Dunham, the creator of HBO’s GIRLS, says when she was younger, she thought she’d be a "Gender and Women’s Studies teacher who showed movies at the occasional film festival." Instead she's trying to figure out what to wear to shoot the cover of Rolling Stone. Dunham talks with Alec about getting a dog and her first date with her boyfriend Jack Antonoff. She’s not ready for children—yet—but they are on her mind: “I was raised to think that the two most important things you could do in your life were to have a passionate, generous relationship to your work and to raise children.”
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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Three years ago, twenty three year old Lena Dunham made a low budget art house film called Tiny Furniture. She filmed the movie in her parents house and basically played herself, a recent college graduate moving back into her childhood bedroom while making plans for her future. Dunham was proclaimed a fresh, original voice, a director with a bright future. Writer director Judd Apatow was one of those who took notice, and today he and Dunham executive produced Girls, a show she created for HBO that premiered its second season on January. You're good and I am so good at you kidding. I've never been as well in my life. No, I know, I mean you seem good. As the wedding was so quick and unexpected, I kind of know how to process it. Or if you like, yeah, well you tend to overthink things and that's an issue for you. This is what it's like when the hunt is over. I think Sandy really likes me. I really like between. He's so nice and funny when we have sex. There's no part of me that once like pretend I don't exist, which is a rarity. That's a awesome. He's kind of a Republican, which feels weird. What's from the Republicans? It's just the same as Democrat their older bags. Lena Dunham has achieved an astonishing amount in just three years. Her portrayal of Hannah Horvath and Girls recently won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. This past October, she sold a book of essays and advice to Random House, and her boyfriend is a rock star. Today, she hardly resembles Aura, her character from Tiny Furniture. I thought I wouldn't have much in common with Lena. She's half my age and has been fiercely embraced by my daughter's generation. But oh, how quickly we realized there was common ground between us. Literally, my show is moving into the third Rock stages. Yes, we're taking Silver Cup and Michael, we were in Silver Cup. Then we went to Steiner because we couldn't get our stages back because some show that has one word that's about murder took it. And then we are coming back because you guys are leaving, so we're going to be on your stages and in your office is Oh my god, no, no, I thought, isn't Michael Fox coming there too? He is. We're I think we don't take as much stage space as you guys did, so we're going to have because we have fewer sets. So I think is gonna have We're gonna have a piece, and he's gonna have a piece. Now, as I'm sitting here meeting you for the first time and talking to you for the first time, you are nothing like I imagined you would pay really nothing. I'm a bit thrown here because you play someone who is I guess in your mind, and I want to talk about your vision of what kind of character you wanted to create. Is a little bit a beat behind everyone else, or I'll let you articulate that what you think she is. But but what I want to say is you. When I meet you, you seem like you could be like a senator or the head of the corporation. I mean, you're really very very You seem so together and smart, and you look great, and you cut your hair and you look gorgeous. That is firstly, very meaningful. I have to not turn red and get excited because you said radio, so don't care. I'll get good, perfect, and I'm wearing my crew jacket and I really I should have dressed up more for you. But that being said, you know, it's funny. Firstly, the a beat behind idea really speaks to me because I'm always sort of saying when people ask about hand I'm always sort of saying, she's a version of me, but she's a few years behind me, and she's also sort of a few minutes behind everyone around her. She really picked up on a concept that I'm sort of always thinking about a little bit when I play her and when I write her. But she's who you used to be. You know, it's funny. I think I used to I think I in order to convince myself that I should play this character, or that I should even write this character, I had to say, well, I'm just writing myself. It's that easy. I'm just writing myself. Because the idea of sort of creating an entire other human can be so intimidating and in real life, in real life, who are you? I think that Hannah is someone who I'm very capable of being, who's wounded, ambitious but doesn't know where to place it. Hannah sort of the version of myself. If I had had less understanding parents and sort of less drive to get things done, and I think who I am as a person who is always sort of if I had to describe the war within myself that exists currently, it's sort of the challenge of trying to reconcile the part of me that that always thought I would be, like, you know, a weird gender and women studies teacher who occasionally showed movies at film festivals and hung out in my strange apartment that was stacked high with books. Trying to reconcile that with the part of me that has to like figure out of Stone magazine exactly, was to shoot the rolling cover of Rolling Stone magazine, was to figure out a dress to where that for an event that everyone seems to be worried about whether or not the dresses in stores, because it has to be my own dress. And so I'm dealing with all these sort of this strange ecosystem and all these weird politics that I kind of never imagined would happen to me in my lifetime. You never imagined, No, you really never imagined it. I think I my dream situation was that I would be someone who people thought, oh, she's