Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Three years ago, twenty three year old Lena Dunham made
Speaker 1: a low budget art house film called Tiny Furniture. She
Speaker 1: filmed the movie in her parents house and basically played herself,
Speaker 1: a recent college graduate moving back into her childhood bedroom
Speaker 1: while making plans for her future. Dunham was proclaimed a fresh,
Speaker 1: original voice, a director with a bright future. Writer director
Speaker 1: Judd Apatow was one of those who took notice, and
Speaker 1: today he and Dunham executive produced Girls, a show she
Speaker 1: created for HBO that premiered its second season on January.
Speaker 1: You're good and I am so good at you kidding.
Speaker 1: I've never been as well in my life. No, I know,
Speaker 1: I mean you seem good. As the wedding was so
Speaker 1: quick and unexpected, I kind of know how to process it.
Speaker 1: Or if you like, yeah, well you tend to overthink
Speaker 1: things and that's an issue for you. This is what
Speaker 1: it's like when the hunt is over. I think Sandy
Speaker 1: really likes me. I really like between. He's so nice
Speaker 1: and funny when we have sex. There's no part of
Speaker 1: me that once like pretend I don't exist, which is
Speaker 1: a rarity. That's a awesome. He's kind of a Republican,
Speaker 1: which feels weird. What's from the Republicans? It's just the
Speaker 1: same as Democrat their older bags. Lena Dunham has achieved
Speaker 1: an astonishing amount in just three years. Her portrayal of
Speaker 1: Hannah Horvath and Girls recently won her a Golden Globe
Speaker 1: Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. This past October,
Speaker 1: she sold a book of essays and advice to Random House,
Speaker 1: and her boyfriend is a rock star. Today, she hardly
Speaker 1: resembles Aura, her character from Tiny Furniture. I thought I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have much in common with Lena. She's half my
Speaker 1: age and has been fiercely embraced by my daughter's generation.
Speaker 1: But oh, how quickly we realized there was common ground
Speaker 1: between us. Literally, my show is moving into the third
Speaker 1: Rock stages. Yes, we're taking Silver Cup and Michael, we
Speaker 1: were in Silver Cup. Then we went to Steiner because
Speaker 1: we couldn't get our stages back because some show that
Speaker 1: has one word that's about murder took it. And then
Speaker 1: we are coming back because you guys are leaving, so
Speaker 1: we're going to be on your stages and in your
Speaker 1: office is Oh my god, no, no, I thought, isn't
Speaker 1: Michael Fox coming there too? He is. We're I think
Speaker 1: we don't take as much stage space as you guys did,
Speaker 1: so we're going to have because we have fewer sets.
Speaker 1: So I think is gonna have We're gonna have a piece,
Speaker 1: and he's gonna have a piece. Now, as I'm sitting
Speaker 1: here meeting you for the first time and talking to
Speaker 1: you for the first time, you are nothing like I
Speaker 1: imagined you would pay really nothing. I'm a bit thrown
Speaker 1: here because you play someone who is I guess in
Speaker 1: your mind, and I want to talk about your vision
Speaker 1: of what kind of character you wanted to create. Is
Speaker 1: a little bit a beat behind everyone else, or I'll
Speaker 1: let you articulate that what you think she is. But
Speaker 1: but what I want to say is you. When I
Speaker 1: meet you, you seem like you could be like a
Speaker 1: senator or the head of the corporation. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: really very very You seem so together and smart, and
Speaker 1: you look great, and you cut your hair and you
Speaker 1: look gorgeous. That is firstly, very meaningful. I have to
Speaker 1: not turn red and get excited because you said radio,
Speaker 1: so don't care. I'll get good, perfect, and I'm wearing
Speaker 1: my crew jacket and I really I should have dressed
Speaker 1: up more for you. But that being said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny. Firstly, the a beat behind idea really speaks
Speaker 1: to me because I'm always sort of saying when people
Speaker 1: ask about hand I'm always sort of saying, she's a
Speaker 1: version of me, but she's a few years behind me,
Speaker 1: and she's also sort of a few minutes behind everyone
Speaker 1: around her. She really picked up on a concept that
Speaker 1: I'm sort of always thinking about a little bit when
Speaker 1: I play her and when I write her. But she's
Speaker 1: who you used to be. You know, it's funny. I
Speaker 1: think I used to I think I in order to
Speaker 1: convince myself that I should play this character, or that
Speaker 1: I should even write this character, I had to say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm just writing myself. It's that easy. I'm just writing myself.
Speaker 1: Because the idea of sort of creating an entire other
Speaker 1: human can be so intimidating and in real life, in
Speaker 1: real life, who are you? I think that Hannah is
Speaker 1: someone who I'm very capable of being, who's wounded, ambitious
Speaker 1: but doesn't know where to place it. Hannah sort of
Speaker 1: the version of myself. If I had had less understanding
Speaker 1: parents and sort of less drive to get things done,
Speaker 1: and I think who I am as a person who
Speaker 1: is always sort of if I had to describe the
Speaker 1: war within myself that exists currently, it's sort of the
Speaker 1: challenge of trying to reconcile the part of me that
Speaker 1: that always thought I would be, like, you know, a
Speaker 1: weird gender and women studies teacher who occasionally showed movies
Speaker 1: at film festivals and hung out in my strange apartment
Speaker 1: that was stacked high with books. Trying to reconcile that
Speaker 1: with the part of me that has to like figure
Speaker 1: out of Stone magazine exactly, was to shoot the rolling
Speaker 1: cover of Rolling Stone magazine, was to figure out a
Speaker 1: dress to where that for an event that everyone seems
Speaker 1: to be worried about whether or not the dresses in stores,
Speaker 1: because it has to be my own dress. And so
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with all these sort of this strange ecosystem
Speaker 1: and all these weird politics that I kind of never
Speaker 1: imagined would happen to me in my lifetime. You never imagined, No,
Speaker 1: you really never imagined it. I think I my dream
Speaker 1: situation was that I would be someone who people thought, oh,
Speaker 1: she's doing important work in her own little corner, like
Speaker 1: a raws Chast cartoon character, exactly, like a ros Chast
Speaker 1: cartoon character. Or like I think, because I went to
Speaker 1: pretendious private school, the biggest dream you would have, you'd
Speaker 1: be like, I'm going to be Joan Didion. That was
Speaker 1: kind of where your brain was allowed to want to
Speaker 1: maybe Nora from Maybe you'll make films, but you're not
Speaker 1: going to be in film exactly. And I don't think
Speaker 1: when I first started acting, I mean I never got
Speaker 1: parts in high school. I never even I never was
Speaker 1: able to. I think I had a twofold thing about it.
