession, the best, most supportive friends. They didn't have. I mean, they had little friend TIFFs. But the characters on our show are tortured. It's sort of impossible to get through your twenties without It's like, if you ask a girl in her twenties, are you a happy person? I think she can say I have happy moments, but I don't
think it's possible. Maybe I'm maybe people will radically disagree with me, but I don't really think it's possible to be sort of an at peace human when you are between twenty two and thirty, and so I think there's dot I don't because I think.
That's a problem that I mean for me. One thing that I noticed when I went to college, which is a long time ago, an interesting number of people they really knew what they wanted to be, they weren't quite sure how to get there. They had a dream. I want to become a lawyer, I want to become a doctor. I want to go into politics. I want to go into and now people today it seems like younger people really they think they have more time to figure it out.
You're turning twenty five, and they really don't have that picture and focus. Do you agree?
I do agree, And I think a big part of it is being I think the Internet has cracked things open in a way that's both beautiful and that it helps you find. There's so many things that I never would have even known about, things that have been huge for me that have existed because of the Internet. And I think that I've been able to partially connect with people who would be fans of the show because of
the Internet. I think, you know, it's always exciting when like there's this website called rookiemag dot com that's run by this girl, Tavi Jevnson, and it's a smart teen magazine that exists only on the Internet. And I just think if when I was a teenager there had been that place and that message board, I would have felt like the world was my oyster like just meeting other weirdo girls who had the same who like you know whatever.
At the time, I just wanted to talk to someone about Connor Oberst or something on the Internet, and that would have been possible. But I think now the fact that like the Internet has created so many strange specialized jobs and so many things where it's like, you know,
I'm a brand consultant, slash blog enhancer or whatever. People are like, suddenly the world feels wide open, but there are less jobs available, and so it's a really confusing moment to make any decisive choice about what you want to do.
It's interesting you say that the Internet is responsible for that, and then idea of having too many choices than you need you wind up bout.
That could also be a metaphor for like men in their twenties dating. I feel like men in their twenties like I once had dated a guy who told me that he didn't feel like he could be serious about anyone in New York because it would be like eating at the same restaurant every night in New York, Right, there's so many amazing choices. It's New York City.
I hope he choked some whatever a restaurant to go. Yeah, I shouldn't say that. That's me that's wrong.
I feel like that, so it's helpful to have it backed up by Alec Baldwin.
This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the thing more in a minute. Lena Dunham didn't have to look far to come up with her character on Girls.
Physically, I'd say Hannah is. I mean, she's me because I play her. But it's funny because she's chubby, but she doesn't. That's not where her anxiety comes from. Like she's just not I like playing a character who doesn't have a perfect body, but that's not the main source of their anxiety. I feel like we have very few female characters on television who don't look like models and
aren't constantly discussing it. So of course Hannah has her moments of self conscientiousness, just like every woman does, but that's not She sort of doesn't notice that her clothes don't quite fit. She sort of doesn't think about what she eats.
It's and I have closed her just to cover you up and keep you warm, exactly. They have some degree of style to the grain, but less.
Like a character exactly. And I like she's more interested in like whether her clothes are funny and witty, like I don't think she really cares about being sexy. She's more just like, oh, this dress like has owls on it? How sweet? I used to be much in college. I dressed like a complete lone. I feel like my dad always told me, I look the golon tamer all the time.
I've calmed down just because I realized that you could vests with so many vests, red vest, so many red vests, so many like you know, strained boots pulled over my weird leggings with a three flounced skirt. I could never accessorize enough. It was oppressive. But in the Luftwaffa, yeah, exactly.
And so so that's Hannah's sort of physical I think emotionally, some facets of Hannah are that she is, you know, she has a certain amount of wit and a certain amount of sort of spunk, but she isn't really applying it anywhere properly yet. And she's also.
Smart and funny and not mean because a lot of the people in that world and the improvisational comedy were oh my god and funny in there me and that meanness is the font that it comes from. Is that source?
I know and you know the thing about Firstly, my dad is like a manner's Nazi. So I think that I grew up feeling like the worst thing you could do was offend somehow.
Sit up straight in that chair, and your dad told me to say that.
I know, Oh my god, my dad still tells me to sit up straight constantly.
I'm going to call it.
And then and it's funny because both my dad is an artist and he paints these sort of outlandish intense I mean, he paints things that are pretty pretty sexual images, pretty aggressive images, you know, a man with a I mean, they're funny, but they're intents. It's like two men with penises for noses in a war with guns and knives with three women.
Grew up around this, is around it.
But it was what was interesting was that my dad was sort of like you.
Can do girls. I know, dad had penises on his face, on.
His face, on every face, but you know, you I grew up around it. But I think that my dad always really showed me that there was a difference between you know, what your work was and who you were. And he's so my parents are so polite and so sort of they just I think so much of this. Again, I've never had kids. I've you know, I don't know what that feels like. But I think, how old are you know? I'm twenty six and I want kids, but I'm not ready. No, please, I really.
I just tomorrow.
I just got a doctor.
We already have birth control pills for you.
Seriously, no kids now. I don't want kids. I just got adoption. Everybody things I'm insane. I just finished season two. Season three. Well, we're starting season three and we're starting at the end of March, so exciting.
Yeah, I want to come and play yours therapist.
That would be the most fun thing in the world. It's bad, bad, bad, But I forget what I'm saying. But I'm glad you don't think.
I mean.
I get too guilty if I ever make a mean joke, like appreciate what I'm saying, I do, well, I'm terrified. It's one of the reasons I don't I don't really feel like a comedy writer, because there's sort of like a quickness and a harshness, and you need.
To have those people in your bullpen there. Do you have some more really traditional edgier We do have.
I have a couple of writers on the staff, one Murray Miller, who this season was really essential in sort of bringing us just hard jokes, But no one on our staff has that particular kind of darkness. I've been around a lot of those comedy writers, and you know, there's that feeling of like even when they're saying something nice to you, they're kind of trying to murder you with their eyeballs, and it's.
It's it becomes too much salt to the soup exactly.
It's impressive to me in small doses, but terrifying.
You've got to have it, but you've got to mix it carefully. Like when we did our show that was that was a big issue where like sometimes I would say, I just think this is too mean, Like we're going to lose people like we want to be we want to be mean, but we have to decide who we're going to be mean too. It's true who deserves it.
My thing is also I always I only really make jokes about people I like, Like when there's a joke that references a celebrity on the show, it's usually a joke that I'm making because I have really taken note of their work and have fascinated by.
It's not because you slept with them and you want to get even with them.
No, I don't have that instinct.
So talk about two things. The level of control you have. I mean, you are a very young woman, and I'm assuming it's all you correct, I mean it is.
I mean I work with Jenny and Judd really closely, and I definitely I think I'm constantly sort of telling myself I have bosses around. It kind of comforts me. I mean, and you don't, do you not exactly. I have collaborators. I have collaborators, but I have collaborators who I take really seriously and who you need and who I need and who I would never I think the minute you get an attitude like it's my show, the ship runs on duneam and my way or the highway,
I think it's broken exactly. I think you still want to feel a little fear when you share a script with your collaborations. You want to go I hope they like this. I'm going to listen to them. When they don't, I still feel tremendously indebted to them and anxious about their reactions. And I never feel like, you know, I'm the big boss and you guys can all get with it or leave.
So when so the Hannah character you start out, I mean in tiny Furniture, I almost feel like tiny.
Furniture is it's.
You. You. You may become one of these actresses now where it's all one series. You know what I mean?
It kind of is. It's funny when I look at any character I've played in anything that I've made, it's you, it's me, and it's it's funny. I've never played anyone whose name doesn't end with a I've made. I've written all these characters who because I always have to have a name that I think sort of like is.
In the world name it's the two double syllables.
Yep.
Someone said to me to be a famous star, you need to have two double syllable names.
You do, do you?
Or two monos? But Sean Penn, Marlon Brando.
My mom did tell me that she gave me my name, which is so funny because it's not like we have any actors in her family. My mom said, I'm named after my Russian gret Grad. And my mom said, but when she named me, she thought, I don't know what she'll want to do. But this is a great name if she does want to be a movie star. That was what my mom thought, which is so funny because it's not like my mom's some crazy stage mom or like is she she's a photographer and.
She's what's the source of your real close to the start, to the extent you can say, I don't.
Want to prob oh, no, I don't mind. I've clearly I don't mind. We are very similar in ways that can be delightful and can be maddening. Something I like about both my parents, and I'd imagine you're like this with kids too. Is they really talked to me like I was an adult always? And I love that And I love I love talking to kids like their adults because it's like they kind of come alive when you just ask them real questions. And yes, my mom always
really let me into her world. And I'm working right now, I'll talk to in ten minutes, And just having that kind of access to her was amazing. Yeah, And I've just always thought she was the coolest, and it's funny and it's nice to see it echoed because all my friends think she's the coolest too.
Now you're going to do how many seasons of the show are you signed on to do well?
You know, it's not clear. I mean HBO contractually has me, I think as an actor for six years, but as a writer, and I wish I should pay more attention to my deals. But I'm just so excited to have my job. I just go, okay, whatever you say. But I think my dream world is that, you know, I want to kind of follow like you know, how British shows always know British shows and thirty Rock always know just when to get off the air.
The question becomes how you can maybe you know, do that TV show? And the schedule is how many months.
We do it?
Well, how many episodes.
We've been doing ten? I think between you, me and McGee, I think we might do twelve next year, right, But I would love that. I don't want to, like, I don't have any desire in doing like, you know, a twenty two episode. I don't even understand how someone does the twenty two episode marathon. But I do think that doing I think that a little more would be just a little more storytelling real estate and it'd be amazing.
But you know, so I shoot four four and a half months out of the year, then I'm editing and I'm doing press that I'm writing. Then I'm back. So so it's not four and a half months, so it's not it's safe months. It's actually more like twelve months. And so would you make.
A movie during the breakfast now?
No, I couldn't because there was just no time. I finished shooting in August, I was editing.
Why don't you make a deal with HBO with all financi your films, so you're working for them in its olin house.
It's very smart. I mean, I really want to make a movie. I have two features scripts that I've been working on that I just I want to make another before I make like a big, massive ambitious movie. I mean, I want to make a creatively ambitious movie. But I want to make another small movie I have. I have small movie idea.
Do you have a massive ambitious movie inside you? I do, but it's I you have an idea?
I do.
But it's so weird, fifty four year old psychotherapist that.
There's there's a fifty four year old somebody And I mean.
I'll talk to you later in the traffic controller.
Working with you is one of my long standing dreams. But I am and I'm also I'm writing a book. So that's something that.
Was really well I heard about that.
It's something that was really important to me to start doing it at this point in my career.
Starn And you write and produce your own TV show and you're writing a book. H Who did that remind me of? What are you gonna write a book about?
I'm writing a book. Well, I guess it's about me, although it's a little less about me because it also has advice an advice component, but it's like personal essays.
So is it like Paula Pell's Hey Young Girls?
Oh my god, I love Hey Young Girls. Makes me so happy. Paula Pel is funny. Paula Pel is someone who's funny and not mean.
Yeah, Paula Pel's I mean to the right people.
She's just a dreamy person. But you know, the thing that's been so great about writing the book is I've always loved writing prose, and I wanted to make it a part of my career sooner rather than later, because I didn't want it to be like when I decided to write a book in ten years, it was like, oh, look, here's a celebrity memoir. Number fifty seven I wanted it to really feel like I'm a person who writes prose and that it's a part of my life and career for a long time.
But unlike other people that are writing books, they don't have TV shows that they're starring in and writing. When you're done doing now not just ten but twelve episodes, what do you have left to go into the book?
There's stuff that's just for the book.
There's still an example.
Well, likewise, I write a lot about my childhood in the book. I write a lot about my parents. I write a lot about college and sort of like that, I write a lot about that period. I write a lot about sort of the beginning of being sexual person. I write about relationships. I'm writing a lot about sort of female role model I.