doing important work in her own little corner, like a raws Chast cartoon character, exactly, like a ros Chast cartoon character. Or like I think, because I went to pretendious private school, the biggest dream you would have, you'd be like, I'm going to be Joan Didion. That was kind of where your brain was allowed to want to maybe Nora from Maybe you'll make films, but you're not going to be in film exactly. And I don't think when I first started acting, I mean I never got parts in high school. I never even I never was able to. I think I had a twofold thing about it. One is that I came from a family of artists, and so the idea was sort of like you made your work and then got out of the way of it. Like part of what was I think I internalized the idea that your work was supposed to speak for you. You were not supposed to speak for your work, and so I think I was self conscious about the idea of being any self self promoting and although that's not what acting is, it's it's become that. And then I also think that I thought, well, there's people who are professionals who can do this better than me. So I'm just going to act until I have access to the people who should be acting. And sometimes I still feel that way. Sometimes I think, like, you know, I'll do this a little longer and then Michelle Williams can play me every day until I die. Something that's really nice about making the show that isn't that is a comedy that isn't stuck in any sort of I mean, thirty Rock was able to bust out of a lot of network sitcom tropes, but a lot of the time when you're on a I think one of the biggest things that networks prevent, besides curse words and showing your breasts is development. I think that when you play, I think so many sitcom characters end up playing the same version of themselves in various scenarios. This is the thing as God is my judge. This is the thing that we talk about in the meeting to prep this thing with you, which was shows I've seen where the protagonist male or female, they're going through the same set of problems in season six that they were in season one. It's just different lines in different coasters. And with you, I'm wondering, do you have a Bible on the show. Do you have an arc in your mind, not even on paper, not even approved with your other because you do this with Judd correct. I do it with Judd and a woman named Jenny Connor, who's the other executive producer. And we have a great little writer's room. But our writer's room doesn't really work like. It's not like we write a script and then all sit together punching it up. It's much more we sit together at the beginning of the season and really talk through. It's like a giant therapy session where we work out the emotional arc and then we go to it. And when you work out that emotional arc, do you think to yourself, are the things that she's going through? Now? Your character and the other characters where you're saying to yourself, and let's make sure they're not going through this. There is a growth a season from now or by the end of the season completely. And that's why I feel like it's okay for me to cut my hair, or it's okay for me to start spinning, or it's okay for me you know whatever I whatever to change to change because I feel as though so much of what this show is about is about seeing these girls off into their adulthood. Like in my Bible, the ideal finale to the show would be a feeling like, you know, they don't have to have kids, they don't have to have husbands, but you look at them and you kind of go there on their way. They're more okay than they were when they started, or they're less okay, but we have an understanding what kind of adult we think they're going to be. So described to me how that works? Because because the theme here is control, and you are, like other brilliant comedy writing chicks I've known over the years, you have this is your show, this is your thing. So how does it start? How does Whose idea was girls? Was it yours? It was mine? Because I basically I went in, I made this movie Tiny Furniture, and I made it. You know, my mom and sister starred. We shot it in my mom's house, my mom and dad's house. We um It was totally populated with friends, some of whom have made their way to Girls with Me. And what motivated don't want to do Time Furniture. I had always wanted to be a writer, and I used to think I wanted to be a playwright. And then in college I sort of had this revelation where I thought, like, plays, you rehearse, and you rehearse, and then they happened twice, Like I just felt so frustrated by the lack of permanence. Like I'd always been sort of turned on by the fact that when my parents as artists made work, like they had these material items that would outlast them. And I was frustrated that that wasn't a part of the theater experience. So I started making short films, and I made my first feature and went to south By Southwest Film Festival with it, and then I just had and I've been making web TV, and I just had this itch to sort of tell the specific story, and I wrote the script and the kind that's what I want to talk about is is that itch meaning beyond the arc of the shooting and the and and the career aspects of it or the burgeoning career, What was it about what was going on in your life that you want to do that movie on a practical, real life level. I wanted to talk about that moment between college and adulthood that felt so floundering, and so every day I felt like I was walking through the strangest, most surreal soup. That would mean that on a deeper level, I kind of wanted to talk about change, which is what I always think is sort of the most interesting place to find characters is in a time of intense change. And so I sort of also wanted to capture this moment where I was, I knew that I wouldn't live at home forever, that my little sister wouldn't be sort of seventeen and ambitious but also stuck in her bedroom forever, that my mom was sort of looking in this beautiful moment where she kind of