Lena Dunham is making headlines for her recently released memoir Famesick, with a bunch of celebs name-checked and controversial moments revisited as the Girls creator recounts her experience in Hollywood.
Some situations are portrayed more flatteringly than others, so if you want all of the book’s celeb gossip moments, as well as the scandals addressed, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s the most talked-about aspects of Lena Dunham’s new memoir, Famesick.
Adam Driver allegedly “hurled a chair” on the Girls set
Dunham’s relationship with her Girls co-star Adam Driver was tumultuous. She alleged that the actor cursed at her and “hurled a chair at the wall” of her trailer while practicing lines for the HBO series.
The actress also claimed Driver — who she described as “condescending and physically imposing” one moment and “protective” the next — was “verbally aggressive” to her while filming the show, and ““hurled [her] this way and that” during their first sex scene”.
“It never entered my mind to say, ‘I am your boss, you can’t speak to me this way.’ And, at that point in my 20s, I still thought that’s what great male geniuses do: eviscerate you,” Dunham wrote.
Dunham said she “never heard from” Driver once they’d wrapped Girls. The actor has not responded to the claims made in Famesick.
Lena Dunham referenced internet chatter about Jack Antonoff
Dunham looked back on her five-year relationship with music producer Jack Antonoff in her memoir. The buzziest moment is when she seemingly referenced Antonoff’s rumoured relationship with Lorde, recalling how she once walked into the studio to find him “ensconced with a teen pop star I was too oblivious to be jealous of”.
While she doesn’t mention the pop star’s name, Dunham does reference the internet chatter about Lorde, including the viral PowerPoint in which a user theorised about the producer’s romance with the singer. “They were so convincing that they had me rethinking events that I myself had been present for,” Dunham wrote.
Both Antonoff and Lorde denied being in a relationship at the height of the rumours in 2018.
Lena Dunham had a toxic friendship with Girls showrunner Jenni Konner
Dunham digs deep into her whirlwind friendship with Girls showrunner Jenni Konner in Famesick, describing a relationship that began merrily but soon turned toxic.
While Dunham wrote that she initially wanted to “dress, walk and talk like” Konner upon first meeting, things turned sour as the seasons of Girls passed, with the pair clashing over Dunham’s inability to film on certain days for health reasons, as well as Konner’s insistence she be paid the same amount as Dunham.
In one section of the book, Dunham claims that Konner chastised her over losing weight, saying Girls “isn’t funny if you’re thin” and that being thin means she didn’t “have a clear voice”. The friendship got so intense that they even went to therapy, at which point Konner said she was done with their friendship and asked her not to write about the fallout.
“Please don’t write about this immediately,” Konner apparently said in the therapy session. “I know how you work, and that you will. But please, just not right away.”
Lena Dunham regretted defending Girls writer Murray Miller
When Girls writer Murray Miller was accused of rape by actress Aurora Perrineau in 2018, Dunham and Konner wrote a joint statement defending their colleague and saying “insider knowledge” had made them “confident” the allegation was “misreported”.
Dunhamn copped major backlash for the defence at the time, and in Famesick she admits she regretted sharing the statement.
“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,” Dunham wrote.
Dunham, who said she had no memory of writing the statement as it was one day after her hysterectomy, said her forgetting the situation does not negate its implications.
“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 wrote.
Lena Dunham addressed the controversy over her previous memoir
In her first memoir, 2014’s Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham detailed a past experience in which she touched her one-year-old sibling Cyrus’ genitals. That excerpt generated another bout of backlash, which Dunham addresses in Famesick.
“I was shocked when a conservative media site analysed the book carefully, pulling choice passages and coming to the conclusion that I had engaged in sexually inappropriate childhood behavior with my sibling,” Dunham wrote.
She added that she didn’t think the anecdote was “particularly salacious” and that it was more an example of how “children are inherently innocent, and yet their imaginations are endless and deranged”.
Dunham said the thing she should be held accountable for within that anecdote — besides “poor phrasing” and “TMI” — was how it impacted Cyrus, who identifies as transmasculine nonbinary.
“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,” she wrote.
“I do believe there were people who were genuinely agitated by the phrasing and what it evoked for them, who felt betrayed by the words — and to them, I am sorry,” she added.
Lena Dunham still fangirls over Taylor Swift
Though she has a complicated relationship with some celebs, Dunham is still friends with Taylor Swift.
“You sing the songs I wrote this book to, the stories that pulled these stories out of me, the music that makes the whole world feel seen,” Dunham wrote in Famesick’s acknowledgments section. “And yet somehow, miraculously, you also pick up every desperate call at every desperate hour.”
Lena Dunham is still friendly with her Girls co-stars
Saving the best bit of tea for last, Dunham writes glowingly of her three Girls co-stars Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke and Zosia Mamet. She revealed that Kirk and Mamet moved in together while filming the first season, and that the trio hit a slight bump when a love triangle emerged while filming.
“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,” Dunham wrote.
Those were all the grabbiest moments from Lena Dunham’s Famesick, which officially hit Aussie bookshelves last week. You can grab it now if you want to hear from the “voice of my generation… Or a voice of a generation.”
Lead images: HBO and Getty
The post The 7 Biggest Revelations In Lena Dunham’s Famesick, From Friendship With Taylor Swift To BTS Girls Tea appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
