Lena Dunham, the creator of Girls is back, but avoiding the limelight

Are we entering a new era of Lena Dunham? Eight years after the conclusion of her fabled HBO show, Girls, Dunham’s new Netflix series Too Much has all her signature autobiographical hallmarks.

In the story, thirtysomething New Yorker Jessica (Megan Stalter from Hacks) suffers a bad break-up, moves to London and meets an indie musician, played by Will Sharpe (The White Lotus).

Dunham, 39, also experienced a painful break-up (from musician and producer Jack Antonoff). In 2021, she likewise moved to the UK, where, the same year, she met and married British-Peruvian musician Luis Felber (with whom she co-created Too Much). That Dunham did not cast herself as the lead – instead, she plays Jessica’s sister – seems partly to do with the body shaming she endured during Girls’ six-series run between 2012 and 2017. Dunham told the New Yorker magazine last year: “Physically I was just not up for having my body dissected again.”

If Dunham has reached for fame’s dimmer switch, it would be understandable. She wrote the pilot for Girls when she was only 24. Co-written/produced by Jenni Konner, executive produced by Judd Apatow (This Is 40), the ensemble comedy-drama spun an uber-hipster fairytale of the 2010s featuring messy twentysomethings with messy New York lives.

Launching new talent – including Adam Driver and Jemima Kirke – Girls was garlanded with awards, including two Golden Globes. In 2013, Dunham featured on the Time 100 most influential list. In Girls, she played self-absorbed writer, Hannah Horvath. Hannah dressed like a disturbed toddler, but it was with her nudity and sex scenes, flaunting her supposed “flaws”, that Dunham single-handedly changed the conversation about which female body types were “permitted” on screen.

It’s now hard to imagine the 21st-century television landscape without Girls. It exposed the dirt under the fingernails of female experience, conjuring an atmosphere midway between a Miranda July story and Tracey Emin’s unmade bed. Along with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag and Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, it spawned a whole new darkly confessional genre.

It has since morphed into a pan-generational quasi-feminist behemoth – gen Z fans make pilgrimages to the stoop of Hannah’s New York apartment.

Cultural writer Patrick Sproull interviewed Dunham for her 2022 film comedy, Catherine Called Birdy, which was adapted from Karen Cushman’s YA novel and starred Bella Ramsey. Of Girls, Sproull says to me: “It’s kind of crazy to view it as a historical document, but it’s probably one of the best encapsulations of millennial culture we have.” In Sproull’s opinion, “what stands Girls apart was that Sex and the City and Friends were idyllic aspirational depictions of young people. Girls wasn’t aspirational – it was honest. They’re horrible to each other, they’re horrible to themselves. It’s part and parcel of being in your 20s.”

British screenwriter/playwright Camilla Whitehill’s award-winning 2024 TV series, Big Mood, starring Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton) is, like Girls, built around the intensity and fragility of female friendship. Whitehill tells me that she and Coughlan (her friend from drama school) were such fans of Girls that they won a Facebook competition to attend the 2014 series three premiere in London; she remembers them both excitedly staring at the real-life Dunham.

Starting out as a writer, Whitehill found Girls inspiring: “It was such a single-vision show, so authored, so confident. And for this young woman to come out with this.”

Girls, she says, opened the door for young female voices. “For years, production companies would say: ‘We’re looking for the British Girls.’ I’d be: ‘You mean you’re looking for an authentic voice – and for that you have to develop someone’s voice. Because that’s how you get Girls.’”

Dunham grew up in Tribeca, New York, the daughter of painter Carroll Dunham and photographer/artist Laurie Simmons. She studied creative writing at Oberlin College, Ohio, until – already the consummate triple threat – she wrote, directed and starred in her assured 2010 debut film Tiny Furniture.