was I mean, shilled murder me for saying this, but she looked that kind of beautiful way where it's like you're not quite old yet and you just look kind of she just looked kind of perfect to me, and I just like, a great, yeah, And I just thought exactly, and I just thought, I want to capture all of this. I want to capture our cats, I want to capture our house. I want to remember all of this. And so, so you really love your mom. I'm obsessed with my mom. I love my mom. And then but I'm saying, that's interesting that you have that feeling, and that's what makes you so of a what's around you wouldn't want to capture that because I find typically people who are not happy, they gotta wait a while until they can negotiate the pain to go back and talk about that. It's one of the biggest things that inspires me to make work is this feeling of looking around and going, even if you're not perfect, you're also perfect right now, let's let's capture this and then you know, I'd love the feeling. I was just watching like Panic in Needle Park last week, that movie which is you know, Kitty Win, Kitty Gosh, she's so good. Where did Kitty Win go? Yeah, let me get that violin out for Kitty Win. She's incredible. But so I was watching that and I was just thinking about how exciting it was to be able to watch sort of like al Pacino at that first moment when he was sort of like he still almost looked a little adolescent and he was still and he was learning his craft and just behaving on film. Yeah, And I just love capturing that. And that's something that I've tried to do with girls too, is sort of grab people and go, let's just let's just see you as you are right now now. The Uh so the film did well, So then how does girls happen? Girls happened? Because so then I went to l A and kind of did that. I went like, Okay, I guess what you do next is get an agent, And I guess what you do next is trying to figure out what I mean. You're on the runway now, Yes, I was. I was on the runway, and I was going around l A doing the sort of what I call the couch and water bottle tour of l A where you meet everybody and have those kind of general meetings where and I remember so funny because at first I didn't understand that everybody says to you at the end of the general meeting, oh, I'd love to find a way to work with you. And so I would call my agent afterwards and go, oh my god, it was amazing, and he said he wants to find a way to work with me, and many want would come clean his pool. Yeah. Basically, I'd always been obsessed with TV. It always loved TV and found it to be the most sort of comforting medium and the one that what comforted you on TV, what comforted me on TV was there was a range of things that comforted me on TV. I love what was the most, what was the weirdest. I mean, my favorite show when I was little was Under the Umbrella Tree, which is a Canadian show about a woman who lives with three puppets, and it was on every morning at seven am. There were three of them named Iggy, Gloria, and Ja, and Iggy was an iguana, Glory as a groundhog, and Jay is a blue jay and he lives out back in a bird house. They like talked to you about recycling or like help their old elderly neighbor who fell down in the street. Like they're just like nice puppets, but looking back, it feels like a child molester who's on the lamb with her three. My guilty pleasure like that was when I was in my twenties and I go to my friend's house and we just had this weird habit where like at four o'clock in the afternoon, we make a drink and we'd roll the biggest joint and we'd smoke pot and watch a show called Stairway to Start Him that was on Public Access TV, and Stairway to Start Him was this older man. It kind of looked like Rod Steiger. He was like a burly looking, tough looking older man and his wife and she kind of looked like, uh, like Tammy Faye Baker. She was like a big, big honeycombed shellack hair and she was like this big, buzzy me older woman. And the guy would come out and he had the funniest voice. He'd be like, welcome everyone to stay away, to stop and use and they'd sing a song and opening so and they would bring out acts that would perform. They were all like local queens, Brooklyn talent people singing parakeets. It was like it was bizarre that sounds like the best thing in the world was the best show in the world, especially if you've smoked an enormous amount of marijuana an enormous joint. So you're on the sofa ward bottle tour and what happens Silfa water bottle Tour and my agent, who I feel like you're not supposed to say you love your agent because it makes you sound really hollywood and out of everyone, I love everyone, And also I have the best agent. He's like really been at it for a long time. He's like a cigar smoking. You know, he's what I imagined in Nation. His name is Peter Bennedeck, Peter Bennedictine now Peter Benedeck, and he smoked cigars. He's old school, he's old exactly, and he belongs to a cigar club. Which one does he belong to? I think it says it has a Cuban flares. I think it is. I'm on the board of Grand Event, are you, Peter? And I probably have seen him a Grand evat. Wow. He always probably hung out there and smokes ours with him. When you were still a gleam in your parents you weren't even around God. Damn with the way of this business works. No, no, no, So so he's your agent and you love him. I love him, And he said to me. I was sort of saying to him, like maybe I could get I just wanted to make move out of my parents house, and I thought and make more movies. And I was like, maybe I could should write aspect how I met your mother, and I could get staffed on the show. I mean, I didn't know any I didn't know how any of this worked. And he said that I should go for a meeting an HBO and I did, and I said, well, here's what I'd want to see, is like a show about all my girlfriends, like sort of like Tiny Furniture, but there's more of us and we don't live with our parents anymore, but it's still about that. It's like it was pitched so