Speaker 1: One is that I came from a family of artists,
Speaker 1: and so the idea was sort of like you made
Speaker 1: your work and then got out of the way of it.
Speaker 1: Like part of what was I think I internalized the
Speaker 1: idea that your work was supposed to speak for you.
Speaker 1: You were not supposed to speak for your work, and
Speaker 1: so I think I was self conscious about the idea
Speaker 1: of being any self self promoting and although that's not
Speaker 1: what acting is, it's it's become that. And then I
Speaker 1: also think that I thought, well, there's people who are
Speaker 1: professionals who can do this better than me. So I'm
Speaker 1: just going to act until I have access to the
Speaker 1: people who should be acting. And sometimes I still feel
Speaker 1: that way. Sometimes I think, like, you know, I'll do
Speaker 1: this a little longer and then Michelle Williams can play
Speaker 1: me every day until I die. Something that's really nice
Speaker 1: about making the show that isn't that is a comedy
Speaker 1: that isn't stuck in any sort of I mean, thirty
Speaker 1: Rock was able to bust out of a lot of
Speaker 1: network sitcom tropes, but a lot of the time when
Speaker 1: you're on a I think one of the biggest things
Speaker 1: that networks prevent, besides curse words and showing your breasts
Speaker 1: is development. I think that when you play, I think
Speaker 1: so many sitcom characters end up playing the same version
Speaker 1: of themselves in various scenarios. This is the thing as
Speaker 1: God is my judge. This is the thing that we
Speaker 1: talk about in the meeting to prep this thing with you,
Speaker 1: which was shows I've seen where the protagonist male or female,
Speaker 1: they're going through the same set of problems in season
Speaker 1: six that they were in season one. It's just different
Speaker 1: lines in different coasters. And with you, I'm wondering, do
Speaker 1: you have a Bible on the show. Do you have
Speaker 1: an arc in your mind, not even on paper, not
Speaker 1: even approved with your other because you do this with
Speaker 1: Judd correct. I do it with Judd and a woman
Speaker 1: named Jenny Connor, who's the other executive producer. And we
Speaker 1: have a great little writer's room. But our writer's room
Speaker 1: doesn't really work like. It's not like we write a
Speaker 1: script and then all sit together punching it up. It's
Speaker 1: much more we sit together at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: season and really talk through. It's like a giant therapy
Speaker 1: session where we work out the emotional arc and then
Speaker 1: we go to it. And when you work out that
Speaker 1: emotional arc, do you think to yourself, are the things
Speaker 1: that she's going through? Now? Your character and the other
Speaker 1: characters where you're saying to yourself, and let's make sure
Speaker 1: they're not going through this. There is a growth a
Speaker 1: season from now or by the end of the season completely.
Speaker 1: And that's why I feel like it's okay for me
Speaker 1: to cut my hair, or it's okay for me to
Speaker 1: start spinning, or it's okay for me you know whatever
Speaker 1: I whatever to change to change because I feel as
Speaker 1: though so much of what this show is about is
Speaker 1: about seeing these girls off into their adulthood. Like in
Speaker 1: my Bible, the ideal finale to the show would be
Speaker 1: a feeling like, you know, they don't have to have kids,
Speaker 1: they don't have to have husbands, but you look at
Speaker 1: them and you kind of go there on their way.
Speaker 1: They're more okay than they were when they started, or
Speaker 1: they're less okay, but we have an understanding what kind
Speaker 1: of adult we think they're going to be. So described
Speaker 1: to me how that works? Because because the theme here
Speaker 1: is control, and you are, like other brilliant comedy writing
Speaker 1: chicks I've known over the years, you have this is
Speaker 1: your show, this is your thing. So how does it start?
Speaker 1: How does Whose idea was girls? Was it yours? It
Speaker 1: was mine? Because I basically I went in, I made
Speaker 1: this movie Tiny Furniture, and I made it. You know,
Speaker 1: my mom and sister starred. We shot it in my
Speaker 1: mom's house, my mom and dad's house. We um It
Speaker 1: was totally populated with friends, some of whom have made
Speaker 1: their way to Girls with Me. And what motivated don't
Speaker 1: want to do Time Furniture. I had always wanted to
Speaker 1: be a writer, and I used to think I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a playwright. And then in college I sort
Speaker 1: of had this revelation where I thought, like, plays, you rehearse,
Speaker 1: and you rehearse, and then they happened twice, Like I
Speaker 1: just felt so frustrated by the lack of permanence. Like
Speaker 1: I'd always been sort of turned on by the fact
Speaker 1: that when my parents as artists made work, like they
Speaker 1: had these material items that would outlast them. And I
Speaker 1: was frustrated that that wasn't a part of the theater experience.
Speaker 1: So I started making short films, and I made my
Speaker 1: first feature and went to south By Southwest Film Festival
Speaker 1: with it, and then I just had and I've been
Speaker 1: making web TV, and I just had this itch to
Speaker 1: sort of tell the specific story, and I wrote the
Speaker 1: script and the kind that's what I want to talk
Speaker 1: about is is that itch meaning beyond the arc of
Speaker 1: the shooting and the and and the career aspects of
Speaker 1: it or the burgeoning career, What was it about what
Speaker 1: was going on in your life that you want to
Speaker 1: do that movie on a practical, real life level. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about that moment between college and adulthood
Speaker 1: that felt so floundering, and so every day I felt
Speaker 1: like I was walking through the strangest, most surreal soup.
Speaker 1: That would mean that on a deeper level, I kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to talk about change, which is what I
Speaker 1: always think is sort of the most interesting place to
Speaker 1: find characters is in a time of intense change. And
Speaker 1: so I sort of also wanted to capture this moment
Speaker 1: where I was, I knew that I wouldn't live at
Speaker 1: home forever, that my little sister wouldn't be sort of
Speaker 1: seventeen and ambitious but also stuck in her bedroom forever,
Speaker 1: that my mom was sort of looking in this beautiful
Speaker 1: moment where she kind of was I mean, shilled murder
Speaker 1: me for saying this, but she looked that kind of
Speaker 1: beautiful way where it's like you're not quite old yet
Speaker 1: and you just look kind of she just looked kind
Speaker 1: of perfect to me, and I just like, a great, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just thought exactly, and I just thought, I
Speaker 1: want to capture all of this. I want to capture
Speaker 1: our cats, I want to capture our house. I want
Speaker 1: to remember all of this. And so, so you really
Speaker 1: love your mom. I'm obsessed with my mom. I love
Speaker 1: my mom. And then but I'm saying, that's interesting that
Speaker 1: you have that feeling, and that's what makes you so
Speaker 1: of a what's around you wouldn't want to capture that
Speaker 1: because I find typically people who are not happy, they
Speaker 1: gotta wait a while until they can negotiate the pain
Speaker 1: to go back and talk about that. It's one of
Speaker 1: the biggest things that inspires me to make work is
Speaker 1: this feeling of looking around and going, even if you're
Speaker 1: not perfect, you're also perfect right now, let's let's capture
Speaker 1: this and then you know, I'd love the feeling. I
Speaker 1: was just watching like Panic in Needle Park last week,
Speaker 1: that movie which is you know, Kitty Win, Kitty Gosh,
Speaker 1: she's so good. Where did Kitty Win go? Yeah, let
Speaker 1: me get that violin out for Kitty Win. She's incredible.
