Ive always annoyed people, says Lena Dunham. I was the girl in third grade where everybody was like, This girl is so annoying like, leave.' But Dunham has done a whole lot more than freak out critics on the left and right for the past five years: In addition to her bestselling memoir and her smart feminist newsletter, Lenny Letter, HBOs Girls, which begins its sixth and final season in February, has been consistently hilarious and innovative, even as a fair number of people could never stop confusing Dunhams sometimes clueless character, Hannah Horvath, with the woman who created and portrays her. People never gave us the benefit of the doubt that the show was actually a self-aware commentary on privileged white womanhood, says Dunham. When a guy plays an antihero, nobodys like, I think Bryan Cranstons really promoting drug use.'
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Its a big thing to end a show. What did you want this final season to accomplish?
We always we wanted to go out while people were still engaged in the show, still talking about it. It felt like the saddest thing that could happen would be for people to be like, Is Girls still on? During Season Four, we started talking about wrapping it up; we then were able to clearly see the 20-episode arc of Seasons Five and Six that took Hannah and the girls to their logical conclusion. Its an intense, painful sort of breaking up of a family but its also one of the most inspiring creative experiences that you can have.
The first season of a show, you dont know if youre gonna have a second season you dont know if anyones gonna like it, and you put everything you have out on the line. And then you come back, at least in my experience, and go, like, Okay, what do I still have to say? I already kind of screamed out my identity. [That] first season, we pushed ourselves as hard as we could, and now we get to make more. You kind of have the same experience ending a show youre like okay, everything I ever wanted to say about these characters, this time of life, lets blast it out right now. Its an interesting thing, because I think we really did end up using kind of every scenario and moment wed ever imagined for these girls.
How did you grapple with the specific challenge of making a series-finale episode did you watch any previous finales in the process?
We were obsessed with our finale and we talked a lot about other shows that we thought did it right, but we actually sort of purposely didnt model ours on anyone elses. The ninth episode of the season is sort of the more traditional finale, and then the 10th is almost like a short-film epilogue. We did it a little bit of a different way. The shows never been about that traditional connection, where its four best friends who just cant get enough of each other. So to do a traditional everybody-gets-their-happy-ending finale didnt feel right. At the same time, we wanted people to have the satisfaction of closure. I think we found kind of a creative way to do that. Well see if other people feel the same way.
You ended up shooting the finale and the first episode of the season at the same time what was that like?
That was actually kind of crazy because we had the fun of starting the season and the weird I mean, there definitely was like a funereal vibe over the finale, I cant lie. We had moments of real fun, but there were a lot of lasts: last time well be in Hannahs apartment, last time Hannah and Marnie are together, last time were gonna see Hannahs parents. People really felt that deeply, and we had crew that have been with us from the beginning. These are people who are really, really connected to the show and what it is, really emotionally invested in it, and it [was] hard to say goodbye to them. The last night was just me like weeping into the arms of everybody. Those guys are my brothers, I mean like our grips Theres tons of women who work on our show but the majority of the crew members who do those big physical jobs wind up being men. We dont all share the same ideology, we dont all vote for the same people, but these dudes have defended me in locker rooms before. Theyre my true family.
And so, saying goodbye to them, [showrunner Jenni Konner] and I were just bereft to lose the day-to-day intimacy with this group of people you kind of never imagined youd be intimate with. Like if you had told me one of my best friends would be, like, a Teamster who is anti-gun control, I would have been like youre insane! And now, hes one of my best friends.
What do you make of the fact that some people are actually, somehow, blaming you for Hillary Clintons election loss?
Its amazing. Im like, Why dont we check in with Russia, you guys? I think it tends to come more from the right wing, although Im not sure. Now its so hard to know whats coming from where, because stories get published on Breitbart and two days later theyre in Newsweek and youre like, What the fuck is happening right now? No one is more studied in the art of the right wing planting a story and liberals eating each other alive over it than I am. I see it every single day, but Im not gonna stand there screaming about it, cause that makes you a bad sport. And also its boring and Im not interested in it. But do people want me to go, I dont think Im really good for this. Im gonna bow out? I wouldnt see any use for celebrity if I wasnt fighting rabidly for what I thought was right.
I backed Hillary Clinton when a lot of people in my age group were on the Bernie train, so I was getting shit from the right for being a libtard and getting shit from young people for supporting what they saw as a corporate candidate. It was painful when people were like, Hillary lost because Lena Dunham is such a bad example of liberalism. But everyones scared and upset, and they need someone to blame. Its easier to blame me than it is to, like, blame George Clooney for not giving enough speeches or whatever. You could go around pointing fingers in every fucking direction in Hollywood if you wanted to. If Im gonna be the punching bag for that, I know where my heart is and I know why I felt like I needed to campaign for her. I know what those experiences on the road meant to me with other women, the connections that I made and I just have to hold on to that.
On the flip side, your friend Taylor Swift took a lot of heat for not speaking up. Is that unfair?
I just think everyone has to do it their way. When I was lesser known, I was like, Who could not share their opinion? Then I found out that when you talk about politics, people straight up tweet you the floor plan of your house and say theyre coming to your house. You have to fucking watch it because people are nuts.
People were like, Hillary lost because Lena Dunham is such a bad example of liberalism. But its easier to blame me than it is to, like, blame George Clooney for not giving enough speeches.
In general, what have you taken away from Taylors approach to her career?
Shes been in the public eye since she was 15. I felt young when my career started and I was 23, 24. When I met her, she was newly 22, and she was a fucking seasoned pro at this stuff. Watching the way that she understands the vicissitudes of the cycle, and she just keeps making her work, thats just really impressive to me. Thats how I hope to live my life, which is not as a slave to public opinion, but just as somebody who continues to make things. Shes truly just an artist who has to make things to survive. I guess thats what we have most in common. And shes never not making music. If people know about it or they dont, shes never not making music, and thats like, something that Ive really watched with a lot of admiration. Because shes been put through the wringer, and shes continued to make her work. People who understand how to protect themselves but arent so beaten down that they cant be creative that to me is the greatest.
Will you keep acting after Girls?
I have mixed feelings about it. Obviously if the Coen brothers were like, Weve written this role for you, or Andrea Arnold was like, I want you to come play a complex mother in the North of England, Id say, Of course. But I have no interest in doing it for the sake of doing it. I really started by accident because I didnt know who else could play this sort of specific archetype, and Ive had an amazing time and amazing luck with it. My dad still laughs: How the fuck did you win a Golden Globe for acting? You were cast as a bouncing ball in your school play and you wouldnt stop waving at your mom and me.
So I dont think that thats really where my future lies. Maybe Im retired. I dont have the kind of patience, focus and spiritual drive that actors need to have to do what they do. Also, people have a short memory and Im not the best at being a public figure in that way. I was really close with Nora Ephron, and she could take the train and people would recognize her for her writing. Theyd be excited to see her, but a lot of people just recognized her because she was like a regular in their deli. I dont want the life that being on screen for your whole 30s, 40s, 50s gives you. I really want something different.
Whats your vision for your post-Girls creative life, then?
I really wanna keep writing. Ive been working on a book of fiction for two and a half years. Thats something Im gonna be putting out in the beginning of 2018, called Best and Always. Its a novella and short stories, theyre all about sort of intersecting relationships between men and women in various combinations. Best and always is something that Jenni Konner and I say to each other in text messages. It started as, Love you best and always and then it became best and always, then it became B and A its an endearment that made sense in the context of the book. Jenni and I are gonna continue working on Lenny Im so proud of the world of writers and thinkers that weve built, and I dont think theres currently anything else like it on the Internet. And then Im going to make movies, which is my hope. Im not trying to get a big box-office movie, not that I think thats what anyone thinks Im good for. But as much as Ive loved my job Im a little excited to let somebody else be the poster girl for white liberalism. That will be a nice transition [laughs] if it can happen.
Your boyfriend, Jack Antonoff, is often making music in your Brooklyn apartment. Whats it like being close to that other kind of creativity?
Hes in the back of my apartment right now recording with two artists. I have a whole other career as a rock-star housewife, making tea for musicians. I really love how private and emotional Jacks work is how hes super-public when he goes on tour or when hes promoting something, and then he goes back into the hole for three years. Thats really appealing to me. He can be very secretive. If hes working on something with Taylor, hell tell me I cant hear it, which makes me crazy!
What did you make of Adam Driver as Kylo Ren? He told me youd never seen a Star Wars movie before.
I had a lot of catching up to do because I didnt know who anyone was or what they were doing. I was like, What the fuck is a lightsaber? But its really exciting to see your friends in an action movie, slaying people and doing supernatural things. Its not an experience you get every day. And I love the fact that hes not going to be known as [Girls character] Adam Sackler. If he has one role like that in his life, its going to be Kylo Ren. So I appreciate not being the person that gave him the role thats going to, like, haunt him until his death, but I also thought he was awesome!
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