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For all the extraordinary backlash Lena Dunham acquired following her first memoir in 2014, “Not That Kind of Girl,” one may assume she can be cautious in regards to the tales she selected to share in her second memoir.
But the “Girls” creator didn’t maintain again in her long-awaited guide, “Famesick,” out Tuesday. One of the most important headlines to return out of Dunham’s guide is undeniably her relationship with “Girls” co-star Adam Driver, who she alleges was “verbally aggressive, condescending and physically imposing.”
She additionally opens up about her unhealthy relationship with “Girls” producer and former greatest buddy Jenni Konner, along with the extraordinary disgrace she felt after the pair wrote a joint assertion collectively in 2017 defending their “Girls” colleague Murray Miller towards accusations of sexual assault. In the guide, she says she has no reminiscence of writing the assertion however time stamps present it could have been the day she received again from the hospital after an intense process.
Much of the guide is bookmarked by the numerous medical procedures she went by throughout this time, together with a hysterectomy, the surgical removing of the uterus. She reveals her dependancy to ache remedy following this process, and finally checking herself into rehab. It was throughout this time that she and Jack Antonoff’s relationship started to falter as he spent intensive time with a “teen pop star” he was working with, they usually had one explosive struggle following her surgical procedure.
Some revelations are lower-stakes, together with the a number of bold-faced names who auditioned for “Girls” and a shock engagement following her breakup with Antonoff.
Here are a few of the largest revelations from Lena Dunham’s “Famesick.”
She opens up about her unhealthy friendship with ‘Girls’ producer Jenni Konner — and their eventual fallout.
At many factors within the guide, Dunham remembers an unhealthy and poisonous relationship along with her former greatest buddy and “Girls” producer Jenni Konner earlier than their public, skilled break up in 2018. When Dunham was battling an consuming dysfunction and shedding pounds, upon transferring to Hollywood, she remembers Konner telling her: “I think the issue is that you’re too thin. And the thing is, it’s not funny if you’re too thin, it’s just ‘Sex and the City’ all over again. What made your movie special was that you weren’t that. If we lose it, we don’t have a clear voice.”
“‘It’s not that hard,’ she hissed. ‘Just put food in your mouth.’ This didn’t sound like concern to me. It sounded like a threat.”
Dunham writes, “It was the first time [Konner] had switched roles, from cozy bestie with whom I bandied about ideas to the role she was initially pitched for: ‘supervisor.’ Only the idea of a supervisor took on a more sinister note: Big Sister is watching you.”
It was a lot later — after Dunham had undergone a life-altering hysterectomy and a short rehab stint as a consequence of opioid dependancy — that their friendship lastly ruptured. “Later, my mother would confess that in the days before rehab, Konner had called her. She had told her that she didn’t understand — now that the hysterectomy had happened, I was well. That last excuse had been erased. ‘”And she’s clinging to this random prognosis prefer it’s a solution,’” she stated.
At this level, Dunham had stored her dependancy largely a secret, together with from Konner. After rehab, she lastly revealed to her that she was 62 days sober, saying “You do not make me feel safe or proud, and I cannot speak to you until we are in front of a therapist.”
During the remedy session, Dunham remembers instantly breaking down in tears, telling Konner how necessary their relationship was to her, nonetheless hopeful they’d be be capable of discuss it out and salvage it. But Konner responded with only one request: “Please don’t write about this immediately.”
Only three minutes into the session, Konner thanked the therapist for his assist and left the room. That can be the final time they noticed one another.
Dunham says it took her many drafts to even sort Konner’s identify within the manuscript for “Famesick.” “Ultimately, it became clear I was going to have to choose — between telling an honest story and avoiding any mention of her,” she writes. “I knew she hadn’t stated ‘ever,’ however quite, ‘immediately’ — but it surely’s telling that even, seven and a half years later after final laying eyes on her, it nonetheless feels instant.
