Why Did Bad Things Happen to Lena Dunham? She’s Still Trying to Figure It Out. | The Interview

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Editors' Note: This conversation omitted the outcome of a rape allegation against the "Girls" writer Murray Miller. The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office did not press charges against Mr. Miller, who denied the accusation. David Marchese, a co-host of "The Interview," writes: In the most compelling way, Lena Dunham’s forthcoming memoir, “Famesick,” is a lot. The book, which she worked on for nearly a decade, includes her carefully wrought and provocatively unstinting reminiscences about the offscreen drama behind “Girls,” her 2012-17 HBO show that became a true millennial touchstone. That drama involved her complicated, confusing bonds with her co-star Adam Driver and her co-showrunner Jenni Konner, as well as Dunham’s toxic tango with fame and the media. She, as you may remember, generated a huge amount of discourse, and was aggressively scolded for being un-self-aware, an oversharer, overly privileged, not attractive enough, self-absorbed — you name it. (Much of that negative attention now scans as blatantly misogynistic and wildly disproportionate, but as Dunham, who was only 24 when she created the show, freely admits, she has always had a knack, maybe even a need, for making herself a target.) A dispatch from the eye of the “Girls” storm alone would’ve been enough for a meaty memoir. But Dunham also writes, in a wry and rueful voice, about her struggles with painful chronic illness (Dunham has endometriosis and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome); drug addiction and rehab; sexual and romantic relationships ranging from the deeply nurturing to the disturbingly abusive; and, ultimately, finding a measure of self-acceptance in her creative life and with her husband, the musician Luis Felber. As someone who has read a truly absurd amount of celebrity memoirs, I can tell you that in rare fashion Dunham goes there. And, as I found out, she did the same in conversation, too. Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/magazine/lena-dunham-interview.html *** “The Interview” features conversations with the world’s m