Speaker 1: But so I was watching that and I was just
Speaker 1: thinking about how exciting it was to be able to
Speaker 1: watch sort of like al Pacino at that first moment
Speaker 1: when he was sort of like he still almost looked
Speaker 1: a little adolescent and he was still and he was
Speaker 1: learning his craft and just behaving on film. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I just love capturing that. And that's something that I've
Speaker 1: tried to do with girls too, is sort of grab
Speaker 1: people and go, let's just let's just see you as
Speaker 1: you are right now now. The Uh so the film
Speaker 1: did well, So then how does girls happen? Girls happened?
Speaker 1: Because so then I went to l A and kind
Speaker 1: of did that. I went like, Okay, I guess what
Speaker 1: you do next is get an agent, And I guess
Speaker 1: what you do next is trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: I mean. You're on the runway now, Yes, I was.
Speaker 1: I was on the runway, and I was going around
Speaker 1: l A doing the sort of what I call the
Speaker 1: couch and water bottle tour of l A where you
Speaker 1: meet everybody and have those kind of general meetings where
Speaker 1: and I remember so funny because at first I didn't
Speaker 1: understand that everybody says to you at the end of
Speaker 1: the general meeting, oh, I'd love to find a way
Speaker 1: to work with you. And so I would call my
Speaker 1: agent afterwards and go, oh my god, it was amazing,
Speaker 1: and he said he wants to find a way to
Speaker 1: work with me, and many want would come clean his pool. Yeah. Basically,
Speaker 1: I'd always been obsessed with TV. It always loved TV
Speaker 1: and found it to be the most sort of comforting
Speaker 1: medium and the one that what comforted you on TV,
Speaker 1: what comforted me on TV was there was a range
Speaker 1: of things that comforted me on TV. I love what
Speaker 1: was the most, what was the weirdest. I mean, my
Speaker 1: favorite show when I was little was Under the Umbrella Tree,
Speaker 1: which is a Canadian show about a woman who lives
Speaker 1: with three puppets, and it was on every morning at
Speaker 1: seven am. There were three of them named Iggy, Gloria,
Speaker 1: and Ja, and Iggy was an iguana, Glory as a groundhog,
Speaker 1: and Jay is a blue jay and he lives out
Speaker 1: back in a bird house. They like talked to you
Speaker 1: about recycling or like help their old elderly neighbor who
Speaker 1: fell down in the street. Like they're just like nice puppets,
Speaker 1: but looking back, it feels like a child molester who's
Speaker 1: on the lamb with her three. My guilty pleasure like
Speaker 1: that was when I was in my twenties and I
Speaker 1: go to my friend's house and we just had this
Speaker 1: weird habit where like at four o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: we make a drink and we'd roll the biggest joint
Speaker 1: and we'd smoke pot and watch a show called Stairway
Speaker 1: to Start Him that was on Public Access TV, and
Speaker 1: Stairway to Start Him was this older man. It kind
Speaker 1: of looked like Rod Steiger. He was like a burly looking,
Speaker 1: tough looking older man and his wife and she kind
Speaker 1: of looked like, uh, like Tammy Faye Baker. She was
Speaker 1: like a big, big honeycombed shellack hair and she was
Speaker 1: like this big, buzzy me older woman. And the guy
Speaker 1: would come out and he had the funniest voice. He'd
Speaker 1: be like, welcome everyone to stay away, to stop and
Speaker 1: use and they'd sing a song and opening so and
Speaker 1: they would bring out acts that would perform. They were
Speaker 1: all like local queens, Brooklyn talent people singing parakeets. It
Speaker 1: was like it was bizarre that sounds like the best
Speaker 1: thing in the world was the best show in the world,
Speaker 1: especially if you've smoked an enormous amount of marijuana an
Speaker 1: enormous joint. So you're on the sofa ward bottle tour
Speaker 1: and what happens Silfa water bottle Tour and my agent,
Speaker 1: who I feel like you're not supposed to say you
Speaker 1: love your agent because it makes you sound really hollywood
Speaker 1: and out of everyone, I love everyone, And also I
Speaker 1: have the best agent. He's like really been at it
Speaker 1: for a long time. He's like a cigar smoking. You know,
Speaker 1: he's what I imagined in Nation. His name is Peter Bennedeck,
Speaker 1: Peter Bennedictine now Peter Benedeck, and he smoked cigars. He's
Speaker 1: old school, he's old exactly, and he belongs to a
Speaker 1: cigar club. Which one does he belong to? I think
Speaker 1: it says it has a Cuban flares. I think it is.
Speaker 1: I'm on the board of Grand Event, are you, Peter?
Speaker 1: And I probably have seen him a Grand evat. Wow.
Speaker 1: He always probably hung out there and smokes ours with him.
Speaker 1: When you were still a gleam in your parents you
Speaker 1: weren't even around God. Damn with the way of this
Speaker 1: business works. No, no, no, So so he's your agent
Speaker 1: and you love him. I love him, And he said
Speaker 1: to me. I was sort of saying to him, like
Speaker 1: maybe I could get I just wanted to make move
Speaker 1: out of my parents house, and I thought and make
Speaker 1: more movies. And I was like, maybe I could should
Speaker 1: write aspect how I met your mother, and I could
Speaker 1: get staffed on the show. I mean, I didn't know
Speaker 1: any I didn't know how any of this worked. And
Speaker 1: he said that I should go for a meeting an
Speaker 1: HBO and I did, and I said, well, here's what
Speaker 1: I'd want to see, is like a show about all
Speaker 1: my girlfriends, like sort of like Tiny Furniture, but there's
Speaker 1: more of us and we don't live with our parents anymore,
Speaker 1: but it's still about that. It's like it was pitched
Speaker 1: so weekly, like a year after my movie, but there's
Speaker 1: more of us and it's a TV show. So the
Speaker 1: conversation wasn't coming out of and Tiny Furniture in the
Speaker 1: indie and in the festival world had a very good buzz.