She remembers Jack Antonoff spending a number of time with a “teen pop star” earlier than their breakup.
As Dunham and Antonoff’s relationship started to falter, he began spending a number of time with a “teen pop star.” “One day I returned home from a bone density test to find her sprawled across our sectional couch, weeping into Jack’s lap as he told her that ‘your teens are for experimenting’ in a tone so comforting, it almost brought tears to my eyes. It had been so long since he’d spoken to me with that kind of expansive generosity.”
After an enormous struggle following her hysterectomy, Dunham and Antonoff determined to take a break. They nonetheless lived in the identical home (though Antonoff was regularly away on tour) and the phrases of the nascent break up have been ambiguous. At first, Dunham was cautious about pursuing any sort of relationship with one other man, observing “careful boundaries.” But, she writes, “If I wanted to look, perhaps I may have seen that Jack was not observing them as closely as I was.”
She writes that she was conscious of the web discourse surrounding her relationship, notably one viral PowerPoint monitoring Antonoff’s alleged affair with Lorde (which readers can assume is the “teen pop star” Dunham refers to earlier within the guide). They have been “so convincing that they had me rethinking events that I myself had been present for,” she writes. She DM’d the maker of the PowerPoint, Hillary Benton, show that “she was in on the joke.” But when Benton requested if she wished to be on her podcast, she declined.
Dunham started an affair with an previous childhood buddy, and received engaged a month after reuniting.
Soon after, Dunham reunited with an previous childhood buddy, Nick. “I decided, then and there, that the only thing that could save me was to be wanted,” she remembers considering.
The pair solely noticed one another a couple of instances throughout this era however as soon as Antonoff and Dunham finally broke up, they started an intense, three-month lengthy affair. She describes them each as being excessive for almost all of the connection (him, smoking day and night time; her, on a wide range of ache medicines, Klonopin and weed).
Only one month after their first kiss, he proposed to her. “I was high when I said yes,” she writes. They advised their households and deliberate on getting married that August however Dunham’s dependancy turned more durable to disregard. She finally checked right into a rehab, breaking apart with Nick shortly after.
She accuses Adam Driver of “verbally aggressive, condescending and physically imposing” habits.
One of the most important headlines to return out of Dunham’s guide is undeniably her relationship with “Girls” co-star Adam Driver, who she alleges as soon as “hurled a chair at the wall next to me” when she forgot her traces throughout rehearsal. She additionally claims that he was typically “verbally aggressive” and “hurled me this way and that” throughout their first intercourse scene. However, she additionally has fond recollections with the actor and says he would typically consolation her in anxious moments.
“He could be short-tempered and verbally aggressive, condescending and physically imposing. He could also be protective, loving even,” she writes.
As “Girls” went on, the 2 turned extra distant, and by the point they have been filming their closing season Dunham says that they had “barely spoken in three years,” although they each “kept crying” in between takes.
“It felt, for just a moment, like he was saying sorry,” Dunham says. “Maybe I was, too — for never knowing how to manage him, what he needed, how to avoid making his face contort with frustration and rage.”
When filming wrapped, Dunham says Driver advised her “I hope you know I’ll always love you,” however she by no means heard from him once more.
Adam Driver’s character in ‘Girls’ was impressed by Dunham’s real-life poisonous ex boyfriend.
In “Famesick,” Dunham sheds gentle on the real-life inspiration for the character of Adam on “Girls,” a person she dated in her early 20s referred to solely as “cleft lip guy.” At the start of their relationship, they might have intercourse in again alleyways as a result of he lived along with his girlfriend. They have been by no means official, however Dunham was decided to make him love her. He was sexually deviant and likewise an early gateway to her eventual dependancy.
“Despite what was to come, I was not yet much of a substance user. In fact, I only did it with him,” she writes. “But often I would appear at his door with the pills stolen from my mother’s various dental surgeries wrapped in a tissue. Whatever we snorted just made it easier to justify my continued presence in an environment where I could expect anything from being gagged with my own tights to having a serrated blade run lightly along my leg, leaving only the faintest white line.”
She reveals a number of celebrities who auditioned for ‘Girls.’
Dunham additionally reveals a listing of bold-faced names who auditioned for “Girls” and have been referred to as again “several times”: Elizabeth Olsen, Dakota Johnson, Cristin Milioti and Amy Schumer. “I recognized a woman named Allison Mack from ‘Smallville’; she wasn’t right for any of the roles but invited me via email to her ‘intimate women’s group’ every week for the next year (there but for the grace of God go I),” Dunham provides, referring to the notorious NXIVM cult that Mack was a part of.
She ‘doesn’t bear in mind’ writing the assertion defending ‘Girls’ author Murray Miller towards accusations of rape.
After “Girls” author and producer Murray Miller was accused of rape by actress Aurora Perrineau in November 2018, Dunham and Konner wrote a joint assertion defending their colleague, which induced a firestorm of criticism on-line. In the guide, Dunham says, primarily based on timestamps, that she will need to have written the assertion the day she received again from the hospital however that she has no precise reminiscence of doing so. “Therefore, how I managed to make a public statement about, much less a careless, blithe and damaging one about a subject that should only ever have been approached with full-spirited care and precision — confounds me to this day,” she writes.
She recounts the extraordinary guilt and disgrace she felt within the months following the assertion, main her to “think it was time to die.” She writes: “I could try — would have tried, if I had written this book any earlier — to explain to you all of the backstory that informed the statement I don’t remember writing, the specificity of the relationships, the obligations and emotions bound up in the decision to defend someone against an accusation I had no business attempting to debunk, no clear reason to fight, no fucking right to an opinion on.”
“But none of that matters,” she continues. “It does not materially change what happened, the shame I feel about it, or –most crucially — the pain it caused. I was so deep in my own distress — physical, emotional, existential — that I had ceased to be able to imagine or invest in anyone else’s.”
She was commissioned by Scott Rudin to pen a YA film script.
Dunham reveals that she was commissioned by legendary but disgraced producer Scott Rudin — who largely disappeared from Hollywood after allegations of abusive habits, however has since mounted a Broadway comeback — to pen a YA film script earlier than her debut function “Tiny Furniture” even premiered. However, as soon as the “Girls” pilot received picked up, she needed to again out of the challenge and was the topic of Rudin’s wrath.
“Within minutes, I had received a torrent of emails I can still quote from memory but won’t, because I don’t want you to be as traumatized as I was. Suffice to say, Mr. Rudin had gone from flattery and flowers and Alexander Wang handbags and celebrating my youthful naivete and enthusiasm to telling me what I really was: a spoiled little girl who didn’t even know how to live without her parents getting her dressed in the morning, a phony who would be cast out of the business just as quickly as I had been allowed in. Furthermore, he said, he would sue: for what was unclear, as I had not yet signed a contract or had been paid, having begun (and finished) the job in good faith.”
Though Rudin’s menace ship Dunham right into a spiral, it led to this gem of an remark from her mentor Nora Ephron: “Honey, if Scott was a straight man, we’d have all fucked him and then wondered why we’d done it.”
She displays on the ‘child molestation’ accusations following her first guide.
In Dunham’s first guide, “Not That Kind of Girl,” she shared that when she was 7 years previous, she had touched her 1-year-old sibling Cyrus’ genitals, setting off a firestorm that led to accusations of kid molestation. Reflecting on the backlash in “Famesick,” Dunham writes that her largest remorse was not the incident itself — which she maintains was harmless childhood curiosity — however the way in which that sharing it affected her brother.
“What I had been guilty of on the page, what the Internet should have charged me with and given me a short sentence for, was poor phrasing, maybe a second count for TMI. What I was now guilty of seemed to be a laissez-faire attitude about what was mine to confess, which had derailed the life of the person I had felt most tasked with protecting.”
