EXCLUSIVE: ‘Love Island USA' Star Leah Kateb Named as Chief Creative Officer and Re-founder of Clean Fragrance Brand Skylar
Under her creative direction, Skylar is set to launch a series of fresh fragrances in the coming months, as well as host several in-person activations to unite consumers with the new scents. 'Something that's really important to me is connecting with my supporters outside of the phone. We have a lot of things coming up that go outside of just posting an Instagram picture. I really want this to feel like a community,' Kateb said. ' I don't want it to just feel like an ad because to me it's not an ad. It really is something very important, and I want people to feel like it's ours.'
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Kateb's path to perfumer started the moment she put her life on pause for reality TV last summer. The casting directors for 'Love Island USA' reached out to her while she was working as a quality control analyst for a company working with medical devices.
Indeed, Kateb wound up joining the storied season six cast of 'Love Island USA' as one of the original islanders who came in on night one. In six weeks of filming, her witty one-liners and candid impressions went viral, which lent a hand in the season's overall success as the most-watched reality show with more than 919.1 million minutes watched in just one week last year. She came off the show as a runner-up, alongside her now boyfriend, Miguel Harichi, and was greeted with over 3.6 million followers, up 3.55 million from when she entered. 'I still cry to this day. I don't think I'll ever get used to it,' Kateb said of the tremendous support she's received online.
In the months since the season finale, Kateb's posted a wide variety of content on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, from vegan restaurant reviews to 'get ready with me' videos. Her influence has been ineffable; just one video of her shower routine caused the Eos Vanilla Cashmere 24-Hour Moisture Body Lotion to sell out completely. She's been tapped by major brands and retailers, such as Skims, Amazon and Google, for partnerships, too. Yet, her dream of starting her own perfume collection has always remained a priority.
' Something that I was really, really interested in, and one of the first things I mentioned when I had a meeting with a bunch of (talent) agencies, was that I wanted my own perfume line,' she explained.
The opportunity to work with Skylar was meant to be. Kateb discovered the brand when she was searching for a vanilla scent at Sephora years ago. She still extols that same Vanilla Sky perfume to her millions of followers today, which is what ultimately caught Skylar's attention. ' I made a perfume video and I was saying, 'What are my top perfumes?' And Skylar saw that, and then lo and behold, they reached out to United Talent Agency and our stars aligned,' Kateb noted.
' I really loved everything about the brand. I thought it was really interesting that it was clean beauty. Up until recently, I didn't know I had eczema, and so I would always keep trying perfumes and it would give me crazy rashes where I would break out in the hives. Skylar was probably one of the only perfumes that didn't irritate me,' Kateb said.
Now, she's 'getting her hands dirty,' contributing far more than just advertisements. 'I tell the team to involve me in absolutely everything. We have this groupchat, and I'm constantly texting in it. I'm writing up the recipes. I have so many scents that I've created that I'm so excited about,' she noted.
Kateb's appointment comes amid Skylar's total reinvention. David Dreyer, chief marketing officer of Starco Brands, Skylar's parent company, told WWD that Kateb has been essential in the brand's makeover. 'We initially approached Leah as she was very public about her love for our fragrances. As we started talking further, we just fell in love. She had such a strong command of the category and vision for Skylar, that making her our chief creative officer was a no-brainer,' he said.
Dreyer continued: 'Leah is helping us reimagine Skylar from the ground up: bringing us back to our California roots, creating new scents, redefining our vibe and shaping the future of fragrance.'
The fragrance brand was originally founded by Cat Chen as a cruelty-free, hypoallergenic scent solution. Four years after its creation, Skylar aimed to beat its perfume mecca competitors through innovation. It unveiled a new logo, stronger formula concentrates and sustainable packaging, graduating from eau de toilette to eau de parfum. In April, the brand capitalized on the burgeoning fragrance mist boom with the release of its inaugural SPF/fragrance hybrid called Boardwalk Delight Scent-Screen Mist.
As of now, the details of Skylar's new scents and their release dates are being kept under wraps. 'There's just so much in the works. Unfortunately, nothing we can leak yet, but it's going to be a lot of fun,' Kateb cheekily added. That said, the possibility of a Persian love cake-inspired scent is high as Kateb likened herself to such.
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Vox
25 minutes ago
- Vox
Little videos are cooking our brains
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Before the next era of TikTok and its clones overwhelms you, it helps to know how we got here and how to run the other direction. Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images As an elder millennial, I've tried to avoid TikTok because of its documented brainrot potential and despite the fact that it means missing out on an endless supply of fun and strangely specific memes. But somehow, little short-form vertical videos keep finding their way to me. Whether they're on Instagram, Netflix, or Pinterest, swipeable smartphone-shaped videos have taken over the internet. They're also showing up in places you wouldn't expect, like Spotify, LinkedIn, and even the New York Times. And whether you enjoy these bite-size bits of content or not, the situation is about to get much weirder. The dark future of vertical video In the near future, the internet may not only be wall-to-wall little videos. Those little videos may also be filled with slop, the term for AI-generated garbage content that is perhaps even more insidious in robbing us of our attention. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Last week, Google started rolling out its Veo 3 AI-powered video generation model, which can create eight-second clips, complete with realistic soundtracks, based on text prompts. After creating a dozen videos of her own, including some for kids, Allison Johnson at the Verge called this tool 'a slop monger's dream' that's 'more than a little creepy and way more sophisticated' than she'd imagined. String together a few of these clips, and you've got a piece of short-form content perfect for TikTok or any of its antecedents that took mere minutes to create. YouTube announced last month that the tool would be built right into its own TikTok clone, YouTube Shorts. These videos are already taking over short-form video platforms. Some of them are racist. AI slop may soon also dominate the ads you're served on these platforms, too. These ads, while currently laughable, will get much better, according to Mark Zuckerberg, who says Meta will completely automate the creation of ads and even make it possible for ads to exist in infinite versions and evolve based on when and where a person sees them. And as algorithmic feeds of short-form videos spread to more places online, it will be increasingly hard to avoid them. We've known for a while that the rise of AI would flood the internet with slop. Slop is already remarkably popular on YouTube, where nearly half of the 10 most popular channels contain AI-generated content. There are even virtual personalities powered by AI earning millions on YouTube. These platforms know that making content easier to produce will lead to more content, which leads to more engagement, which leads to more ads, which ultimately leads to a less enriching, more addictive internet. That's why YouTube is pushing Veo 3 to its creators, and why, as of last month, TikTok and Open AI have pushed out similar tools. This wouldn't be such a concern if you wanted to seek out awful AI-generated videos. Instead, the slop finds you unwittingly and drowns you in anxiety. These platforms know that making content easier to produce will lead to more content, which leads to more engagement, which leads to more ads, which ultimately leads to a less enriching, more addictive internet. 'You can think of it as attentional capacity, and we can use that capacity to get work done, to do important things,' said Gloria Mark, author of Attention Span and professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, whose research landed on that 47-second number. 