weekly, like a year after my movie, but there's more of us and it's a TV show. So the conversation wasn't coming out of and Tiny Furniture in the indie and in the festival world had a very good buzz. There was no conversation, but used going right into films and making more films. Normally they're gonna want to steer some especially your age was very young. They're gonna go, let's just keep making movies. Well, you know, there was a conversation, but I think I picked up on the fact very early going on the Couch and Water Bottle tour that the kind of stories that I wanted to tell we're not really being funded on a larger scale. And film Tina says that sometimes the Tina I will just finish work that that it's it's it seems like it's more difficult to a to have the control you wanted the film business and be to say what you want to say it is. And the fact is I could have kept saying what I wanted to say, you know, making movies, but I wanted It's weird. The reason that I like having some budget is not because you know, I want to stage car crashes or I want to have you know, ten makeup artists on set, although those things would will would be lovely, but but it's more because of the fact that I do so many jobs. So it was so exciting to not have to worry anymore about answering the doorbell, about returning the equipment, about making sure that people had the pizza. Also, that's going to happen in TV and what has money and HBO has HBO is time warnering, but they have money, but they use it in this kind of amazing there. It's this amazing model, which is that they don't have to answer to advertisers in the same way, so HBO can sort of fulfill its odd little interests. And that's what I started out as and I what I didn't predict was how much I would love the opportunity to develop characters in this way and the kind of the fiber of TV itself, and they believe in you. Based on my experience, I've never worked for them, but I've have many friends and colleagues over the years who have worked for them, and I've I've almost worked for them here and there. You know, HBO is one of those places like that. I think the most successful studios and networks. The way they operate, which is that they vetted maybe to a fairly well but if once they believe in you, they're all in. It's your wors. They give you the money that they it's not too intrusive now. So the template of four women, and obviously HBO is no stranger to the template of four women talking about but obviously those women were older. And you've been a fan of that show, Yes, I think that I can't find one girl who isn't at least secretly a fan of sex in the city who's my age. And I loved it. And you know, I was very conscious when I was first writing this show. I thought to myself, should I put these girls in Boston? There was and I tried to make it three girls because and Shoshanna was initially not one of the girls. Shoshanna was Jesse as Jasha Mamitt's character was Jess as Jemima Kirk's character's cousin, and she kind of came in and out as a kind of she was the most as a recurring in and out goofball who was sort of supposed to call to attention. Seriously, she does. She plays it beautifully. And but the reason that I wrote her was to sort of call out the sex in the City thing, like, this is the girl who came to New York to have her cosmos and her Manolo's and it's not going quite right. But she was so wonderful and she added something that the three of us didn't have on our own. And so it became a four person delio, and so I tried to make it three women. I tried to put it in different city. But the fact is is that New York is where it was supposed to happen and for women, just somehow there's a symmetry to it that doesn't star I'm going to do. I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it. And so but the fact is that you know, sexon City is a specter that hangs over in a I mean in a positive way. Everything when female centric, and you know, in the writer's room, every there were so many episodes of sexon City and they tackled every area of sexual function and dysfunction that there's almost nothing you can pitch that they haven't done. But I found that the women on Sex in the City, that those women would have things happen, and they tended to brush off the consequences pretty quickly, whereas the girls on your show, the tone seems very different. Everybody seems to almost be doubting what they're doing, or they have a kind of a sense of fear or anxiety about it while they're doing it. It It seems more real. Was that is that? Was that deliberate in your part? Well? Something I feel about being in your twenties, which is different than you know. Sexon City was a show about women in their thirties who had successful careers prerecession, the best, most supportive friends they didn't have. I mean, they had little friend TIFFs. But the characters on our show are tortured. It's sort of impossible to get through your twenties without It's like, if you ask Ale in her twenties, are you a happy person? I think she can say I have happy moments. But I don't think it's possible. Maybe i'm maybe people radically disagree with me, but I don't really think it's possible to be sort of an at peace human when you are between twenty two and thirty, and so I think there's still I don't because I think it's a problem that I mean for me, that's something I've noticed because I'm much older than you. And one thing that I I noticed when I went to college, which is a long time ago, an interesting number of people they really knew what they wanted to be. They weren't quite sure how to get there. That they had a dream. I want to become a lawyer. I want to become a doctor. I want to go into politics. I want to go into and now people today it seems like younger people, they really they think they have more time to figure it out, returning and they really don't have that picture in question. Do you agree? I do agree, And I think a big part of it is being I think the world the Internet has cracked