Has writer and filmmaker Lena Dunham made mistakes over the course of her life and career? Sure—and she gets into plenty of them in new memoir, Famesick (out today from Random House), as she examines the realities of living with two chronic and often misunderstood conditions: illness and fame.
You should absolutely read the memoir for yourself, but as a little amuse-bouche, here are the nine biggest things I took away from Dunham’s new book.
Greta Gerwig’s Frances Ha and Dunham’s Hannah Horvath spiritually inhabit the same multiverse
Not only did Dunham and Gerwig run in the same downtown New York circles as the Safdie brothers’ Red Bucket Collective in their early filmmaking days, but Dunham also used to run lines with the future Barbie director. But the connection doesn’t stop there: Dunham recalls in her book that the last scene of Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s film Frances Ha was shot in a Brooklyn Heights apartment that Dunham ended up living in. “…There’s a brief but lovely moment where she places her things on my little white desk and looks out the window at the very gardens that made me feel I had to live there,” Dunham writes. Thus, it’s confirmed: Frances Halliday and Hannah Horvath would have absolutely loved (or hated?) each other had they been undergrads or interns at the same time!
Dunham’s personal and professional breakup with Jenni Konner was one of the most fraught ones in her life
Questions have long circulated about the circumstances under which Dunham and her Girls collaborator Konner dissolved their friendship and multiple creative projects. In Famesick, Dunham writes about the experience with a measure of grace that undergirds a clearly not-entirely-processed amount of pain, recalling Konner’s lack of sympathy toward Dunham’s struggles with disordered eating and body image while filming Girls, her later inability to empathize with Dunham’s experience of chronic illness, and a tough dynamic around what both women were paid at one point. Female best friendships—they can be complicated!
The toxic relationship between Hannah and Adam on Girls was mirrored by Dunham’s real-life dynamic with Adam Driver
Much has been written lately about Driver’s erratic behavior on the set of Girls, with multiple outlets picking up Dunham’s anecdote about Driver throwing a chair in her direction while shooting a scene. Midway through Famesick, Dunham recalls hoping for a different kind of ending with Driver than the one she got as Girls wrapped, writing: “He got out of the van. I stayed, motionless, wondering if this moment, this reckoning, meant we had a different kind of future ahead of us. Who knows—maybe I’d write him new parts. We would write new stories. We would laugh at the way things had been, and smile at the way they were now. But I never heard from him again.” Woof.
Scott Rudin is exactly as bad as reported
None other than Nora Ephron, who acts as a sort of Glinda the Good Witch in Dunham’s Hollywood-ascent narrative, gives Dunham permission to move on when Rudin excoriates her via email for putting aside a project she’d been working on for him on spec. Ephron’s incredible line on the subject? “Honey, if Scott was a straight man, we’d all have fucked him and then wondered why we’d done it.”
Zosia Mamet and Jemima Kirke were briefly roommates (and then frenemies)
Dunham speaks glowingly of all three of her principal Girls costars, but notes that it wasn’t all love, all the time, on set. “Jemima and Zosia had bonded quickly in season one and made the very big mistake of moving in together, Zosia taking the spare room in Jemima’s apartment. What began as a love affair—scouring flea markets, matching tattoos—ended in heartbreak when Zosia began to casually date someone Jemima said she had claimed dibs on, despite the fact that she was married with a child.” Jessa! Shoshanna! You’re (onscreen) cousins! Work it out on the remix!
An unnamed “teen pop star” definitely disrupted Dunham and Jack Antonoff’s relationship
Oh, Lorde, did she ever! At one point, Dunham expresses concern about how close Antonoff is growing to a young female artist he’s working with during the slow downfall of his and Dunham’s relationship, only for him to respond: “You’re just mad because she doesn’t want to be your friend.” (To be fair, Dunham then adds, “And he was right.” Important to know yourself!)
Dunham was diagnosed with Ehler-Danlos syndrome via her ex-business partner’s ex-husband’s Hinge date
Konner’s ex-husband, who also served as CEO of Dunham and Konner’s newsletter Lenny (RIP), once forwarded her an email “from a woman he had met on Hinge and gone on several dates with, nothing serious,” which sounds like the beginning of a nightmare but actually ends up cluing Dunham in to the fact that the chronic health issues overtaking her life actually stemmed from the connective-tissue disorder Ehler-Danlos syndrome. A good diagnosis is a good diagnosis, no matter where it comes from, I guess?
Dunham cheated on Antonoff with her sixth-grade boyfriend
Definitely read this part of Dunham’s narrative for yourself, but my final word on the matter is: shit happens!
Dunham only names her now-husband in the acknowledgements
It seems the undisputed queen of turning oversharing into creative gold has finally held something back—specifically, the narrative of her courtship and eventual marriage to musician Luis Felber (which I suppose they did fictionalize on the Netflix series Too Much, but still). Is it parasocial to say that I love this for her?