'But if we're switching our attention, that's draining our tank of resources, and then we just don't have the capacity anymore to pay attention.' Before the next era of TikTok and its clones overwhelms you, it helps to know how we got here and how to run the other direction. Can you opt out of the endless-loop internet? There's a popular narrative that TikTok owes its success to Vine, a short-form video service founded in 2012 only to be bought by Twitter a few months later. It's a nice thought. Vine, like Twitter itself, was accidentally successful. While many young people first encountered a feed for weird and hilarious short-form videos on Vine, it was the TikTok algorithm that led to that platform's success, not to mention the long line of companies trying to draft off that success. That algorithm finds its roots in a viral news app called Toutiao, which ByteDance released in China the same year that Vine launched in the US. (Yes, this is the same ByteDance that now owns TikTok.) The platform's big innovation was a complex recommendation engine that used machine learning, a type of AI, to create a highly personalized feed for its users based on their interests and behavior — down to their swipes, location, and even their phone's battery life — rather than what people you know are doing online. The algorithm proved extremely effective at getting people to spend more time on the app. ByteDance made this algorithm the foundation of TikTok's video feed, when it launched in 2017 (a version of the app, Douyin, launched in China two years earlier). If you find yourself stuck Try these three tips from professor Gloria Mark: Take breaks. If, rather than enjoying yourself, you find yourself foraging for interesting content, stand up and go outside and look at a tree. There are . If, rather than enjoying yourself, you find yourself foraging for interesting content, stand up and go outside and look at a tree. There are lots of apps that prompt you to put down the device. Be intentional rather than automatic when you use any app. If you tap TikTok because you don't know what else to do, that's a sign that you're tired and low on cognitive resources. Think ahead to your future self. Visualize what you want at the end of your day and how you'll get there. It probably doesn't involve spending 108 minutes looking at TikTok. Early on, a one-minute length limit meant that TikTok users were fed videos constantly, often serendipitously, on their For You page. That limit has since been extended to 60 minutes, but users have also learned they can swipe to see a new, unexpected video as soon as they're bored. This can lead users to keep searching for good videos, which are effectively rewards, triggering dopamine release and effectively getting them addicted to the feedback loop. As Mark put it, 'The hardest behavior to extinguish, to stop, is randomly reinforced behavior, and the reason is because of the randomness of the rewards coming.' The short-form nature of these videos, rapid context-switching, and resultant digital overload has multiple negative effects. A 2023 study from researchers in Germany found that TikTok use impairs our prospective memory, which is what allows you to hold more than one thought in your head when you're distracted. The subjects of the study were given a task, then interrupted and allowed to scroll Twitter, watch YouTube, thumb through TikTok, or do nothing. The people who chose TikTok were nearly 40 percent more likely to forget what they were doing. Researchers studying this phenomenon argue that this amounts to a dark pattern, a design that manipulates you to make certain choices. You've encountered dark patterns on websites that trick you into signing up for a newsletter or an ad you can't click out of. Torrents of short-form videos like you see on TikTok are especially pernicious because the feeds are designed to keep you fully engaged and foraging for good content. 'They keep us in an endless loop. We kind of detach from the things that we were engaged with before,' Francesco Chiossi, a researcher at LMU Munich and the study's lead author, told me. 'They are engineered to maximize engagement at the expense of our attention and stability of what we call goal-directed behavior.' It would be comforting for me to report that you can easily avoid getting stuck in these loops. It's actually getting harder. You can avoid TikTok, but you might love Netflix, which is rolling out its own TikTok-like video feed on its mobile app. I use Spotify daily, sometimes against my better judgment, but the discovery feature keeps pushing me to watch little video clips rather than simply listen to music. On the LinkedIn video tab, its TikTok clone, a work influencer recently warned me against 'peanut-buttering every channel instead of going deep on a few channels.' I spent at least 47 seconds trying to figure out what that meant. There's a pretty straightforward lesson here, though. If you like to watch these little videos, by all means: Enjoy. But know that, like most free things big tech companies make today, these products are designed to keep you engaged, to steal as much of your attention as possible as they collect data about you and serve ads to you based on what that data reveals. TikTok and its many little siblings are free because you're the product. Consider taking some of the minutes — or hours — back from TikTok and its many little video clones. You might discover something wonderful in the real world, if you pay attention.
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Travel + Leisure
27 minutes ago
- Travel + Leisure
These Hotels Are The Closest You Can Stay to the 'Love Island USA' Villa in Fiji—and Rooms Start at Just $74 a Night
The newest season of Love Island USA has broken streaming records—the first week of episodes racked up more than one billion minutes of viewership. With the third week just wrapped, it's nearly impossible to avoid words like 'Casa Amor,' 'good chat,' and 'Nicolandria' on your social media feed. And even if you don't watch the show, you may have seen that Megan Thee Stallion recently entered the villa, further cementing the show as the reality TV watch of the summer. Super fans have been attempting to geolocate the Love Island USA villa, which is somewhere in Fiji. But while everyone scours Google Maps to find out where Ace is plotting against Jeremiah, Travel + Leisure reached out to Melissa Natawake, the business events manager at Tourism Fiji, to help Love Island set-jetters recreate their own Love Island- style escape (without the world trying to vote you off the island). Tourism Fiji is staying mum on the exact location of the Love Island villa, but we can confirm that it is closed to the public, all the time. 'The area is restricted to production personnel during filming and is not open to the public,' Natawake told T+L. 'The Love Island site is on the western side of Fiji.' The villa is a private property, you can't book a stay, even when filming is finished. However, you can book accommodations very close to the villa. Natawake says that the two hotels closest to where the show is filmed are First Landing Beach Resort and Villas and Landers Bay Resort & Spa. (For those keeping track, that's on the northwestern side of the island.) First Landing has stunning villas, while Landers Bay is adults-only. Both have beach access and are not too far from Koroyanitu National Heritage Park. First Landing starts at around $171 per night, while Landers Bay starts at $74 per night. Both hotels are about a 30-minute drive from the Nadi International Airport (NAN). Natawake also recommends other hotels in the area, including The Fiji Orchid and Tanoa Waterfront Hotel. Love Islanders are not typically allowed out of the production area during filming. They aren't filmed on Saturdays, and they are otherwise not permitted to leave the villa unless the producers send them out on a date. Fortunately, tourists do not have to follow production rules. When you tire of lying out by the pool, there's plenty to do in the surrounding area. During the time she wasn't hosting, Megan Thee Stallion showed off some of the activities available in the area. She hit the beach, went on ATV tours, and caught a stunning sunset. Natawake has a comprehensive list of things to do in Fiji, including a visit to Viseisei Village (the oldest settlement in Fiji), going to the Sabeto Hot Spring and Mud Pool, ziplining and waterfall exploring, heading to the Malamala Beach Club, taking a traditional Fijian cooking class, touring local towns and markets, and going on a safari tour. 'The production has leased the villa for the next two years,' Natawake told T+L. That means that for the next two summers, there's a chance your stay on the island will coincide with the filming of the eighth and ninth seasons of Love Island USA , if you get the timing right. Imagine coming back from the beach, sun-kissed and a little sleepy, to watch the show that's being filmed on the very same island you're exploring. 'With the rise of social media and the visibility of recognizable local spots and services featured in the show, local interest has grown significantly,' Natawake said. 'The original Celebrity Love Island was filmed in Fiji from 2005 to 2006 before the franchise was rebooted around 2015.' Love Island USA was filmed in Fiji in 2019, then came back in 2023 after briefly leaving due to pandemic-related restrictions. 'Fiji remains a favorite of the ITV franchise thanks to its cinematic landscapes, brand consistency, ease of access with a remote feel, and strong support from the Fijian government and Tourism Fiji, including destination incentives and rebates,' Natawake says. Beyond increasing recognition from locals, it is also having a notable impact on the economy. Natawake said that Suva, Fiji, had a 70 percent year-over-year increase in searches between 2023 and 2024, and an 18 percent spike in searches following the 2024 premiere of the show. The actual production of the show is also driving an economic boom. Natawake said Love Island USA 's production team books over 500 rooms in the Nadi region for around six to eight weeks. 'Productions like Love Island USA bring significant economic impact—booking hundreds of rooms for weeks at a time, employing locals across hospitality, transport, logistics, and security, and supporting nearby communities through the purchase of food, materials, and services,' Natawake said. 'The benefits are far-reaching across both the tourism and creative industries.' Yes. If you are a fan of both shows, you'll be pleased to know that the villa is about an hour away via boat.
Los Angeles Times
38 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
When Lena met Megan: How a DM blossomed into ‘Too Much'
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. '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. '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.'