things open in a way that's both beautiful and that it helps you find. There's so many things that I never would have even known about, things that have been huge for me that have existed because of the Internet, and I think that I've been able to partially, you know, connect with people who would be fans of the show because of the Internet. I think, you know, it's always exciting when, like I there's this website called Rookie mag dot com that's run by this girl, Tovy Jevinson, and it's a it's a smart teen magazine that exists only on the Internet. And I just think if when I was a teenager there had been that place and that message board, I would have felt like the world was my oyster like just meeting other weirdo girls who had the same who like, you know whatever. At the time, I just wanted to like talk to someone about Connor, o burst or something on the internet, and that would have been possible. But I think now the fact that like the Internet has created so many strange specialized jobs and so many things where it's like, you know, I'm a brand consultant, slash blog enhancer or whatever. People are like suddenly the world feels wide open, but there are less jobs available, and so it's a really confusing moment to make any decisive choice about what you want to do. It's interesting you say that the Internet is responsible for that, and then idea of having too many choices than you need you wind up. That could also be a metaphor for like men in their twenties dating. I feel like men in their twenties, Like I once had dated a guy who told me that he didn't feel like he could be serious about anyone in New York because it would be like eating at the same restaurant every night. In New York. There's so many amazing choices. It's New York City. I hope he chokes some restaurant he goes. I shouldn't say that. That's me. That's wrong. I feel like that, So it's helpful to have it backed up by Alec Baldwin. This is a like Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing more in a minute. Lena Dunham didn't have to look far to come up with her character on Girls. Physically, I'd say, Hannah is I mean, she's me because I play her, but she's It's funny because she's chubby, but she doesn't. That's not where her anxiety comes from. Like she's just not. I like playing a character who isn't doesn't have a perfect body, but that's not the main source of their anxiety. I feel like we have very few female characters on television who don't look like models and aren't constantly discussing it. So, of course, Hannah has her moments of self consciousness, just like every woman does, but that's not She sort of doesn't notice that her clothes don't quite fit. She sort of doesn't think about what she eats. And I am, clothes are just to cover you up and keep you warm, exactly, have some degree of style to the great, but less like a character exactly. And I like she's more interested in like whether her clothes are funny and witty, Like I don't think she really cares about being sexy. She's more just like, oh, this dress like has owls on it? How sweet. I used to be much in college, addressed like a complete luon. I feel like my dad always told me I look like a lion tamer all the time. I've calmed down just because I realized that you could have vests, so many vests, so many red vests, so many like you know, strange boots pulled over my weird leggings with a three flounced skirt. I could never accessorize enough. It was oppressive. But you're like in the Luftwaffe, Yeah, exactly. And so so that's Hannah sort of physical I think emotionally some facets of Hannah or that she is. You know, she has a certain amount of wit and a certain amount of sort of spunk, but she isn't really applying it anywhere properly yet. And she's all smart and funny and not mean because a lot of the people in that world, in the improvisational comedy world, and funny and there me and that meanness is the font that it comes from that source, I know. And you know the thing about firstly, my dad is like a manner's Nazi. So I think that I grew up feeling like the worst thing you could do was offend somebody could sit up straight in that chair, and your dad told me to say that. I oh my god, my dad still tells me to sit up straight constantly. And then and it's funny because both my my dad is an artist and he paints these sort of outlandish intense I mean, he paints things that are pretty pretty sexual images, pretty aggressive images, you know, a man with I mean, they're funny, but They're intense. It's like two men with penises for noses in a war with guns and knives with three women. And I grew up around it, but it was what was interesting was that my dad was sort of like, you can do that. Dad had penises on on the stage on his face, on everyone's face. But you know, you I grew up around it. But I think that my dad always really showed me that there was a difference between you know, what your work was and who you were, and he's My parents are so polite and so sort of they just I think so much of this. Again, I've never had kids. I've you know, I don't know what that feels like. But I think six and I want kids, but I'm not ready. Please, I really just to be out tomorrow. I just got already of birth control pills for you serious kids. Now. I don't want kids. I just gotta donk and everybody thinks I'm insane. I just finished season two, starting season three. Well we're starting season three and we're starting at the end of March. So exciting. Therapist, that would be the most in the world. Bad, bad, but I forget what I'm saying. But I'm glad you don't think. I mean, I get too guilty if I ever make a mean joke app what I'm saying, I do, well, I'm terrified. It's one of the reasons I don't I don't really feel like a comedy writer, because there's sort of like a quickness and a harshness, and you need to have those people in your bullpen there. Do you have some more really traditional edgier We do have. I have a couple of writers on the staff, um one Murray Miller, who this