Actress Lena Dunham is claiming that she wrote about her “Girls” co-star Adam Driver in an “honest way.” In her tell-all memoir “Famesick,” Dunham alleges that the “Star Wars” actor threw a chair, punched a hole in his trailer, and screamed in her face when she forgot her lines. She also claimed that their relationship nearly crossed a boundary before he married his now-wife, Joanne Tucker, in 2013.
Lena Dunham Addresses Her Relationship With ‘Girls’ Costar Adam Driver
While promoting her latest memoir, Dunham reflected on the issue of being the “Girls” showrunner at such a young age, as she was only 23 when HBO called to supply her a blind pilot deal for the show. While the comedy series was a success for HBO, Driver was also navigating his newfound fame as Kylo Ren within the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy.
“For higher or worse, it was all of our first jobs. I believe Adam went on a really specific ride because he had the ride of the show after which also the ride of becoming a serious movie star at the identical time,” Dunham told PEOPLE magazine while promoting her memoir.
“So he was on these two tracks, and he’s a really, very serious work-focused private person. So I actually have quite a lot of empathy for that,” she added.
Dunham Said She Didn’t Want To Make Adam Driver ‘The Outlier’
Dunham insisted that she didn’t have the desire to make Driver look like “the outlier” of the comedy series when she wrote about her experiences with him in her memoir. As an alternative, she said she wanted it to serve for instance of how difficult it could be to navigate her “first experiences” as a boss, which she hopes others can relate to.
“And again, the goal was never to make Adam look like he was in any way the outlier of the show, but simply to discuss how complex and confusing those first experiences of attempting to be a boss were,” she said.
Lena Dunham Says It Was A ‘Challenge’ To Be A Leader
Dunham insists that it wasn’t just her experiences with Driver that made it difficult to be a “boss” on set.
“I used to be also, at that time in my life, extremely intimidated by men. And so there was an actual challenge to me in attempting to be a pacesetter when it got here to men,” she explained. “And I learned on that job, and fortunately, I don’t feel those self same sorts of fears anymore.”
Lena Dunham Says They Shared A ‘Wealthy Creative Dynamic’
Adam Driver’s character, also named Adam, played the on-again-off-again boyfriend to Dunham’s character, Hannah. While reflecting on the experience of filming “Girls,” Dunham claimed that they’d “two different relationships” once they were on-screen and in real life.
“It was a very wealthy creative dynamic during which we were in a position to understand one another completely after we were on screen, after which in some ways, in no way after we were off,” she said. “And so it was almost like we had two different relationships, one which type of played out in our scenes together and one which played out in life.”
She said she wrote about Driver within the book only to capture the connection in an “honest way” as she reflected on her experiences.
“It was an try and capture that [relationship] in an honest way, and in addition really discuss how much being around this very talented, charismatic, complex, and powerful person affected me in ways in which were really positive and in ways in which were a bit harder,” she says.
Lena Dunham Reflects On The Behavior Of ‘Great Male Geniuses’
In a separate interview with The Guardian to advertise her memoir, Dunham admitted, “I also care lots about having a set where individuals are comfortable, and be at liberty and heard and unafraid. Largely because I don’t want people to feel a number of the ways in which I felt.”
“On the time, I didn’t have the skill to … it never entered my mind to say, ‘I’m your boss, you may’t speak to me this fashion,’” Dunham said of Driver’s alleged behavior. “And, at that time in my 20s, I still thought that’s what great male geniuses do: eviscerate you. Which is weird, because I used to be raised by a male genius who would never do this.”
On the time of this writing, Driver has yet to publicly comment on her accusations. In her memoir, she said that the last time they’d contact was when “Girls” wrapped in 2016.