Want to say about sexuality.
It's interesting. I've had to become more conscious about what I say and what I promote. Not in a way that stifles me, but just in a way where I realize now that there are seventeen year old girls who come up to me and tell me that the show means a lot to them, and.
This show one percent of your audience is influenced. This is what I learned from someone one percent of your one percent is genuinely and in any way influenced by what you do and say. That's still tens of thousands of people.
It's amazing. It's an amazing thing. And it's like it's a platform that you have to take seriously, which is why sometimes it's like I used to be really into Rihanna, that pop star, and then it was like again, I don't want to ever, you know, throw stones from my glasshouse, but I follow her on Instagram and I just think about how many little girls, beyond what I could even comprehend, are obsessed with Rihanna, Like, you know, she left Barbados,
she's had this amazing career, she's you know, one Grammy, she's talented, and then she gets back together with Chris Brown and posts a million pictures of them smoking marijuana together on a bed, and it cracks my heart in half in a way that makes me feel.
Like I'm nicety Chris Brown smoking pot.
No, because she got back together, was going, oh, yeah, you guys, you made a really good joke, and I got too emotional and in my response, yeah, because I want to that's here. It's terrible, mean enough, it's terrible.
So you are as a role model. What won't Hannah or the other girls in the quartet do?
Jenny and I talk about this a lot. We won't fuck someone because they have a nice apartment. There's not going to be any version of sort of like prostuding yourself. There's not going to be any version of dating somebody because he can take you out to nice dinner.
Wait, wait, you're putting down my whole playbook. This is all I have left. Wait a second. That is so wrong of you.
Come on, it's interesting. I have so many friends who are so sort of tortured by their romantic relationships, and I think such a big part of it is that the desires of young men and young women are not caught up with each other.
And I say to my wife, I do want to eat in the same restaurant every night, but I want the hostess to wear a different outfit every night. Perfect. But so you say they won't monetize sex.
They won't monetize sex, And it's like even more subtle than that, Like, I don't like a storyline that's like unless it's really saying something about where characters at. I don't like a storyline that's like, you know, he bought me an entire trousseau of dresses, and so I'm his forever. Like that's just not the way that I want to idealize anything. I think that the characters, the characters can make mistakes, but they have to be emotionally responsible for
the things that they've done. I don't ever want to like have a makeover scenario where someone's doing better after they've put on a great dress and you know, straight ironed their hair. Like I just there's it's a really instinctual thing, but it's just a feeling a balance. I want women. This is so kind of Hippi tippy, but
I want them to make their own choice. I want them to I don't want people to live in service to sort of what television things they should look like, or what their family things they should act.
How much do you think that women, because this is a very sensitive topic, I mean because I'm I'm not going to go Norman Mailer here, but I feel like, you know, the interesting thing for society is if women have been allowed to make their own choices for the most part, for the last forty years, or at least for the last twenty five and that's reaped enormous benefits
for society. I mean, forget about just women. But at the same time, women are the only ones who can have children, true, and therefore in the way that we're trying to in the traditional family or even in a gay family where a man and two guys want to have a baby with a woman, or two women want to have a child together, that balance of career and ambition and so forth with family is that something that you struggle with some numbers you even think that.
Struggling, But I mean I think about it all the time actually because I'm.
Because you're the product of a happy home, yeah.
And I want all that you want to replicate that totally. I was raised to think that the two most important things you could do in your life were have a passionate, generous relationship to your work and to raise children. And so you still feel that way, and I do still feel that you want to have children big time. I'm so excited. I don't want like to jolly pit the whole situation, but like, like at least two and I
think all the time about it's funny exactly. I might got Jenny Connor's daughter, Coco, who's eight and is my dear friend. We like to go out to see live music together. Coco one day was like, when do you think you're going to have children? Just roughly, and I was like, I don't know, Coco, Like, you know, I'm twenty six, so I'd like to wait till I'm like at least thirty. And she was like, at that point,
I think you should not be working on girls. And if you are working on girls, you're going to have to cut your hours down to like eight thirty to six because you need to be able to be there when they wake up, and you also need to be there with them at nice issue. Yeah, and she, basically an eight year old, started to school me in the way that my lifestyle would not allow for children. She was like, you know your boy My boyfriend's a musician
and he tours a lot. And she was like and she was like, he might have to quit his job. And I was like, I don't think he's going to quit his job. Well, that might be hard for you too. You might have to really talk about it. And even just now, I just adopted a dog and I was really really it was like instead of just meeting a dog, thinking it was adorable and bringing it home. It was this tortured thing of like, am I gonna be able to give it what it needs? And what if it
resents me? And at a certain point my mom, who is really ready to play dog grandma and is playing to spend a lot of time with the dog, was like she was like, Lena, it's a fucking dog. She was like, it's at a certain point she was like, I get it. I'm glad you're thinking it through, but like, this is not like adopting twins now.
Two things that I think are kind of connected, which is how do men present themselves? You have a boyfriend, and I don't want to prior to your personal life, but you how do men present themselves too differently? You said that Hannah was this and that and a chubby girl who did and now you're now the name Lena Dunham means something else to people. How do men present themselves to you now different from the way they used to?
It's interesting. I mean, I'm so bad at knowing if anybody's hitting on me, Like someone literally has to like beat me on the head with a drumstick and me back to their cave for me to understand that it's going on, and then I would, and then they then, and then I didn't hire Gloria Alred as my attorney. Yeah exactly. But you know, the thing is is that sleazy people are attracted to and sleazy people and not sleazy people are attracted to any sense of GRAVI toss
that someone might have. So so I definitely have had more. I mean, I definitely have had felt less ignored by the opposite sex. But I'm also so bad at perceiving any of it. And so did you know your boyfriend liked to Well, we got set up on a blind date, so I knew he liked well. I didn't know he liked me, but he was predisposed. He was predisposed to like me because what we were going on was a date.
And then that was a special situation because I went, oh, I think he likes me, and I like him, And.
Tell me if you don't want answer this question, but I just find it charming. Where did you go on your first date with your boyfriend?
We went to Blue Ribbon Bakery in the West Village. And the reason I was happy is because I find picking a restaurant so anxiety producing, because I feel like.
Yeah, because the lemma a burdens ass. It really is.
And also, what if I choose the wrong restaurant and you have a bad association with it or you think I'm pretty much.
Poorly on me?
Exactly, it's just the worst. And like what if we go there and you don't like a brand muffin? Exactly, it's stressful. So he said, before I even had to say anything, he said, if it's stressful for you, I can pick the restaurant. And I felt like, okay, I'm going to be in great hands.
Where did you pick?
And then you picked Blue room Maker? And then I ate a cheese and then I ordered a hamburger and he said, I think you should get cheese on it. It's not nice.
And you went, oh my god, I'm home.
Yeah that's easy.
I was so glad you like, did my mom call you for this date?
And let you know, cheese? I like Yarlsburg exactly, somebody suggesting burger and then and then and now you've been dating it for a while, yeah.
Like almost a year. It's been. He's a very very great person.
To meet you and tell me if I'm onto something here. You seem like someone that regardless of what you look like or didn't look like, or what you had or didn't have. Whoever you were, you have a very very healthy and kind of guileless sense of who you are and you present it yourself to people your entire life, going this is who I am, and if you like me, great, and if you don't, there's another six point five billion people out there to go for it. Am I right?
I mean that's the most stress to me. That's the most lovely way of putting it. I mean, I think I think I always had a feeling like if you just stick around and continue to be yourself, the correct people will find you. And that's something that's been so wonderful about the show is that it kind of confirmed that for me, which is not everyone watches it, but
the people who watch it understand it. And that feeling I'm sure you've had this before of uniting with your appropriate audience and sort of uniting with your people is like about as comforting as feelings get.
You too, can unite comfortably with Lena Dunham over the unique discomfort of being a woman in your twenties. Today. Girls is on Sunday nights on HBO. I'm ac Baldwin, here's the thing. Is brought to you by iHeart Radio