season was really essential and sort of bringing us just hard jokes, but no one on our staff has that particular kind of darkness. I've been around a lot of those comedy writers, and you know, there's that feeling of like even when they're saying something nice to you, they're kind of trying to murder you with their eyeballs, and it's it's it becomes too much salt to the soup exactly. It's impressive to me in small doses, but terrifying. You've got to have it, but you've got to mix it carefully. Like when we did our show, there was that was a big issue where like sometimes I would say, I just think this is too mean, it's like we're gonna lose people like we want to be we want to be mean, but we have to decide who we're going to be mean too, who deserves it. My thing is also I always I only really make jokes about people I like. Like when there's a joke that references a celebrity on the show, it's usually a joke that I'm making because I have really taken note of their work and him fascinated by It's not because you slept with them and you want to get even No, I don't have that that instinct. So talk about two things. The level of control you have. I mean, you are a very young woman, and I'm assuming it's all you, correct, I mean it is. I mean, I work with Jenny and Judd really closely, and I definitely I think I'm constantly sort of telling myself I have bosses around. It kind of comforts me. I mean, and you don't do your not exactly. I have collaborators. I have collaborators, but I have collaborators who I take really seriously and who you need and who I need and who I would never I think the minute you get an attitude like it's my show, the ship runs on Dunham and my way or the Highway. I think it's broken exactly. I think you still want to feel a little fear when you share a script with your collaborators. You want to go, I hope they like this. I'm going to listen to them. When they don't, I still feel tremendously indebted to them and anxious about their reactions. And I never feel like, you know, I'm the big boss and you guys can all get with it or leave. So when the so the Hannah character you start out, I mean in tiny furniture, I almost feel like tiny furniture is it's a it's a ways you you may become one of these actresses now where it's all one series, you know, it kind of is. It's funny when I look at any character I've played in anything that I've made, you it's me, and it's it's funny. I've never played anyone whose name doesn't end with a I've made. I've written all these characters who because I always have to have a name that I think sort of likes in the world. It's the two double syllables. Someone said to me, to be a famous star, you need to have two double syllable names. You do do you? Or to monos of a Sean Penn, Marlon Brando, thank you, my mom. My mom did tell me that she gave me my name, which is so funny because it's not like we have any actors in our family. Mom said, I'm named after my Russian great grandmother. And my mom said that when she named me, she thought, I don't know what you want to do, but this is a great name if she does want to be a movie star. That was what my mom thought, which is so funny because it's not like my mom's some crazy stage mom or like she's a photographer and she what's the source of your real closeness to to the extent you can say I don't want to problem, Oh no, I don't mind. I've clearly I don't mind. We are very similar in ways that can be delightful and can be madnes Something I like about both my parents and i'd imagine you're like this with kids too, is they really talked to me like I was an adult always, And I love that, and I love I love talking to kids like they're adults, because it's like they kind of come alive when you just ask them real questions. And my mom always really let me into a world and say, like, I'm working right now, I'll talk to in ten minutes. And just having that kind of access to her was amazing. Yeah, And I've just I've always thought she was the coolest and it's funny and it's nice to see it echoed because all my friends think she's the coolest. To now, um, you're going to do how many seasons of the show are you signed on to do? Well? You know, it's not clear. I mean HBO contractually has me, I think as an actor for six years, but as a writer, and I wish I should pay more attention to my deals. But I'm just so excited to have my job. I just go, okay, whatever you say. But I think my dream world is that, you know, I want to kind of follow like you know, British shows always no British shows and thirty Rock always know just when to get off the air. The question becomes how you can maybe you know, do that TV show, and either the schedule is how many months we do? Well, we've been doing ten. I think uh, between you me and McGee, I think we might do twelve next year. But I would love that. I don't want to, Like, I don't have any desire in doing like, you know, a twenty two episode. I don't even understand how someone does the twenty two episode marathon. But I do think that doing I think that a little more would be just a little more storytelling real estate and it would be amazing. But you know, so I shoot four four and a half months out of the year, then I'm editing, then i'm doing pressed, then I'm writing, then I'm back. So so it's not four a half months. So it's not it's it's actually more like twelve months. And so did you make a movie during the breakfice? Now? No, I couldn't because there was just no time. I finished shooting in August, I was editing. Why don't you make a deal with HBO with will finance your films. You're working for them and it's all in house. It's very smart. I mean, I I really want to make a movie. I have two features grips that I've been working on that I just I want to make another before I make like a big, massive, ambitious movie. I mean, I want to make a creatively ambitious movie. But I want to make another small movie I have. I have small movie ideas. Do you have a massive, ambitious movie inside you? I do, but