When Lena met Megan: How a DM blossomed into 'Too Much'

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2 days ago

This article contains some spoilers for Netflix's "Too Much."
Sliding into someone's DMs — even with the purest intentions — can be a daunting move. Will they see it? Is it weird? Will they respond? Lena Dunham, the creator of HBO's "Girls," saw it as a shot for her latest creative collaboration.
It began with a shout-out. It was 2022 and Dunham was fangirling over images of Megan Stalter, who was attending her first Emmys as part of the cast of "Hacks," in a sheer red lace slip dress. Dunham posted one to her Instagram stories, calling Stalter one of the best-dressed women in Hollywood.
Stalter responded and before long, the exchange led to a message from Dunham about a project she wanted to discuss with her. Stalter didn't see the message right away. Not that Dunham was keeping tabs herself — she enlists someone to handle her social media footprint because, as she says, "I don't shop in that aisle."
"I kept saying to my friend, who runs my social media, 'Anything from Meg? Any word from Meg?'" Dunham says while seated next to Stalter recently. "It's the first time I really shot my shot that way. But I thought, you miss 100% of the shots you don't make."
Now, they're joining forces in "Too Much," Dunham's big return to television since her semi-autobiographical creation "Girls" drew both praise and criticism more than a decade ago with its intimate glimpse at the messy friendships, ambitions and sexual misadventures of four 20-something white women in New York.
But "Too Much" isn't a story about friendship or sex. It's about love — Dunham's version. It's loosely inspired by her move to London and eventual marriage to musician Luis Felber, who co-created the series with Dunham.
In the series, which premiered Thursday, Stalter stars as Jessica, an eccentric and complacent but capable producer at a commercial agency who moves to London from New York — her pint-size scraggly dog in tow — after her seven-year relationship blows up. Her over-romanticized vision of life across the pond, fueled by love stories like "Sense and Sensibility" set in pastoral England, starts out more bedraggled than charmed.
But on her first night there, she meets Felix (Will Sharpe), a wayward punk musician who takes an interest in her fish-out-of-water vibe. After a bathroom meet-cute with confusing results — he walks her home, she makes the first move on her couch, he reveals he's seeing someone and leaves, then she accidentally sets herself on fire while making a TikTok video — they quickly form an attachment that turns into a swift and tender, albeit complicated, romance of two people trying not to let their personal baggage get in the way.
It brings Stalter — whose profile has risen precipitously since her run of making viral character sketches on Twitter and TikTok led to her turn on "Hacks" as Kayla, the seemingly hapless assistant-turned-Hollywood manager who is actually good at the job despite her daffy persona — sharply into focus as a quirky and relatable leading woman. Dunham saw that potential.
Read more: Megan Stalter always knew she was 'special.' The rest of us are finally catching up
"I watched the show where she was hosting people making snacks," says Dunham, referring to Netflix's "Snack vs. Chef," a snack-making competition.
"My nephew watched it by himself," Stalter interjects with a laugh that turns wistful.
"He watched it by himself?"
"Yes, my sister said recently she found out he watched it by himself. He's 7. He's just an amazing angel."
"I watched it and thought: 'She's a genius,'" Dunham continues. "I just felt that she had amazing range that was — I'm not even going to say she wasn't tapping into it because it was there, even in her comedy. The biggest thing with centering someone in a show is, you have to want to watch them. You have to sort of be addicted to watching them. And that's how I feel about her. I just knew that she would inspire me as a writer and as a director."
Stalter and Dunham, both in trendy suit attire, are nestled on a couch at Netflix's office in New York City like two friends about to settle in for a night of "Love Island" after work — except they're just video conferencing into this interview. Their bond and banter reveals itself early. Stalter says she is not someone who worships celebrities — "I don't even know actors' names sometimes" — but stresses that she is a "mega, mega, mega Lena/'Girls' fan" and is still processing their collaboration.
"It was always going to be Meg, it was written for Meg," Dunham says.
Stalter imbues Jess with equal measures of absurdity and charm, making the character as easy to rally behind as Bridget Jones or Sally Albright — whether she is waddling to the bathroom post-coitus or accidentally posting a series of TikTok videos, meant to stay in drafts, that take aim at her ex's new girlfriend. But the show illuminates how she is at her most alluring when vulnerability is in reserve.
Midway through 'Too Much,' a flashback episode unravels Jessica's pain: It tracks the rise and fall of her previous relationship with Zev (Michael Zegen), from the sweet early days, to the growing pains and then brutal emotional withdrawal. Jess' attempt to discuss their troubles — after learning she's pregnant — leads to a devastating exchange and the end of their relationship. The epilogue to their union is a brokenhearted Jess having an abortion.
'It was important to me that we feel that they [Jess and Felix] have a past and that's the thing they're wrestling with — they're not wrestling with whether they like the other one or understand the other one or are attracted to the other; it's not external forces that are keeping them apart,' Dunham says. 'It's what we're all up against, which is our own pain and our own trauma and our own inability to move past it because it's hard.'
The episode was also an opportunity to show a realistic and nuanced portrayal of abortion, Dunham says, where Jess wrestles with the decision but not because she feels guilty or believes she's doing the wrong thing: "She's just sad because oftentimes when a person has to terminate a pregnancy, there's a lot of factors around them that are challenging — just because something is an emotional decision doesn't mean it's wrong."
Dunham says she considered the Jess-Zev breakup the central mystery of the show.
'It's funny because I acted like what happened between Jess and Zev was like me keeping a plot point from 'Lost' secret,' she says. 'And it's just that they broke up. It's a totally normal breakup, but to her, it's like her rosebud, it's her 'Citizen Kane.'"
Stalter found it refreshing that Dunham wanted to show someone in their mid-30s still grappling with the pains of a past relationship while falling in love — and learning that love is not always the magical cure.
Read more: How Lena Dunham learned to love her childhood self through writing a film
"I actually think that being in love is bringing up everything that's ever happened to you because you're finally with someone that's safe," Stalter says. "You're like, 'Wait, what if you knew this about me? Would you still make me feel safe? OK — what if you knew this about me? We still safe?"
While "Too Much" is another narrative inspired by her life, Dunham knew from its inception that she was not interested in being the face of the series. Even before "Girls" premiered in 2012, the attention on Dunham, whose prior work was the 2010 indie film "Tiny Furniture," was intense. Over its six-season run, the buzz around "Girls" — a series she wrote, sometimes directed and played the central character in — also opened it up to criticisms and commentary about representation, the privileged and self-absorbed behavior of its millennial characters and Dunham's prolific nudity.
She largely retreated from television when "Girls" ended — she co-created HBO's short-lived comedy "Camping" and directed the network's pilot of "Industry." Dunham says the experience of "Girls" — and the time away — gave her a clearer sense of who she is and her limitations as she approached this new series in her late 30s.
"There was a moment where it seemed like her [Meg's] schedule might not work and I remember saying, 'I don't know if I want to make this show if that's the case.' I wasn't like, 'I don't want to put myself through this, therefore it's Meg.' But separately, I don't really want to put myself through it."
In the beginning, with "Girls," Dunham says she was able to brush off the criticism. But the commentary was relentless, even in her day-to-day life.
"I was in a recovery room at a hospital and a nurse said, 'Why do you get naked on television all the time?'" she recalls. "We live in a strange time where people act like they don't have power over what they're viewing. They act like you held their eyeballs open with a weird eyeball machine and force them to watch your show and they are living a trauma as a result.
"It created a lot of anger in me and I don't like to be angry. I think because I don't like to be angry, I really suppressed that. And suppressed anger has to come out somewhere," she adds. "And because I deal with chronic illness, it made it harder to bear that. I was swallowing down so much rage."
There isn't as much sex and nudity in "Too Much." But there's some. As someone whose success began online, where trolls are in high supply, Stalter has learned to navigate unsolicited feedback about her appearance.
"I haven't been on TV that long, but I have been a comedian that posts online for a long time," she says. "I love the way I look and I love my brain and my heart so much that someone calling me fat online, I'm like, 'Honey, there's a lot of Reddit threads about that. Who cares?' If you're not attracted to me, good thing we're not dating, I guess. I'm almost 35 — I'm so happy that I feel this way about myself."
While Stalter is the beating heart of the show, Dunham is among the memorable supporting players as Jessica's sister Nora. The character, who has moved in with her grandmother (Rhea Perlman) and mother (Rita Wilson), is confronting her own crossroads after her husband, played by former "Girls" co-star Andrew Rannells, decides he wants freedom to explore his sexuality. The split leaves her bedbound, hardly attentive to the teenage son they share.
"Nora is proud of her sister, but she's also jealous — she is trapped in the very space Jessica deemed tragic and pathetic, at home with their family," Dunham says. "Even her son seems to find it fairly pathetic, and his father gets to be the hero, despite having left. I'm not a mother, but I can relate to feeling stuck because of obligation and also to wondering when it's going to be your turn to make the decision that's right for you. She doesn't get her 'next act' and has to live with the one she's got. If we get to make a second season, I have a lot to mine here."
It's unclear how much of "Too Much" there will be. The season closes in romantic-comedy fashion, with its main couple, despite the road bumps, choosing each other and getting married. But Dunham has more to say.
"We don't always have control of how much we get to make," Dunham says. "I thought about this with the first season of 'Girls' — if this show never comes back, then I want to end with Hannah eating cake on the beach after her boyfriend got hit by a truck. That's what needs to happen. And we know how we wanted this to end. But as in life, a happy ending is just the beginning of a different life with someone. And so — "
"Twenty more seasons!" Stalter cheerily interjects.
"It's going to run for seasons upon seasons," Dunham continues. "But I do think about marriage comedies. I'm really obsessed with 'Mr. Mom,' with Michael Keaton. And I love 'Mad About You.' I love a comedy that lets us see what's behind keeping a marriage going. I would love the chance to see them being parents."
"Having triplets," Stalter adds.
"I'd love to film Meg getting a C-section for the triplets," Dunham says.
Stalter quips: "A whole episode is the whole C-section."
While "Too Much" puts Dunham fully in her romantic comedy era, it wasn't originally intended to be a show about love. Before she met Felber, Dunham was mulling tapping into her experience of spending extended periods in England for work and the culture clash of a brassy American coming to the U.K. Then she met Felber, and "it was the first time I ever felt like I was living in a romantic comedy," she says. "I always felt like I was living in a sad, gritty romantic drama where they don't end up together in the end, and someone falls asleep in a puddle."
"Too Much" features episode titles that pay homage to romance films like "Notting Hill," "Pretty Woman" and "Love Actually." Dunham says the rom-com genre was the first she ever loved, but developed internalized snobbery around it as she got older.
"I felt like I was having this innocent romantic forced out of me," she says. "By the time I was in my 20s, I felt embarrassed to be that romantic person. I felt as though to even feel that way was sort of naive and silly. I didn't feel like I was allowed to want the things that I wanted or ask for the things that I really needed."
As she got older and started dating again after a period of being single in her early 30s, that began to change.
"When I met my husband, I was kind of back in that place in my 20s, where I thought, 'This is not something that's going to happen for me,'" she says. "And as a result, I was very honest and I was very blunt, and I think it ended up having a really interesting effect, which is that it actually made it possible for us to get to know each other, and in turn, created something that was more romantic than anything I'd experienced before."
Enough to approach him with a proposal about a month into their relationship: Will you make this show with me?
He said yes. In the time since, they've collaborated on other projects — she worked on two of Felber's music videos and he helped score her 2022 film "Sharp Stick." Working on a TV show, though, was a big commitment early into their relationship. But it turns out it wasn't too much.
"I remember thinking we could make something really cool if all the universe and all the Tetris pieces of life fall into place," he says in a separate video call. "When you're at the beginning of a relationship and you feel like someone's taste matches yours, improves yours — that was Lena. I didn't understand what it meant — 'Hey, do you want to make a TV show with me?' I was like, 'What does that entail? Do I walk up and down the room just cracking jokes and you write them down?' She's like, 'Basically.' I was like, 'I could do that.'"
It's not their story directly, but the show was a way for them to put their experiences together.
"Our love was the germ of this, or the nucleus of it; we always wanted to make something joyful. But when you're going on set every day with your partner, you learn a lot about them quickly," he says. "Most couples get home from work and are like, 'How was your day, my love?' We had that down. I think it was a catalyst to our relationship, in a way. To be able to see Lena direct, act and write was like, 'Wow.' It was so inspiring to be around someone like that."
Dunham's mark on the rom-com genre is still in progress. She's currently in production on the upcoming film "Good Sex," also for Netflix, about a 40-something couples therapist who reenters the dating scene: "The film is very much an examination of what it is to exit your 30s and wonder if your exploration decades have come to a close," Dunham says. "It's a question we are always asking ourselves because the 30s were the new 20s, but what are the 40s, especially if you haven't chosen to, or been able to be, a parent?"
The film boasts Natalie Portman, Rashida Jones, Mark Ruffalo and '90s rom-com queen Meg Ryan. There isn't an Instagram backstory involved with the casting of that Meg. Dunham says she approached Ryan while at Taylor Swift's Eras tour stop in London.
"I tend to let icons have their space, but she and I shared Nora Ephron as a guiding force in our lives, and so I really just wanted to talk about Nora because remembering her makes me happy," Dunham shared in a follow-up email. "It led to a lovely, nonwork lunch and burgeoning friendship and I wrote with her in mind. But I was still stunned and honored when she said yes. Watching her at the table read, Natalie and Rashida and I were just pinching ourselves. Afterwards, we all texted 'Meg f—ing Ryan!' What can I say — I may be long sober, but I'm addicted to Megs."
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.