Speaker 1: There was no conversation, but used going right into films
Speaker 1: and making more films. Normally they're gonna want to steer
Speaker 1: some especially your age was very young. They're gonna go,
Speaker 1: let's just keep making movies. Well, you know, there was
Speaker 1: a conversation, but I think I picked up on the
Speaker 1: fact very early going on the Couch and Water Bottle
Speaker 1: tour that the kind of stories that I wanted to
Speaker 1: tell we're not really being funded on a larger scale.
Speaker 1: And film Tina says that sometimes the Tina I will
Speaker 1: just finish work that that it's it's it seems like
Speaker 1: it's more difficult to a to have the control you
Speaker 1: wanted the film business and be to say what you
Speaker 1: want to say it is. And the fact is I
Speaker 1: could have kept saying what I wanted to say, you know,
Speaker 1: making movies, but I wanted It's weird. The reason that
Speaker 1: I like having some budget is not because you know,
Speaker 1: I want to stage car crashes or I want to
Speaker 1: have you know, ten makeup artists on set, although those
Speaker 1: things would will would be lovely, but but it's more
Speaker 1: because of the fact that I do so many jobs.
Speaker 1: So it was so exciting to not have to worry
Speaker 1: anymore about answering the doorbell, about returning the equipment, about
Speaker 1: making sure that people had the pizza. Also, that's going
Speaker 1: to happen in TV and what has money and HBO
Speaker 1: has HBO is time warnering, but they have money, but
Speaker 1: they use it in this kind of amazing there. It's
Speaker 1: this amazing model, which is that they don't have to
Speaker 1: answer to advertisers in the same way, so HBO can
Speaker 1: sort of fulfill its odd little interests. And that's what
Speaker 1: I started out as and I what I didn't predict
Speaker 1: was how much I would love the opportunity to develop
Speaker 1: characters in this way and the kind of the fiber
Speaker 1: of TV itself, and they believe in you. Based on
Speaker 1: my experience, I've never worked for them, but I've have
Speaker 1: many friends and colleagues over the years who have worked
Speaker 1: for them, and I've I've almost worked for them here
Speaker 1: and there. You know, HBO is one of those places
Speaker 1: like that. I think the most successful studios and networks.
Speaker 1: The way they operate, which is that they vetted maybe
Speaker 1: to a fairly well but if once they believe in you,
Speaker 1: they're all in. It's your wors. They give you the
Speaker 1: money that they it's not too intrusive now. So the
Speaker 1: template of four women, and obviously HBO is no stranger
Speaker 1: to the template of four women talking about but obviously
Speaker 1: those women were older. And you've been a fan of
Speaker 1: that show, Yes, I think that I can't find one
Speaker 1: girl who isn't at least secretly a fan of sex
Speaker 1: in the city who's my age. And I loved it.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was very conscious when I was
Speaker 1: first writing this show. I thought to myself, should I
Speaker 1: put these girls in Boston? There was and I tried
Speaker 1: to make it three girls because and Shoshanna was initially
Speaker 1: not one of the girls. Shoshanna was Jesse as Jasha
Speaker 1: Mamitt's character was Jess as Jemima Kirk's character's cousin, and
Speaker 1: she kind of came in and out as a kind
Speaker 1: of she was the most as a recurring in and
Speaker 1: out goofball who was sort of supposed to call to attention. Seriously,
Speaker 1: she does. She plays it beautifully. And but the reason
Speaker 1: that I wrote her was to sort of call out
Speaker 1: the sex in the City thing, like, this is the
Speaker 1: girl who came to New York to have her cosmos
Speaker 1: and her Manolo's and it's not going quite right. But
Speaker 1: she was so wonderful and she added something that the
Speaker 1: three of us didn't have on our own. And so
Speaker 1: it became a four person delio, and so I tried
Speaker 1: to make it three women. I tried to put it
Speaker 1: in different city. But the fact is is that New
Speaker 1: York is where it was supposed to happen and for women,
Speaker 1: just somehow there's a symmetry to it that doesn't star
Speaker 1: I'm going to do. I couldn't help it. I couldn't
Speaker 1: help it. And so but the fact is that you know,
Speaker 1: sexon City is a specter that hangs over in a
Speaker 1: I mean in a positive way. Everything when female centric,
Speaker 1: and you know, in the writer's room, every there were
Speaker 1: so many episodes of sexon City and they tackled every
Speaker 1: area of sexual function and dysfunction that there's almost nothing
Speaker 1: you can pitch that they haven't done. But I found
Speaker 1: that the women on Sex in the City, that those
Speaker 1: women would have things happen, and they tended to brush
Speaker 1: off the consequences pretty quickly, whereas the girls on your show,
Speaker 1: the tone seems very different. Everybody seems to almost be
Speaker 1: doubting what they're doing, or they have a kind of
Speaker 1: a sense of fear or anxiety about it while they're
Speaker 1: doing it. It It seems more real. Was that is that?
Speaker 1: Was that deliberate in your part? Well? Something I feel
Speaker 1: about being in your twenties, which is different than you know.
Speaker 1: Sexon City was a show about women in their thirties
Speaker 1: who had successful careers prerecession, the best, most supportive friends
Speaker 1: they didn't have. I mean, they had little friend TIFFs.
Speaker 1: But the characters on our show are tortured. It's sort
Speaker 1: of impossible to get through your twenties without It's like,
Speaker 1: if you ask Ale in her twenties, are you a
Speaker 1: happy person? I think she can say I have happy moments.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it's possible. Maybe i'm maybe people
Speaker 1: radically disagree with me, but I don't really think it's
Speaker 1: possible to be sort of an at peace human when
Speaker 1: you are between twenty two and thirty, and so I
Speaker 1: think there's still I don't because I think it's a
Speaker 1: problem that I mean for me, that's something I've noticed
Speaker 1: because I'm much older than you. And one thing that
Speaker 1: I I noticed when I went to college, which is
Speaker 1: a long time ago, an interesting number of people they
Speaker 1: really knew what they wanted to be. They weren't quite
Speaker 1: sure how to get there. That they had a dream.
Speaker 1: I want to become a lawyer. I want to become
Speaker 1: a doctor. I want to go into politics. I want
Speaker 1: to go into and now people today it seems like
Speaker 1: younger people, they really they think they have more time
Speaker 1: to figure it out, returning and they really don't have
Speaker 1: that picture in question. Do you agree? I do agree,
Speaker 1: And I think a big part of it is being
Speaker 1: I think the world the Internet has cracked things open
Speaker 1: in a way that's both beautiful and that it helps
Speaker 1: you find. There's so many things that I never would
Speaker 1: have even known about, things that have been huge for
Speaker 1: me that have existed because of the Internet, and I
Speaker 1: think that I've been able to partially, you know, connect
Speaker 1: with people who would be fans of the show because
Speaker 1: of the Internet. I think, you know, it's always exciting when,
Speaker 1: like I there's this website called Rookie mag dot com
Speaker 1: that's run by this girl, Tovy Jevinson, and it's a
Speaker 1: it's a smart teen magazine that exists only on the Internet.