it's you have an idea? I do, But it's so weird. Four year old psychotherapist. There's there's a fifty four year old somebody and I mean, I'll talk to you later in traffic control. Working with you is one of my long standing dreams. But I am and I'm also I'm writing a book. So that's something that was really wired about that. It's something that was really important to me to start doing at this point in my career. And you write and produce your own TV show and you're writing a book. Who did that remind me? What are you gonna write a book about? I'm writing a book. Well, I guess it's about me, although it's a little less about me because it also has advice an advice component, but it's like personal essays. So is it like Paula Pell's Hey Young Girls? Oh my God, I love Hey Young Girls. Makes me so happy. Paula Pell is funny. Paula Pel is someone who's funny and not mean. She's just a dreamy person. But you know the thing that's been so great about writing the book I've always loved writing pros, and I wanted to make it a part of my career sooner rather than later, because I didn't want it to be like when I decided to write a book in ten years, it was like, oh, look, here's a celebrity memoir number fifty seven. I wanted it to really feel like I'm a person who writes pros and that it's a part of my life and career for a long time. But unlike other people that are writing books, they don't have TV shows that they're starring in and writing. When you're done doing now not just ten but twelve episodes, what do you have left to go into the book? There's stuff that's just for the book. There's an example. Well, like I write a lot about my childhood. In the book, I write a lot about my parents. I read a lot about UM college and sort of like that. I read a lot about that period. I read a lot about sort of the beginning of being sexual person. I read about relationships. I'm writing a lot about sort of female um to say about sexuality, it's interesting. I've had to become more conscious about what I say and what I promote, not in a way that stifles me, but just in a way where I realized now that there are seventeen year old girls who come up to me and tell me that the show means a lot to them, and this one of your audience is influenced, this is what I learned from Some of your is genuinely and in any way influenced by what you do and say that's still tens of thousands of people. It's amazing. It's an amazing thing, and it's like it's a platform that you have to take seriously, which is why sometimes it's like I used to be really into Rihanna, that pop star, and then it's like again, I don't want to ever, you know, throw stones from my glass house, but I follow her on Instagram and I just think about how many little girls, beyond what I could even comprehend, are obsessed with Rihanna, Like, you know, she left Barbados, She's had this amazing career, she's you know, one Grammy, she's talented, and then she gets back together with Chris Brown and post a million pictures of them smoking marijuana together on a bed, and it cracks my heart in half in a way that makes me feel like Brown smoking by no, because she got back together. It's going, oh, yeah, you you made a really good joke, and I got too emotional and in my response, yeah, because I want to be it's terrible enough. It's terrible. But so you are as a role model. What won't Hannah or the other girls in the quartet do? Jenny and I talked about this a lot. We won't fuck someone because they have a nice apartment. There's not going to be any version of sort of like proceeding yourself. There's not gonna be any version of dating somebody because he can take you out to nice dinner. Wait. Wait, you're putting down my whole playbook. This is all I have left in my age. Wait a second, that is so wrong of you. Come on, it's interesting. I have so many friends who are so sort of tortured by their romantic relationships, and I think such a big part of it is that the desires of young men and young women are not caught up with each other. And I say to my wife, I do want to eat in the same restaurant every night, but I want the hostess to wear a different outfit every night. Perfect. But but so you say, they won't monetize sex, they won't monetize sex. And it's like even more subtle than that, Like I don't like a storyline that's like unless it's really saying something about where characters are. I don't like a storyline that's like, you know, he bought me an entire trousseau of dresses and so I'm his forever. Like that's just not the way that I want to idealize anything. I think that the characters, the characters can make mistakes, but they have to be emotionally responsible for the things that they've done. I don't ever want to like have a makeover scenario where someone's doing better after they've put on a great dress and you know, straight ironed their hair, Like I just there's it's a really instinctual thing, but it's just a feeling like I want women. This is so kind of hippie tip, but I want them to make their own choices. I want them to I don't want people to live in service to sort of what television things they should look like, their family things they should act. How much do you think that women, Because this is a very sensitive topic of me, because I'm I'm not going to go Norman Mailer here, but I feel like, you know, the the interesting thing for society is if women, women have been allowed to make their own choices, not for the most part, for the last forty years, or at least for the last and that's reaped enormous benefits for society, and forget about just women. But at the same time, women are the only ones who can have children, and therefore in the way that we're trying to in the traditional family, even in a gay family where a man and two guys want to have a baby with a woman, or two women want to have a child together, that balance of career and ambition and so forth with family is that something that you struggle with some numbers you even think not struggling to. I mean I think about it all the time, actually because I'm because you're the product of a happy poem, and I want all the totally. I was raised to think that the two most important things you could do in your life were have a passionate, generous relationship to your work and to raise children. And so you still feel that one and I do still feel that, well, I have children, big time. I'm so excited. I don't want like to jolly pit the whole situation, but like at least two, and I think all the time about it's funny exactly. I might got Jenny Connor's daughter, Coco, who's who's eight, and his dear friend. We like to go out to see live music together. Cocoa one day was like, when do you think you're gonna have children? Just roughly? And I was like, I don't know. Cocoa, like, you know, I'm twenty six, so I'd like to wait till I'm like at least thirty. And she was like, at that point, I think you should um not be working on girls. And if you are working on girls, you're going to have to cut your hours down to like eight thirty to six because you need to be able to be there when they wake up, and you also need to be there with them at night. And she, basically an eight year old, sort of to school me in the way that my lifestyle would not allow for children. And she was like, you know, your boyfriend. My boyfriends a musician and he tours a lot, and she was like and she was like, he might have to quit his job. And I was like, I don't think he's going to quit his job. And she's like well, that might be hard for you too. You might have to really talk of it. Like and even just now, I just adopted a dog and I was really really it was like instead of just meeting a dog, thinking it was adorable and bringing it home, it was this tortured thing of like, am I gonna be able to give it what it needs? And what if it resents me? And at a certain point, my mom, who is really ready to play dog Grandma is planning to spend a lot of time with the dog, was like she was like, Lina, it's a fucking dog. She was like, it's at a certain point she was like, I get it. I'm glad you're thinking it through, but like, this is not like adopting twins. Now. Two things that I think are kind of connected, which is how do men present themselves? You have a boyfriend, and I don't I don't want to pry to your personal life, but you how do men present themselves to you differently? You said that Hannah was this and that and a chubby girl who and now you're now the name Lena Dunham means something else to people. How do men present themselves to you now different from the way they used to it's interesting. I mean, I'm so bad at knowing if anybody's hitting on me, Like someone literally has to beat me on the head with a drumstick and drag me back to their cave for me to understand that it's going on, and then you would press charges again, and then I would, and then they and then and then I hire Gloria Alred is my attorney. Yeah exactly. But you know, the thing is is that sleazy people are attracted to and sleazy people and not sleazy people are attracted to any sense of gravity toss that someone might have. So so I definitely have had more. I mean, I definitely had felt less ignored by the opposite sex. But I'm also so bad at perceiving any of it. And so, did you know your boyfriend liked to Well, we got set up on a blind date, so I knew he liked well, I didn't know he liked me, but he was pretty disposed. He was predisposed to like me because what we were going on was a date. And then that was a special situation because I went, oh, I think he likes me, and I like him, And tell me if you don't want to aswer this question, but I just find it charming. Where did you go on your first date with your boyfriend? We went to Blue Ribbon Bakery in the West Village. And the reason I was happy is because I find picking a restaurant so anxiety producing, because I feel like, yeah, because it really is start. And also, what if I choose the wrong restaurant and you have a bad association with it or you think I'm sleezy Exactly, it's just the worst. And like what if we go there and you don't like muffin? Exactly? It's so stressful. So he said, before I even had to say anything, he said, if it's stressful for you, I can pick the restaurant. And I felt like, okay, I'm going to be in great hands. Where did you pick? And then you picked Blue and Maker? And then I ate a cheese and then I ordered a hamburger and he said, I think you should get cheese on it. It's not nice. And you went, oh my god, yeah, that's easily. I was so glad you, like, did my mom call you for this date? And let you know I like Yarlsberg exactly. Somebody is suggesting that one of Yarlsburger And then and then you know you've been dating for a while. Yeah, like almost a year. It's been. He's a very very great person to meet you and tell me if I'm onto something here. You seem like someone that regardless of what you look like or didn't look like, or what you had or didn't have, whoever you were, you have a very very healthy and kind of guileless sense of who you are, and you presented yourself to people your entire life going this is who I am, and if you like me, great, and if you don't, there's another six point five billion people out there to go for it. Am I Right? That's a really stretched much. That's the most lovely way of putting it. I mean, I think I think I always had a feeling like if you just stick around and continue to be yourself, the correct people will find you. And that's something that's been so wonderful about the show is that it kind of confirmed that for me, which is not everyone watches it, but the people who watch it understand it. And that feeling I'm sure you've had this before of uniting with your appropriate audience and sort of uniting with your people is like about as comforting as feelings get. M you two can unite comfortably with Lena Dunham over the unique discomfort of being a woman in your twenties. Today, Girls is on Sunday nights on HBO. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing