Lena Dunham on her new show Too Much, the allure of New York and TV's double standard

Globe and Mail

2 days ago

I love Lena Dunham. She's generous with her candour, despite the vitriol of her haters. She wants to get to the bottom of what she notices, even if the bottom isn't the prettiest place to be. With her new Netflix series, Too Much (arriving July 10), she gives us a messy heroine at a messy moment in her life – messy meaning human – and invites us to ponder whether all those romantic comedies we've internalized are good for us or not.
Jessica, played by Megan Stalter (the overconfident nepo-baby agent on Hacks), is a fledgling producer at a New York commercial agency. She has a loving but chaotic family – grandmother (Rhea Perlman), mother (Rita Wilson), older sister (Dunham) – and a callous ex-boyfriend (Michael Zegen), who stopped loving her and then found countless ways to blame her for it.
She accepts a short-term assignment at the London office, where her co-workers, led by Richard E. Grant, dismiss her in new, British ways. And then she meets Felix (Will Sharpe), a musician whose own screwed-up-ness is disguised by his dreamboat exterior. Jessica's three-steps-forward, two-back progress is mirrored by the flashbacks Dunham employs to deepen her story, and Stalter is as physically and emotionally fearless as Dunham herself was on her previous series, the zeitgeist-grabbing Girls. Reader, she made me cry.
Yeah, yeah, parts of Too Much sound semi-autobiographical: Dunham made some blunders amplified by social media; moved from New York to London in 2021 (I recommend her New Yorker essay about breaking up with the city she grew up in, as the child of two artist parents); met and married a musician, Luis Felber, who co-created the series. But name a decent piece of art that isn't.
Here are highlights from a recent video interview with Dunham.
What questions were you asking yourself while writing Too Much?
I was trying to look at and deconstruct the influences that gave me my idea of what being an adult woman is supposed to look like. As a kid I was obsessed with The Mary Tyler Moore Show, That Girl, Gidget. That unflappable, 'She's always getting herself into a sticky situation and getting herself out of it.' In your 20s, you don't know what you're supposed to be like; that's what Girls was about. Once I hit 30, I started thinking about all these 'supposed-tos,' and the ways in which my life didn't look like that.
I remember calling my mother, really upset: 'I see all these women in the street, it's seven in the morning and they've already exercised and made their own coffee at home and the coffee is in a canister, and I cannot get out of bed before 9:30 if I'm not working, and that's on a good day.' I realized that Mary Richards, if she was around now, would definitely make herself a smoothie and put on exercise pants and a matching vest, because Mary was equipped and ready. I had this consistent feeling of being behind, being unprepared. Looking around the room, thinking, 'There's supposed to be an adult here' – oh god, it's me.
So I wanted to centre in a romantic comedy a woman who realistically struggles with the things I and many people I know struggle with. Minus the montage of her suddenly cleaning her apartment and blowing out her hair and she's ready for life.
There's a beautiful moment where Felix tells Jess he loves her body. How important was that to you?
It was important to me and to Meg that whatever Jess is beating herself up about, it's not about what her body looks like. We talked a lot about how to do it. I've dated people who said a version of this to me: 'I don't want you to worry, your body not being size zero is not a problem for me.' They may have said it lightly more elegantly than that, but only lightly. When I met my husband, 'Don't worry' was not a part of the dialogue. The compliments were never, 'Insert light neg, but.' He never said anything that made me feel like there was another reality in which I could look a different way. I didn't realize I'd been missing that until I had it. Because even the body positivity movement is saying, 'Don't worry, it's okay.' What if we just took all that out of the picture?
Did moving to London reawaken you creatively in the way you hoped it would?
Yes. Although I published that essay about leaving New York, then promptly headed back to shoot all over the city all summer. It was the most me thing ever. My timing has never been ideal.
I met my husband in London, that was obviously a big thing. I've found great collaborators here. But it also created some space for me to reimmerse myself in reading, watching films, painting. Girls was an amazing but all-encompassing experience. New York is such a productivity-based culture, it's easy to forget that you can't drive a car that's out of gas. I feel lucky in a way that my chronic health condition told me that I was burnt out.
Typically for you, you've been open about your Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, endometriosis and fibromyalgia.
It doesn't always feel like a luxury when you get sat on your butt by your own body turning against you. But it was a luxury to be able to pause.
Let's talk about this maddening phenomenon where women who write some version of their experience get dismissed as limited, while men who do the same are hailed as authentic.
I do get frustrated, not even on my own behalf, because I so often see women or queer people who are making things that are deeply developed pieces of work, which are being treated like they're attention-seeking tweets. It's hard for some people to believe that I got into this for reasons other than attention or fame. But truly, I don't even like compliments that much; they stress me out and make me turn red, and I immediately have to turn around and compliment the other person. I'm always like, 'Am I making enough of an appreciative face that they'll think I'm humble, but also like the compliment?' The reason I do any of this is the work.
Do the harsh comments bother you?
If I make you so angry, please go find something you enjoy. There's more content than there's ever been. I actually cannot relate to the way people act as if they're having their eyes held open and images forced into their brains like in Clockwork Orange. I wouldn't even click on a picture of Trump on Insta.
There's an Easter egg in the final episode of Too Much, where we hear your voice call 'cut.' You sound so happy.
It's a bit embarrassing, I sound like I'm a fourth-grader directing a school play. But my directing style is enthusiastic. I really get in there with actors, we're working it out, I'm gesticulating a lot. I'm super collaborative; I hire people I love and trust and try to give them a lot of agency. I can't help but notice that men are often treated like auteurs, whereas people will ask me stuff like, 'Were you in the editing room?' Of course I'm there. There's this assumption that the craft, the aesthetic, aren't yours, and my favourite part is the craft.
Tell me a craft-related story.
When I directed the film Catherine Called Birdy –
A fantastic film, starring Bella Ramsey. On Netflix.
On the first day, I showed up early to walk through the medieval village alone. I will never forget it as long as I live. It was my favourite book when I was 10, I wanted to make it for 25 years, and there I was, walking in a village we created. I cannot believe this is my job. I hope everyone who works on my sets feels that way: 'I can't believe that we get to do this together.'
This interview has been edited and condensed.