Speaker 1: And I just think if when I was a teenager
Speaker 1: there had been that place and that message board, I
Speaker 1: would have felt like the world was my oyster like
Speaker 1: just meeting other weirdo girls who had the same who like,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. At the time, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: like talk to someone about Connor, o burst or something
Speaker 1: on the internet, and that would have been possible. But
Speaker 1: I think now the fact that like the Internet has
Speaker 1: created so many strange specialized jobs and so many things
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, I'm a brand consultant, slash
Speaker 1: blog enhancer or whatever. People are like suddenly the world
Speaker 1: feels wide open, but there are less jobs available, and
Speaker 1: so it's a really confusing moment to make any decisive
Speaker 1: choice about what you want to do. It's interesting you
Speaker 1: say that the Internet is responsible for that, and then
Speaker 1: idea of having too many choices than you need you
Speaker 1: wind up. That could also be a metaphor for like
Speaker 1: men in their twenties dating. I feel like men in
Speaker 1: their twenties, Like I once had dated a guy who
Speaker 1: told me that he didn't feel like he could be
Speaker 1: serious about anyone in New York because it would be
Speaker 1: like eating at the same restaurant every night. In New York.
Speaker 1: There's so many amazing choices. It's New York City. I
Speaker 1: hope he chokes some restaurant he goes. I shouldn't say that.
Speaker 1: That's me. That's wrong. I feel like that, So it's
Speaker 1: helpful to have it backed up by Alec Baldwin. This
Speaker 1: is a like Baldwin and you're listening to here's the
Speaker 1: thing more in a minute. Lena Dunham didn't have to
Speaker 1: look far to come up with her character on Girls. Physically,
Speaker 1: I'd say, Hannah is I mean, she's me because I
Speaker 1: play her, but she's It's funny because she's chubby, but
Speaker 1: she doesn't. That's not where her anxiety comes from. Like
Speaker 1: she's just not. I like playing a character who isn't
Speaker 1: doesn't have a perfect body, but that's not the main
Speaker 1: source of their anxiety. I feel like we have very
Speaker 1: few female characters on television who don't look like models
Speaker 1: and aren't constantly discussing it. So, of course, Hannah has
Speaker 1: her moments of self consciousness, just like every woman does,
Speaker 1: but that's not She sort of doesn't notice that her
Speaker 1: clothes don't quite fit. She sort of doesn't think about
Speaker 1: what she eats. And I am, clothes are just to
Speaker 1: cover you up and keep you warm, exactly, have some
Speaker 1: degree of style to the great, but less like a
Speaker 1: character exactly. And I like she's more interested in like
Speaker 1: whether her clothes are funny and witty, Like I don't
Speaker 1: think she really cares about being sexy. She's more just like, oh,
Speaker 1: this dress like has owls on it? How sweet. I
Speaker 1: used to be much in college, addressed like a complete luon.
Speaker 1: I feel like my dad always told me I look
Speaker 1: like a lion tamer all the time. I've calmed down
Speaker 1: just because I realized that you could have vests, so
Speaker 1: many vests, so many red vests, so many like you know,
Speaker 1: strange boots pulled over my weird leggings with a three
Speaker 1: flounced skirt. I could never accessorize enough. It was oppressive.
Speaker 1: But you're like in the Luftwaffe, Yeah, exactly. And so
Speaker 1: so that's Hannah sort of physical I think emotionally some
Speaker 1: facets of Hannah or that she is. You know, she
Speaker 1: has a certain amount of wit and a certain amount
Speaker 1: of sort of spunk, but she isn't really applying it
Speaker 1: anywhere properly yet. And she's all smart and funny and
Speaker 1: not mean because a lot of the people in that world,
Speaker 1: in the improvisational comedy world, and funny and there me
Speaker 1: and that meanness is the font that it comes from
Speaker 1: that source, I know. And you know the thing about firstly,
Speaker 1: my dad is like a manner's Nazi. So I think
Speaker 1: that I grew up feeling like the worst thing you
Speaker 1: could do was offend somebody could sit up straight in
Speaker 1: that chair, and your dad told me to say that.
Speaker 1: I oh my god, my dad still tells me to
Speaker 1: sit up straight constantly. And then and it's funny because
Speaker 1: both my my dad is an artist and he paints
Speaker 1: these sort of outlandish intense I mean, he paints things
Speaker 1: that are pretty pretty sexual images, pretty aggressive images, you know,
Speaker 1: a man with I mean, they're funny, but They're intense.
Speaker 1: It's like two men with penises for noses in a
Speaker 1: war with guns and knives with three women. And I
Speaker 1: grew up around it, but it was what was interesting
Speaker 1: was that my dad was sort of like, you can
Speaker 1: do that. Dad had penises on on the stage on
Speaker 1: his face, on everyone's face. But you know, you I
Speaker 1: grew up around it. But I think that my dad
Speaker 1: always really showed me that there was a difference between
Speaker 1: you know, what your work was and who you were,
Speaker 1: and he's My parents are so polite and so sort
Speaker 1: of they just I think so much of this. Again,
Speaker 1: I've never had kids. I've you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what that feels like. But I think six and I
Speaker 1: want kids, but I'm not ready. Please, I really just
Speaker 1: to be out tomorrow. I just got already of birth
Speaker 1: control pills for you serious kids. Now. I don't want kids.
Speaker 1: I just gotta donk and everybody thinks I'm insane. I
Speaker 1: just finished season two, starting season three. Well we're starting
Speaker 1: season three and we're starting at the end of March.
Speaker 1: So exciting. Therapist, that would be the most in the world. Bad, bad,
Speaker 1: but I forget what I'm saying. But I'm glad you
Speaker 1: don't think. I mean, I get too guilty if I
Speaker 1: ever make a mean joke app what I'm saying, I do, well,
Speaker 1: I'm terrified. It's one of the reasons I don't I
Speaker 1: don't really feel like a comedy writer, because there's sort
Speaker 1: of like a quickness and a harshness, and you need
Speaker 1: to have those people in your bullpen there. Do you
Speaker 1: have some more really traditional edgier We do have. I
Speaker 1: have a couple of writers on the staff, um one
Speaker 1: Murray Miller, who this season was really essential and sort
Speaker 1: of bringing us just hard jokes, but no one on
Speaker 1: our staff has that particular kind of darkness. I've been
Speaker 1: around a lot of those comedy writers, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's that feeling of like even when they're saying something
Speaker 1: nice to you, they're kind of trying to murder you
Speaker 1: with their eyeballs, and it's it's it becomes too much
Speaker 1: salt to the soup exactly. It's impressive to me in
Speaker 1: small doses, but terrifying. You've got to have it, but
Speaker 1: you've got to mix it carefully. Like when we did
Speaker 1: our show, there was that was a big issue where
Speaker 1: like sometimes I would say, I just think this is
Speaker 1: too mean, it's like we're gonna lose people like we
Speaker 1: want to be we want to be mean, but we
Speaker 1: have to decide who we're going to be mean too,
Speaker 1: who deserves it. My thing is also I always I
Speaker 1: only really make jokes about people I like. Like when
Speaker 1: there's a joke that references a celebrity on the show,
Speaker 1: it's usually a joke that I'm making because I have
Speaker 1: really taken note of their work and him fascinated by
Speaker 1: It's not because you slept with them and you want
Speaker 1: to get even No, I don't have that that instinct.
Speaker 1: So talk about two things. The level of control you have.
Speaker 1: I mean, you are a very young woman, and I'm
Speaker 1: assuming it's all you, correct, I mean it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: I work with Jenny and Judd really closely, and I
Speaker 1: definitely I think I'm constantly sort of telling myself I
Speaker 1: have bosses around. It kind of comforts me. I mean,
Speaker 1: and you don't do your not exactly. I have collaborators.
Speaker 1: I have collaborators, but I have collaborators who I take
Speaker 1: really seriously and who you need and who I need
Speaker 1: and who I would never I think the minute you
Speaker 1: get an attitude like it's my show, the ship runs
Speaker 1: on Dunham and my way or the Highway. I think
Speaker 1: it's broken exactly. I think you still want to feel
Speaker 1: a little fear when you share a script with your collaborators.
Speaker 1: You want to go, I hope they like this. I'm
Speaker 1: going to listen to them. When they don't, I still
Speaker 1: feel tremendously indebted to them and anxious about their reactions.
Speaker 1: And I never feel like, you know, I'm the big
Speaker 1: boss and you guys can all get with it or leave.
Speaker 1: So when the so the Hannah character you start out,
Speaker 1: I mean in tiny furniture, I almost feel like tiny
Speaker 1: furniture is it's a it's a ways you you may
Speaker 1: become one of these actresses now where it's all one series,
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of is. It's funny when I
Speaker 1: look at any character I've played in anything that I've made,
Speaker 1: you it's me, and it's it's funny. I've never played
Speaker 1: anyone whose name doesn't end with a I've made. I've
Speaker 1: written all these characters who because I always have to
Speaker 1: have a name that I think sort of likes in
Speaker 1: the world. It's the two double syllables. Someone said to me,
Speaker 1: to be a famous star, you need to have two
Speaker 1: double syllable names. You do do you? Or to monos
Speaker 1: of a Sean Penn, Marlon Brando, thank you, my mom.
Speaker 1: My mom did tell me that she gave me my name,
Speaker 1: which is so funny because it's not like we have
Speaker 1: any actors in our family. Mom said, I'm named after
Speaker 1: my Russian great grandmother. And my mom said that when
Speaker 1: she named me, she thought, I don't know what you
Speaker 1: want to do, but this is a great name if
Speaker 1: she does want to be a movie star. That was
Speaker 1: what my mom thought, which is so funny because it's
Speaker 1: not like my mom's some crazy stage mom or like
Speaker 1: she's a photographer and she what's the source of your
Speaker 1: real closeness to to the extent you can say I
Speaker 1: don't want to problem, Oh no, I don't mind. I've
Speaker 1: clearly I don't mind. We are very similar in ways
Speaker 1: that can be delightful and can be madnes Something I
Speaker 1: like about both my parents and i'd imagine you're like
Speaker 1: this with kids too, is they really talked to me
Speaker 1: like I was an adult always, And I love that,
Speaker 1: and I love I love talking to kids like they're adults,
Speaker 1: because it's like they kind of come alive when you
Speaker 1: just ask them real questions. And my mom always really
Speaker 1: let me into a world and say, like, I'm working
Speaker 1: right now, I'll talk to in ten minutes. And just
Speaker 1: having that kind of access to her was amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I've just I've always thought she was the coolest
Speaker 1: and it's funny and it's nice to see it echoed
Speaker 1: because all my friends think she's the coolest. To now, um,
Speaker 1: you're going to do how many seasons of the show
Speaker 1: are you signed on to do? Well? You know, it's
Speaker 1: not clear. I mean HBO contractually has me, I think
Speaker 1: as an actor for six years, but as a writer,
Speaker 1: and I wish I should pay more attention to my deals.
Speaker 1: But I'm just so excited to have my job. I
Speaker 1: just go, okay, whatever you say. But I think my
Speaker 1: dream world is that, you know, I want to kind
Speaker 1: of follow like you know, British shows always no British
Speaker 1: shows and thirty Rock always know just when to get
Speaker 1: off the air. The question becomes how you can maybe
Speaker 1: you know, do that TV show, and either the schedule
Speaker 1: is how many months we do? Well, we've been doing ten.
Speaker 1: I think uh, between you me and McGee, I think
Speaker 1: we might do twelve next year. But I would love that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to, Like, I don't have any desire
Speaker 1: in doing like, you know, a twenty two episode. I
Speaker 1: don't even understand how someone does the twenty two episode marathon.
Speaker 1: But I do think that doing I think that a
Speaker 1: little more would be just a little more storytelling real
Speaker 1: estate and it would be amazing. But you know, so
Speaker 1: I shoot four four and a half months out of
Speaker 1: the year, then I'm editing, then i'm doing pressed, then
Speaker 1: I'm writing, then I'm back. So so it's not four
Speaker 1: a half months. So it's not it's it's actually more
Speaker 1: like twelve months. And so did you make a movie
Speaker 1: during the breakfice? Now? No, I couldn't because there was
Speaker 1: just no time. I finished shooting in August, I was editing.
Speaker 1: Why don't you make a deal with HBO with will
Speaker 1: finance your films. You're working for them and it's all
Speaker 1: in house. It's very smart. I mean, I I really
Speaker 1: want to make a movie. I have two features grips
Speaker 1: that I've been working on that I just I want
Speaker 1: to make another before I make like a big, massive,
Speaker 1: ambitious movie. I mean, I want to make a creatively
Speaker 1: ambitious movie. But I want to make another small movie
Speaker 1: I have. I have small movie ideas. Do you have
Speaker 1: a massive, ambitious movie inside you? I do, but it's
Speaker 1: you have an idea? I do, But it's so weird.
Speaker 1: Four year old psychotherapist. There's there's a fifty four year
Speaker 1: old somebody and I mean, I'll talk to you later
Speaker 1: in traffic control. Working with you is one of my
Speaker 1: long standing dreams. But I am and I'm also I'm
Speaker 1: writing a book. So that's something that was really wired
Speaker 1: about that. It's something that was really important to me
Speaker 1: to start doing at this point in my career. And
Speaker 1: you write and produce your own TV show and you're
Speaker 1: writing a book. Who did that remind me? What are
Speaker 1: you gonna write a book about? I'm writing a book. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's about me, although it's a little less
Speaker 1: about me because it also has advice an advice component,
Speaker 1: but it's like personal essays. So is it like Paula
Speaker 1: Pell's Hey Young Girls? Oh my God, I love Hey
Speaker 1: Young Girls. Makes me so happy. Paula Pell is funny.
Speaker 1: Paula Pel is someone who's funny and not mean. She's
Speaker 1: just a dreamy person. But you know the thing that's
Speaker 1: been so great about writing the book I've always loved
Speaker 1: writing pros, and I wanted to make it a part
Speaker 1: of my career sooner rather than later, because I didn't
Speaker 1: want it to be like when I decided to write
Speaker 1: a book in ten years, it was like, oh, look,
Speaker 1: here's a celebrity memoir number fifty seven. I wanted it
Speaker 1: to really feel like I'm a person who writes pros
Speaker 1: and that it's a part of my life and career
Speaker 1: for a long time. But unlike other people that are
Speaker 1: writing books, they don't have TV shows that they're starring
Speaker 1: in and writing. When you're done doing now not just
Speaker 1: ten but twelve episodes, what do you have left to
Speaker 1: go into the book? There's stuff that's just for the book.
Speaker 1: There's an example. Well, like I write a lot about
Speaker 1: my childhood. In the book, I write a lot about
Speaker 1: my parents. I read a lot about UM college and
Speaker 1: sort of like that. I read a lot about that period.
Speaker 1: I read a lot about sort of the beginning of
Speaker 1: being sexual person. I read about relationships. I'm writing a
Speaker 1: lot about sort of female um to say about sexuality,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I've had to become more conscious about what
Speaker 1: I say and what I promote, not in a way
Speaker 1: that stifles me, but just in a way where I
Speaker 1: realized now that there are seventeen year old girls who
Speaker 1: come up to me and tell me that the show
Speaker 1: means a lot to them, and this one of your
Speaker 1: audience is influenced, this is what I learned from Some
Speaker 1: of your is genuinely and in any way influenced by
Speaker 1: what you do and say that's still tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of people. It's amazing. It's an amazing thing, and it's
Speaker 1: like it's a platform that you have to take seriously,
Speaker 1: which is why sometimes it's like I used to be
Speaker 1: really into Rihanna, that pop star, and then it's like again,
Speaker 1: I don't want to ever, you know, throw stones from
Speaker 1: my glass house, but I follow her on Instagram and
Speaker 1: I just think about how many little girls, beyond what
Speaker 1: I could even comprehend, are obsessed with Rihanna, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: she left Barbados, She's had this amazing career, she's you know,
Speaker 1: one Grammy, she's talented, and then she gets back together
Speaker 1: with Chris Brown and post a million pictures of them
Speaker 1: smoking marijuana together on a bed, and it cracks my
Speaker 1: heart in half in a way that makes me feel
Speaker 1: like Brown smoking by no, because she got back together.
Speaker 1: It's going, oh, yeah, you you made a really good joke,
Speaker 1: and I got too emotional and in my response, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I want to be it's terrible enough. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: But so you are as a role model. What won't
Speaker 1: Hannah or the other girls in the quartet do? Jenny
Speaker 1: and I talked about this a lot. We won't fuck
Speaker 1: someone because they have a nice apartment. There's not going
Speaker 1: to be any version of sort of like proceeding yourself.
Speaker 1: There's not gonna be any version of dating somebody because
Speaker 1: he can take you out to nice dinner. Wait. Wait,
Speaker 1: you're putting down my whole playbook. This is all I
Speaker 1: have left in my age. Wait a second, that is
Speaker 1: so wrong of you. Come on, it's interesting. I have
Speaker 1: so many friends who are so sort of tortured by
Speaker 1: their romantic relationships, and I think such a big part
Speaker 1: of it is that the desires of young men and
Speaker 1: young women are not caught up with each other. And
Speaker 1: I say to my wife, I do want to eat
Speaker 1: in the same restaurant every night, but I want the
Speaker 1: hostess to wear a different outfit every night. Perfect. But
Speaker 1: but so you say, they won't monetize sex, they won't
Speaker 1: monetize sex. And it's like even more subtle than that,
Speaker 1: Like I don't like a storyline that's like unless it's
Speaker 1: really saying something about where characters are. I don't like
Speaker 1: a storyline that's like, you know, he bought me an
Speaker 1: entire trousseau of dresses and so I'm his forever. Like
Speaker 1: that's just not the way that I want to idealize anything.
Speaker 1: I think that the characters, the characters can make mistakes,
Speaker 1: but they have to be emotionally responsible for the things
Speaker 1: that they've done. I don't ever want to like have
Speaker 1: a makeover scenario where someone's doing better after they've put
Speaker 1: on a great dress and you know, straight ironed their hair,
Speaker 1: Like I just there's it's a really instinctual thing, but
Speaker 1: it's just a feeling like I want women. This is
Speaker 1: so kind of hippie tip, but I want them to
Speaker 1: make their own choices. I want them to I don't
Speaker 1: want people to live in service to sort of what
Speaker 1: television things they should look like, their family things they
Speaker 1: should act. How much do you think that women, Because
Speaker 1: this is a very sensitive topic of me, because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go Norman Mailer here, but I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, the the interesting thing for society
Speaker 1: is if women, women have been allowed to make their
Speaker 1: own choices, not for the most part, for the last
Speaker 1: forty years, or at least for the last and that's
Speaker 1: reaped enormous benefits for society, and forget about just women.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, women are the only ones
Speaker 1: who can have children, and therefore in the way that
Speaker 1: we're trying to in the traditional family, even in a
Speaker 1: gay family where a man and two guys want to
Speaker 1: have a baby with a woman, or two women want
Speaker 1: to have a child together, that balance of career and
Speaker 1: ambition and so forth with family is that something that
Speaker 1: you struggle with some numbers you even think not struggling to.
Speaker 1: I mean I think about it all the time, actually
Speaker 1: because I'm because you're the product of a happy poem,
Speaker 1: and I want all the totally. I was raised to
Speaker 1: think that the two most important things you could do
Speaker 1: in your life were have a passionate, generous relationship to
Speaker 1: your work and to raise children. And so you still
Speaker 1: feel that one and I do still feel that, well,
Speaker 1: I have children, big time. I'm so excited. I don't
Speaker 1: want like to jolly pit the whole situation, but like
Speaker 1: at least two, and I think all the time about
Speaker 1: it's funny exactly. I might got Jenny Connor's daughter, Coco,
Speaker 1: who's who's eight, and his dear friend. We like to
Speaker 1: go out to see live music together. Cocoa one day
Speaker 1: was like, when do you think you're gonna have children?
Speaker 1: Just roughly? And I was like, I don't know. Cocoa, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm twenty six, so I'd like to wait
Speaker 1: till I'm like at least thirty. And she was like,
Speaker 1: at that point, I think you should um not be
Speaker 1: working on girls. And if you are working on girls,
Speaker 1: you're going to have to cut your hours down to
Speaker 1: like eight thirty to six because you need to be
Speaker 1: able to be there when they wake up, and you
Speaker 1: also need to be there with them at night. And she,
Speaker 1: basically an eight year old, sort of to school me
Speaker 1: in the way that my lifestyle would not allow for children.
Speaker 1: And she was like, you know, your boyfriend. My boyfriends
Speaker 1: a musician and he tours a lot, and she was
Speaker 1: like and she was like, he might have to quit
Speaker 1: his job. And I was like, I don't think he's
Speaker 1: going to quit his job. And she's like well, that
Speaker 1: might be hard for you too. You might have to
Speaker 1: really talk of it. Like and even just now, I
Speaker 1: just adopted a dog and I was really really it
Speaker 1: was like instead of just meeting a dog, thinking it
Speaker 1: was adorable and bringing it home, it was this tortured
Speaker 1: thing of like, am I gonna be able to give
Speaker 1: it what it needs? And what if it resents me?
Speaker 1: And at a certain point, my mom, who is really
Speaker 1: ready to play dog Grandma is planning to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time with the dog, was like she was like, Lina,
Speaker 1: it's a fucking dog. She was like, it's at a
Speaker 1: certain point she was like, I get it. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you're thinking it through, but like, this is not like
Speaker 1: adopting twins. Now. Two things that I think are kind
Speaker 1: of connected, which is how do men present themselves? You
Speaker 1: have a boyfriend, and I don't I don't want to
Speaker 1: pry to your personal life, but you how do men
Speaker 1: present themselves to you differently? You said that Hannah was
Speaker 1: this and that and a chubby girl who and now
Speaker 1: you're now the name Lena Dunham means something else to people.
Speaker 1: How do men present themselves to you now different from
Speaker 1: the way they used to it's interesting. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: so bad at knowing if anybody's hitting on me, Like
Speaker 1: someone literally has to beat me on the head with
Speaker 1: a drumstick and drag me back to their cave for
Speaker 1: me to understand that it's going on, and then you
Speaker 1: would press charges again, and then I would, and then
Speaker 1: they and then and then I hire Gloria Alred is
Speaker 1: my attorney. Yeah exactly. But you know, the thing is
Speaker 1: is that sleazy people are attracted to and sleazy people
Speaker 1: and not sleazy people are attracted to any sense of
Speaker 1: gravity toss that someone might have. So so I definitely
Speaker 1: have had more. I mean, I definitely had felt less
Speaker 1: ignored by the opposite sex. But I'm also so bad
Speaker 1: at perceiving any of it. And so, did you know
Speaker 1: your boyfriend liked to Well, we got set up on
Speaker 1: a blind date, so I knew he liked well, I
Speaker 1: didn't know he liked me, but he was pretty disposed.
Speaker 1: He was predisposed to like me because what we were
Speaker 1: going on was a date. And then that was a
Speaker 1: special situation because I went, oh, I think he likes me,
Speaker 1: and I like him, And tell me if you don't
Speaker 1: want to aswer this question, but I just find it charming.
Speaker 1: Where did you go on your first date with your boyfriend?
Speaker 1: We went to Blue Ribbon Bakery in the West Village.
Speaker 1: And the reason I was happy is because I find
Speaker 1: picking a restaurant so anxiety producing, because I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it really is start. And also, what if I
Speaker 1: choose the wrong restaurant and you have a bad association
Speaker 1: with it or you think I'm sleezy Exactly, it's just
Speaker 1: the worst. And like what if we go there and
Speaker 1: you don't like muffin? Exactly? It's so stressful. So he said,
Speaker 1: before I even had to say anything, he said, if
Speaker 1: it's stressful for you, I can pick the restaurant. And
Speaker 1: I felt like, okay, I'm going to be in great hands.
Speaker 1: Where did you pick? And then you picked Blue and Maker?
Speaker 1: And then I ate a cheese and then I ordered
Speaker 1: a hamburger and he said, I think you should get
Speaker 1: cheese on it. It's not nice. And you went, oh
Speaker 1: my god, yeah, that's easily. I was so glad you, like,
Speaker 1: did my mom call you for this date? And let
Speaker 1: you know I like Yarlsberg exactly. Somebody is suggesting that
Speaker 1: one of Yarlsburger And then and then you know you've
Speaker 1: been dating for a while. Yeah, like almost a year.
Speaker 1: It's been. He's a very very great person to meet
Speaker 1: you and tell me if I'm onto something here. You
Speaker 1: seem like someone that regardless of what you look like
Speaker 1: or didn't look like, or what you had or didn't have,
Speaker 1: whoever you were, you have a very very healthy and
Speaker 1: kind of guileless sense of who you are, and you
Speaker 1: presented yourself to people your entire life going this is
Speaker 1: who I am, and if you like me, great, and
Speaker 1: if you don't, there's another six point five billion people
Speaker 1: out there to go for it. Am I Right? That's
Speaker 1: a really stretched much. That's the most lovely way of
Speaker 1: putting it. I mean, I think I think I always
Speaker 1: had a feeling like if you just stick around and
Speaker 1: continue to be yourself, the correct people will find you.
Speaker 1: And that's something that's been so wonderful about the show
Speaker 1: is that it kind of confirmed that for me, which
Speaker 1: is not everyone watches it, but the people who watch
Speaker 1: it understand it. And that feeling I'm sure you've had
Speaker 1: this before of uniting with your appropriate audience and sort
Speaker 1: of uniting with your people is like about as comforting
Speaker 1: as feelings get. M you two can unite comfortably with
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham over the unique discomfort of being a woman
Speaker 1: in your twenties. Today, Girls is on Sunday nights on HBO.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing