Latest news with #Antonoff
Graziadaily
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Graziadaily
Lena Dunham And Jack Antonoff: Their Relationship And Break Up Explained
There's no denying that Lena Dunham is a millennial icon. And with her new series, Too Much, finally available to stream from today, rom-com fans cannot contain their excitement. Too Much follows the story of Jessica, a New Yorker who relocates to London to restart her life and career after experiencing heart break with her boyfriend, Zev. In London, she falls in love with an unlikely match, a musician called Felix, who leads her on an array of adventures in the capital. Too Much isn't directly based on a true story, but Dunham told The Hollywood Reporter that the 'germ' of the story is 'autobiographical.' Naturally, this has led to renewed interest in Dunham's own personal life including her ex-boyfriend Jack Antonoff. Jack Antonoff is a US musician, who most people will know as the lead singer and founding member of Bleachers, an indie pop band. Antonoff has a successful career in the music industry, having produced work for numerous high-profile artists, including Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Lorde and St. Vincent. He was named as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2024. Jack Antonoff and Lena Dunham met when they were set up on a blind date by his friend, the comedian Mike Birbiglia, in 2012. The pair hit it off quickly, with Jack telling New York he immediately told Lena everything about himself - 'because when you really like someone, you want them to know everything about you.' Dunham and Antonoff moved into an apartment together in Brooklyn and got a dog called Lamby. In an interview with The Guardian, Dunham spoke about their strong bond. 'I've had boyfriends before, but never someone who was a constructive member of society and made my life better. And I have a really great boyfriend now. I'm really lucky. It would be hard to be with someone who wasn't supportive of what I did,' she told the outlet. Jack and Lena dated for five years. In a 2015 interview with The Times, Antonoff gushed about Dunham, explaining she inspired his debut album. 'We've been together for over two years, which for me is a long time, and I still want to know everything about her. That's what falling in love is. You're wrapped up in a mystery novel, lost in an exciting world,' he said. Engagement rumours circulated throughout their relationship, but the pair had vowed not to tie the knot until same-sex marriage was made legal in all 50 US states. Speaking about marriage to New York, Antonoff said: 'It's hard to imagine when the right time is, because things are so crazy at the moment,' adding 'It just seems like the most fun thing in the world. I've never met people who have kids who haven't looked me in the eye and been like, "It's the greatest thing that's ever happened."' When the Supreme Court voted in favour of marriage equality in 2015, the engagement rumours around the pair ramped up again. Dunham addressed these on Ellen DeGeneres. 'I mean, we own a dog together. We own a home together, but the marriage thing is a big deal,' she said, adding that she was excited to marry Antonoff 'at some point.' The pair announced their split in 2018, with a source at the time telling people it was 'amicable.' Five months later, Lena addressed the break up in an article in Vogue. 'We sat in our shared kitchen of nearly four years and quietly faced each other, acknowledging what nobody wanted to say. That obsessive connection had turned to blind devotion, and the blinders were coming off to reveal that we had evolved separately (the least shocking reason of all and perhaps the most common),' she wrote. 'That anger wasn't sexy or sustainable. That our hearts were still broken from trying so hard to fix it but no longer uncertain about whether or not we could. The finality nearly killed me.' Lena Dunham has said that Too Much is loosely based on her own experiences, although she stressed the show differs to real life in many ways. She told Variety 'It's certainly not quote-unquote based on a true story, but like everything I do, there is an element of my own life that I can't help but inject.' And what about the comparisons between Jessica's break up in the show, and Dunham's split with Jack Antonoff? In an interview with Vanity Fair, Lena explained that Zegen's character (Jessica's ex-boyfriend in Too much) is not directly based on Antonoff. 'That ex-boyfriend is very much an amalgamation of every ex that I've had, or that a friend's had,' she said. 'It's this quotidian acceptance of unkindness that eats away at a person over a long period of time and degrades their sense of self. If someone were to say, "Who inspired that character?" I'd be like, "Do you have time for me to give you 42 examples?"'
Time Magazine
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
How Lena Dunham's Netflix Series 'Too Much' Mirrors Her Own Life
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Too Much. In the near-decade since Lena Dunham's groundbreaking HBO dramedy Girls aired its final episode, its creator and star has taken a big step back from the spotlight. Though she has written, directed, and produced a handful of projects in the intervening years—including the 2018 HBO comedy series Camping and 2022 medieval comedy film Catherine Called Birdy—Dunham herself has said she took an "intentional break" from the public eye in response to the intense scrutiny that surrounded her during Girls' six-season run (especially in relation to a number of controversies for which she was facing backlash). 'I didn't really understand how to distinguish between what was and wasn't necessary for the public. I felt confused about how I was supposed to respond,' she told The Times in an interview published in June. 'I thought if I explain properly who I am, or give a glimpse of who I am, people are going to have a different perception of me, that we would be friends. But no one cares—and that's fine.' Now, Dunham is returning to the small screen with Too Much, a new 10-episode romantic comedy series available to stream on Netflix. This time around, while Dunham does appear in the show in a supporting role, Megan Stalter takes the lead as Dunham's semi-autobiographical stand-in Jessica Salmon, a 30-something workaholic New Yorker who moves to London in the wake of a devastating breakup with her longtime boyfriend Zev (Michael Zegen). Across the pond, she meets a troubled musician named Felix Remen (Will Sharpe) and the two strike up a whirlwind romance that forces them both to confront their individual issues. Those who have kept track of news about Dunham's personal life in the years since Girls ended will likely recognize several apparent similarities between the plot of Too Much and Dunham's own story, particularly with regard to her 2018 breakup with music producer Jack Antonoff, subsequent move to London, and later marriage to Peruvian-British musician Luis Felber, who co-created Too Much. As for just how much her life influenced Too Much, Dunham told Variety, 'It's certainly not quote-unquote based on a true story, but like everything I do, there is an element of my own life that I can't help but inject.' Here's everything to know about how Too Much mirrors Dunham's life. The breakup After meeting on a blind date in 2012, Dunham and Antonoff dated for five years (throughout the entire run of Girls) before news of their breakup emerged in January 2018. Later that month, Us Weekly reported Antonoff had moved on with model Carlotta Kohl in a story that included a quote from an anonymous source who claimed Dunham and Antonoff "had been slowly breaking up for the last six months." Antonoff and Kohl eventually ended things and, in August 2021, he began dating actor Margaret Qualley, whom he married in August 2023. In Too Much, Jessica and Zev break up after seven years together and Zev pretty much immediately starts dating Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski), a knitting influencer he meets at a party while he and Jess are still together. When Wendy asks to meet up with Jess in the finale and reveals she's done with Zev, she explains he had originally told her that he and Jess had been separated for six months before they officially broke up—which Jess says is untrue. Too Much also makes a point of emphasizing Jess' obsession with checking Wendy's social media after she gets together with Zev, a storyline that—judging by a November 2018 profile of Dunham in which she admitted it pained her to look at Antonoff's new girlfriend's Instagram stories—seems to be pulled from Dunham's own experiences. "[B]eing the hysterical ex-girlfriend is kinda like the weirdest, funniest, public performance," she told The Cut. 'I thought I was kind of proving weird girls can have love too. And now he's dating somebody who looks regular and normal and like girls are supposed to look." (In addition to being an actor, Ratajkowski is also a model.) Other details from Dunham and Antonoff's relationship that Dunham has spoken about in the press also seem to be alluded to in the show, such as in a flashback scene from Episode 5 in which Zev tells Jess she needs to cut back on her pink home decor when they're moving in together. In an essay penned for Domino magazine's Fall 2019 cover story, Dunham wrote about how Antonoff disliked her decorating taste. "[H]e hated it. He didn't want to hate it. He tried not to hate it. But he didn't like living among the insides of my mind," she said. "I felt sick every time I made a design concession or covered up pink with dove gray. Love can only survive so much." Read More: Megan Stalter Is Reinventing the Rom-Com Heroine The dogs As part of the flashbacks to Jess and Zev's relationship that play out in Episode 5, we see that at one point they adopted a dog named Cutesie at Jess' behest. But after Cutesie has an aggressive encounter with another dog at the park, Jess is forced to give him away. This plot point seems to draw from what happened in real life with Dunham and her rescue dog Lamby, who she gave up to a Los Angeles canine rehabilitation facility in 2017 after originally adopting him from the BARC shelter in Brooklyn. Dunham said in an Instagram post that the decision had been made due to "four years of challenging behavior and aggression" that was caused by abuse he suffered as a puppy. However, Lamby's rehoming ended up turning into quite the internet controversy after an employee from BARC wrote an email to a Yahoo reporter claiming Lamby had been totally fine until he met Dunham. 'You can say a lot of sh-t about me, but I am a very committed pet owner. Ask anybody who works with me on a pet level,' Dunham told The Cut in response in 2018. 'Also, what animal-shelter guy is like, 'I'm an electronic DJ, and I'm also looking to talk to Yahoo! Celebrity'? But dragging him through the court of public opinion like that doesn't get me anywhere. It's better just to kick back and be like, 'Okay, sir, you can extend your career by telling people what a bad dog owner I was.'" Of course, it didn't help matters with her critics that, the year after Lamby was rehomed, Gia Marie, a Sphynx cat Dunham had adopted who had lung damage after surviving a house fire, and Bowie, her 13-year-old Yorkie, both died within months of each other. The series of unfortunate events led to an online conspiracy theory that Dunham was killing her pets, which she quickly shut down, pointing to the fact that many of the animals she'd adopted were of advanced age. In Too Much, following her breakup with Zev, Jess adopts a hairless chihuahua named Astrid who becomes her closest companion. Sadly, in the finale, Felix hears Astrid struggling to breathe and rushes her to the vet but her heart gives out before Jess arrives to say goodbye. The marriage After moving from New York to London in January 2021, Dunham met Felber on a blind date set up by mutual friends. "The first time we hung out, we didn't stop talking for, like, eight hours," Felber told the New York Times later that year. "I think it was sort of incredible, you know, I walked into that. I'd been on quite a few dates in the past year. As someone who's quite open, I find you hold a lot back on your first three dates. Or first 10 dates. I was just a bit fed up with that, so I just walked into the situation very myself, shall I say. And Lena liked that. And she's the same." By that September, Dunham and Felber had married in an impromptu wedding at Soho's Union Club with just about 60 guests present. This is obviously similar to what happens between Jess and Felix in Too Much after they meet at a bar on the night Jess moves to London. However, Stalter says the show isn't intended to directly echo Dunham and Felber's relationship. "[Lena and Luis] always made it really clear that it wasn't just based on them. There was no pressure to do an impression of them," Stalter told TIME. "Me and Will were able to take it and add things in of ourselves and what we thought the characters should be...[It wasn't] like we were playing them, but bringing to life a story that has elements of them in it, and ourselves." Despite its happy ending, Dunham has said she still wanted Too Much to reflect the challenges that two people who have their own lifetimes' worth of baggage can face both individually and as a couple while trying to make a relationship work. "Everything I've ever made is romantically pessimistic. Even the most romantic episodes of Girls—when Marnie and Charlie reunite, a heroin needle falls out of his pants," she told the New Yorker of Too Much's optimistic tilt. "This is such a mortifying answer, but I think that it had to do with meeting Lu, and being, like, 'Oh, there actually is a feeling that you can have that it might be OK, that the thing might last, that you're not always running as fast as you can and then realizing you're on a treadmill.' It was wanting to make something that was about that feeling, but also acknowledging that, when we met each other, we had both experienced an enormous amount of life, trauma, complexity, and addiction, separately. So what does it look like when you meet and you're both just trying to be the best versions of yourself, the version that you can live with, and then you welcome someone else into that?"
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sabrina Carpenter's Songwriting Questioned by Popular YouTuber: ‘Maybe She Wrote One Line'
Sabrina Carpenter's Songwriting Questioned by Popular YouTuber: 'Maybe She Wrote One Line' originally appeared on Parade. recently took heat for the controversial cover art for her forthcoming album Man's Best Friend. Now the 'Espresso' hitmaker has found herself in the sights of popular music YouTuber , who is questioning the contributions to her own songs. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 In a video titled 'How Do People NOT Know This About Pop Music?' posted on YouTube on June 24, Beato focuses on Carpenter's current hit single 'Manchild' and plays a clip of the video before letting loose on Carpenter and her fans. 'People are discussing the lyrics, and they are talking about them as if Sabrina Carpenter wrote these lyrics herself,' Beato says in his video. 'Now maybe Sabrina Carpenter wrote one line or changed a couple of words or something,' he adds, without providing evidence to back up this claim. As of this writing, Beato's video has more than 1.2 million views, and his channel, which often features interviews with classic rock icons, has more than 5 million subscribers. Beato goes on to mention that the song was co-written by Carpenter with songwriters and , who have worked with Carpenter in the past. Allen was one of the writers on Carpenter's massive breakout hit 'Espresso.' Carpenter, Allen and Antonoff also collaborated on her hit 'Please, Please, Please.'After noting Allen's and Antonoff's credits as writers on several hits by other artists, Beato again takes a shot at Carpenter's role in writing her songs. 'Yeah, she might be in the room for some of this stuff, but the fact of the matter is these same people are all over multiple hit songs.' He also questions her role in the making of her videos. 'When I see people make videos on YouTube where they're about her lyrics, what this 'Manchild' thing means, it's like doesn't mean anything,' Beato says. 'Every bit of this video has been meticulously crafted. They do story boards. They do all this kind of stuff. They figure out what kind of outfits, what the vibe's going to be. The same thing with the album cover art. All of it is a completely calculated thing. She's a pop star. This is a thing that I guess a lot of people don't realize that this stuff is figured out by massive groups of people. These are not songs that are coming from Sabrina Carpenter's head.' While Beato's video is seemingly designed to inform his followers about the making of pop records, some took it as an unwarranted attack on Carpenter. 'Something so unseemly about Rick Beato popping off on Sabrina Carpenter,' author/musician , host of The Record Store Day podcast, wrote on his Facebook page. 'Such a bitter Lefsetz-ian move,' he added, referring to music industry commentator . Despite Myers' criticism, those who commented on Beato's YouTube video generally seemed to agree with Beato's thoughts on the matter. 'A few writers writing for everyone, a few producers producing everyone, mixed and mastered by the same people. Starts to feel like McMusic,' wrote one. Sabrina Carpenter's Songwriting Questioned by Popular YouTuber: 'Maybe She Wrote One Line' first appeared on Parade on Jun 26, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 26, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sabrina Carpenter's Songwriting Questioned by Popular YouTuber: ‘Maybe She Wrote One Line'
Sabrina Carpenter's Songwriting Questioned by Popular YouTuber: 'Maybe She Wrote One Line' originally appeared on Parade. recently took heat for the controversial cover art for her forthcoming album Man's Best Friend. Now the 'Espresso' hitmaker has found herself in the sights of popular music YouTuber , who is questioning the contributions to her own songs. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 In a video titled 'How Do People NOT Know This About Pop Music?' posted on YouTube on June 24, Beato focuses on Carpenter's current hit single 'Manchild' and plays a clip of the video before letting loose on Carpenter and her fans. 'People are discussing the lyrics, and they are talking about them as if Sabrina Carpenter wrote these lyrics herself,' Beato says in his video. 'Now maybe Sabrina Carpenter wrote one line or changed a couple of words or something,' he adds, without providing evidence to back up this claim. As of this writing, Beato's video has more than 1.2 million views, and his channel, which often features interviews with classic rock icons, has more than 5 million subscribers. Beato goes on to mention that the song was co-written by Carpenter with songwriters and , who have worked with Carpenter in the past. Allen was one of the writers on Carpenter's massive breakout hit 'Espresso.' Carpenter, Allen and Antonoff also collaborated on her hit 'Please, Please, Please.'After noting Allen's and Antonoff's credits as writers on several hits by other artists, Beato again takes a shot at Carpenter's role in writing her songs. 'Yeah, she might be in the room for some of this stuff, but the fact of the matter is these same people are all over multiple hit songs.' He also questions her role in the making of her videos. 'When I see people make videos on YouTube where they're about her lyrics, what this 'Manchild' thing means, it's like doesn't mean anything,' Beato says. 'Every bit of this video has been meticulously crafted. They do story boards. They do all this kind of stuff. They figure out what kind of outfits, what the vibe's going to be. The same thing with the album cover art. All of it is a completely calculated thing. She's a pop star. This is a thing that I guess a lot of people don't realize that this stuff is figured out by massive groups of people. These are not songs that are coming from Sabrina Carpenter's head.' While Beato's video is seemingly designed to inform his followers about the making of pop records, some took it as an unwarranted attack on Carpenter. 'Something so unseemly about Rick Beato popping off on Sabrina Carpenter,' author/musician , host of The Record Store Day podcast, wrote on his Facebook page. 'Such a bitter Lefsetz-ian move,' he added, referring to music industry commentator . Despite Myers' criticism, those who commented on Beato's YouTube video generally seemed to agree with Beato's thoughts on the matter. 'A few writers writing for everyone, a few producers producing everyone, mixed and mastered by the same people. Starts to feel like McMusic,' wrote one. Sabrina Carpenter's Songwriting Questioned by Popular YouTuber: 'Maybe She Wrote One Line' first appeared on Parade on Jun 26, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 26, 2025, where it first appeared.
NBC News
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NBC News
Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff re-create iconic moment to celebrate her historic masters purchase
Taylor Swift is enjoying her 'Reputation' era again after breaking the news that she now owns her master recordings. Swift announced in a May 30 letter on her website that after re-recording four of her albums — dubbed 'Taylor's Version' — she bought back all of her masters, including her 2006 self-titled debut and 2017's 'Reputation.' Swift's longtime friend and producer, Jack Antonoff, shared a video of the duo on X the night of May 30 as they enjoyed a 'guilt free' listen of 'Reputation' to celebrate the news. In the clip, Swift and Antonoff sang the album's ninth track, 'Getaway Car' and re-created a viral moment from her 2020 documentary 'Miss Americana' where they wrote the song together. Swift was initially carrying her cat Meredith at the start of the video before placing the feline down to finish the tune with Antonoff, who screamed as the clip ended. 'rep forever guilt free listening!' Antonoff captioned the post. After re-recording four of her albums, including 'Fearless,' 'Speak Now,' 'Red' and '1989,' Swift addressed in her May 30 letter to fans whether she would be re-releasing the rest of her first six albums to complete the project. 'What about Rep TV? Full transparency: I haven't even re-recorded a quarter of it,' Swift wrote on her website. 'The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it…To be perfectly honest, it's the one album in those first 6 that I thought couldn't be improved upon by redoing it. Not the music, or the photos, or the videos. So I kept putting it off.' However, Swift shared, 'I've already completely re-recorded my entire debut album, and I really love how it sounds now.' Whether fans will get to hear 'Taylor's Version' of those two albums — or even just the vault tracks — remains unknown, with the singer writing, 'But if it happens, it won't be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now.' After working with Swift on several tracks from 2014's '1989,' Antonoff and Swift kicked off a long partnership of co-writing and producing her subsequent albums, including 'Reputation,' 'Lover,' 'Folklore,' 'Evermore,' 'Midnights' and several songs on her most recent record, 'The Tortured Poets Department.' During an October 2023 appearance on 'Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist,' Antonoff opened up about his friendship and working relationship with Swift over the decades, including why he thinks they work so well together. 'That relationship has gone on and on and on and I think we've just pushed each other endlessly,' Antonoff explained. 'I could quantify our relationship in very reductive ways about the things we agree on, the sounds we like, but the truth is, we've just grown together. She's put an amazing amount of belief in me.'
