Latest news with #Stalter
Miami Herald
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
When Lena met Megan: How a DM blossomed into ‘Too Much'
[This article contains some spoilers for Netflix's "Too Much."] LOS ANGELES - 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." Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
The Herald Scotland
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'Too Much' review: Lena Dunham's new show is just enough
So there's a poignancy to Stalter's Jessica, a boisterous woman who feels like she needs to button up. And while her actions are sometimes more extreme than the average woman might relate to (the series opens with Jessica breaking into her ex's apartment), her struggle is infinitely relatable. "Too Much" thrives on the quiet, intimate dialogue, whether between Jessica and her new beau Felix (Will Sharpe, "The White Lotus"), or journal-like videos she makes while pretending she's speaking to her ex's new fiancee. It's a series built on talking, on the conversations that make us fall in love or discover ourselves or other people. And it never really feels like there's too much of that. When we meet Jessica, she's at her lowest. Aimless after being dumped by her long-term boyfriend (Michael Zegen) for a social media influencer, she gets a work opportunity in London that seemingly will give her a chance to start over. But she can't stop watching TikToks of that new fiancee (Emily Ratajkowski) and worrying that every move she makes is a mistake. On her first night out, she meets Felix, a sober musician who has gotten close but never hit it big, and has his own troubled past with relationships. They're instantly drawn to each other, although Jessica vacillates between not believing Felix is attracted to her and worrying that he's a "red flag" guy. The pair bumble and fumble through the early, heady days of attraction and connection, while each also struggles in their professional lives. More: Meg Stalter mastered the art of cringe comedy. Now, she's ready to show you her 'earnest' side. The series is the apex of cringe comedy, luxuriating in the awkward moments between characters and focusing on the banalities and uncomfortable moments of life with a zoomed-in lens. Although the humor can be too edgy and the stories can drag on a hair too long (like so many streaming shows, the series could do with shaving a few minutes off each episode), "Too Much" is a thoughtful, affable show about finding yourself and finding love. Stalter and Sharpe make a dynamic pair, surrounded by famous guest stars ranging from Rita Wilson to Naomi Watts to Dunham herself and set against a grungy London aesthetic. It's refreshing to see a series built around someone like Jessica, all sharp corners and untapped potential, looking and sounding more like a real woman than any Hallmark big-city girl ever could be. She's awkward with a deep need to be liked, a defensive response to a world that doesn't always welcome plus-size women with big personalities with open arms. She has a habit of entering wild conversations (she is willing to discuss sex and medical problems with a staggering number of recent acquaintances) and has a neediness that radiates off the screen. Some viewers might hate her as much as the internet hated Dunham's "Girls" character Hannah Horvath, but nobody will treat Jessica as poorly as she treats herself. Stalter and Dunham are a match made in a very awkward heaven. Despite their generational divide they have a shared language of comedy. The series is semi-autobiographical for Dunham (with Felix as a stand-in for Dunham's music producer ex Jack Antonoff), and if she isn't the person to play herself in the story, Stalter is an excellent stand-in. The series is very funny and sweet, but also at times distinctly melancholy, and it navigates its different moods gracefully. The series is entirely influenced by Jessica's complex emotions and personality, which would surprise the excessively humble protagonist greatly. At one point Jessica tells Felix that adulthood is constantly having to do things you don't want to do. When Will replies that he believes it's about making time to do what you really want, Jessica doesn't know how to respond. Life, as far as she's lived it, has never been about her. Thankfully, she's got a Netflix series all to herself now.
Time Magazine
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Megan Stalter Is Reinventing the Rom-Com Heroine
Megan Stalter talks about the experience of starring in Too Much, a Netflix romantic comedy series from Lena Dunham, with the dreamy satisfaction of a person recounting how she found her soulmate. Like so many contemporary love stories, it began with a digital meet-cute, when the Girls creator—then a total stranger—slid into her DMs. 'She messaged me on Instagram and said, 'I have a project for you,'' Stalter recalls. 'I was like, 'What?!' And she said that she wrote it with me in mind, which is the craziest thing to hear from my No. 1. I'm a No. 1 fan of Lena.' The fantasy continued in the UK, where she filmed her role as an operatically heartbroken New Yorker who crosses the Atlantic and meets a disarmingly gentle London boy (The White Lotus' Will Sharpe). Even after growing a cult following on social media with videos of unhinged characters, then breaking out on Max's Hacks, Stalter might have felt nervous about anchoring such a high-profile show. But her immediate rapport with Sharpe, who she was pleased to discover was "weird and funny like me," as well as Dunham and her husband and co-creator Luis Felber, set her at ease. There is a perfect awkward moment in the premiere when Stalter's character, Jessica, plants a hearty smooch on Sharpe's Felix, and he responds only with an embarrassed smirk. It was the first scene they shot together, and yet, she says, 'we had such an easy time improvising a lot of those lines.' A blissful working relationship, sealed with the worst kiss ever. Maybe Stalter got lucky in finding such simpatico collaborators, but after our video chat in June, I suspect she could get along with almost anyone. 'We clicked,' she says four separate times about her first encounters with different collaborators. She brims with appreciation for the people in her life; family members get the same enthusiasm as idols turned friends like Dunham. Brilliant at embodying characters high on their own questionable supply, Stalter has no trouble speaking earnestly about herself or her work. What comes through when she does is buoyancy, warmth, and a form of gratitude free of self-doubt—all auspicious traits for a rom-com ingénue in the making. For as long as she can remember, Stalter, 34, has been fascinated by beauty pageants and their pick-me-princess competitors. The title character of Little Miss Ohio, a compilation of cheerfully deranged monologues she released in the pandemic summer of 2020, is a faded beauty queen struggling to film a promo for this year's pageant. In June, she accepted an award at an LGBTQ-oriented Critics Choice Association event for her portrayal of Hacks' absurdly self-assured rookie talent manager Kayla wearing a tiara and sash with her sheer gown. (While Kayla is apparently straight, Stalter is in a long-term relationship with a woman, Maddie Allen, and describes herself as 'almost lesbian.') Playing to an audience that embraced her campy sensibility long before she was a TV star, Stalter proclaimed: 'I'm in shock that a country-bumpkin brunette made her way all the way to Hollywood and now I'm accepting the award for Best Gay Actor of All Time.' In fact, it was her relatively humble Ohio upbringing that nurtured Stalter's love affair with brash female characters: 'To be like, I should win, I'm the best actor, I'm the best politician or the prettiest girl in the room, is so funny to me, because it's so overly confident, but also there's something really vulnerable about those kinds of characters.' A pageant girl's bravado is matched only by her need for external validation. Stalter experienced this dichotomy firsthand as a kid who practiced tirelessly with her mom for a local poetry-declamation contest. She loved to perform, making videos with siblings and cousins, and believed in her own abilities. But, she says, 'In high school, I never really got the part I wanted' despite her hard work. That discouraging experience motivated her to create her own material. 'Part of why I love doing comedy and writing for myself and doing stand-up is that you get to make the rules," she says. 'No one's telling you you can't do it. I don't have to wait for someone to say yes.' Still, it would take a while—and a few attempts at training for a more practical career, like nursing or teaching—to make her way to the comedy hub of Chicago, where she studied improv and broke into the stand-up scene. She felt like a success almost immediately, just knowing she'd finally begun to do the work she was meant to do. 'It wasn't like, 'When is my dream gonna come true?'' she recalls. 'As soon as I was like, 'I'm gonna go for it,' it felt like my dream was coming true. Being in an improv class was so exciting to me, getting out on my first show, or even just doing open mics.' In the summer of 2019, Stalter moved to New York. But it was during the pandemic, which she weathered in Ohio, that her star rose, as the housebound scrolled in search of a laugh—and found lo-fi videos in which she portrayed such characters as 'your boss when her tube top falls off on a Zoom meeting.' She was so convincing in variations on a woman whose cockiness is undermined by nervous stumbling or general strangeness that not everyone realized it was a bit. But being misunderstood has never fazed her. 'I don't mind making someone feel unsettled a little bit, or [pushing] them out of their comfort zone,' she says, citing Nathan Fielder as a comedian whose blurring of personality and persona she finds riveting. Besides, those bewildered reactions are fodder for the inside jokes she shares with fans who do get it. Among the latter group were the creators of Hacks, Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky, who spotted her online and looked past a shoddy self-tape audition to cast her as Kayla. The pandemic was still raging when Stalter moved to L.A. to shoot the dramedy, which casts Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder as comedians of different generations jockeying for success in a sexist, ageist Hollywood. Introduced as a broad, nepo-baby foil to Downs' pushover-manager character, Jimmy, Kayla evolved from inept assistant to shrewd showbiz strategist. In Season 4, which aired this spring, she agonized over whether to sell out Jimmy and take a big job at her father's firm. She gives the show's writers credit for this transformation: 'They definitely let me improvise. But the storylines and the scripts are all them, so if they didn't want [Kayla] to be such an essential part, I wouldn't get to be.' That vote of confidence paid off, allowing Stalter to exhibit a versatility that no doubt helped her level up to multifaceted romantic lead. For a Girls girl and rom-com devotee already pinching herself to be sure the last few years weren't all a dream, landing Too Much felt like divine intervention. 'That is straight from the stars. That's from God,' says Stalter, who has always been a big believer. In a story that echoes Dunham's romance with Felber, a British musician, Stalter's Jessica has been spiraling since her ex, Zev (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel alum Michael Zegen), dumped her for an Instagram-perfect knitwear influencer, Wendy (Emily Ratajkowski). After a humiliating breakdown, Jess seizes the chance to work abroad in London. That means leaving her claustrophobic clan of single women in Great Neck; Rhea Perlman, Rita Wilson, and Dunham play her grandma, mom, and sister. (This female-dominated family reminded Stalter of her own: 'I was raised by women that all have big, strong personalities.') She arrives to find that her council-estate sublet is nothing like the verdant country estate she pictured. Her dry British boss (Richard E. Grant) resists her messy American charms. And she remains so obsessed with her ex and his now-fiancée that she accidentally lights her nightgown on fire while making a bitter video addressed to Wendy. Felix, an indie rocker styled like a young Robert Smith, offers a calming contrast to Jess' too-muchness. But this reformed party boy has baggage too. In episodes that flash back to the couple's previous partners and explore their families' internal dynamics, Too Much illustrates how who we are in each romance is the culmination of every other serious relationship, sexual or otherwise, we've had. 'Anytime you're dating, you're bringing everything that's ever happened to you,' Stalter notes. 'If you actually are falling in love, you are showing really bad sides of yourself.' This honest approach to romance, which affectionately comments on the idealized rom-coms parodied in each episode title ('Enough, Actually'), resonated with Stalter. Raised on the escapist pleasures of Bridget Jones and the Julia Roberts canon, she describes Dunham's surprisingly humane spin on the genre as 'subverted and unexpected and so my sense of humor,' but also grounded in 'beautiful, real, dramatic moments.' Some are love scenes every bit as frank as the ones Dunham famously made for Girls, though this time around the sex is often good. If Stalter had any lingering nerves about these intimate moments, they didn't make it to the screen. Her vulnerable performance evokes Bridget's dizziness and intelligence, and the commingling of naivety and jadedness that made Pretty Woman's Vivian appealing. You can see flickers of Legally Blonde's Elle Woods and Clueless' Cher Horowitz—who could be icons to Jess—in a wardrobe of candy colors, skirt suits, and whimsy. What these women share isn't a hair color, a shape, or a profession; it's their effervescence, a spirited lightness that has defined screwball It Girls for a century and practically fizzes out of Stalter's pores. Even in recent decades, as LGBTQ voices have moved into the mainstream, it's been rare to see queer actors leading straight romances. So it feels notable that Stalter, who has been openly bisexual for longer than she's been famous and says that 'right now, I actually couldn't imagine being with a man,' slides so comfortably into hetero roles. She does have years of experience with men to draw on. But immersing herself in queer community, especially via camp-soaked niches of social media, where her aggressively femme characters often play off unseen husbands, has also made her a keen observer of straightness. 'Queer people sometimes are curious about straight culture, as straight people are curious about queer cultures,' she notes. At the same time, she has cherished the opportunity to play women navigating relationships with women, as she did in the title role of the 2023 indie film Cora Bora, which follows an unmoored musician straining to hold on to a long-distance girlfriend. 'It's really emotional and meaningful for me to play queer characters because of what it means for representation,' she says. To that end, she has spent the past few years developing a comedy series called Church Girls with A24 and Max. Inspired by her experiences, it casts Stalter as a young, Christian woman in Ohio coming to terms with the realization that she is a lesbian. Especially in a polarized society where loving God and 'love is love' can seem incompatible, Stalter feels compelled to demonstrate otherwise. 'I've never understood why you wouldn't be able to be gay and be a God girl,' she says, pointing out that the Bible has about as little to say against homosexuality as it does against, say, eating shrimp. 'It hurts me to think, if somebody wanted to connect in a spiritual way, that they would feel like they wouldn't be allowed to because of their sexuality.' Church Girls is Stalter's dream project, the one she makes time for even as she juggles TV roles, live comedy tours, and a devotion to posting weird videos on the internet that didn't end when she booked Hacks. ('Laughing with strangers online is just important to me.') Which is not to say she's torched her personal life: 'You always make time for things that are important to you.' For her, that means friends, family, plus her dog and two cats—'literally God's little angels sent down to help us.' On screen and off, in work as at home, Stalter seems to seek out soul-deep connections. It's the kind of romantic quest that, like a wounded American girl giving love a second shot in the land of Wuthering Heights and Notting Hill, you can't help but root for.
Los Angeles Times
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- 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.'
Sydney Morning Herald
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
TV's new golden rule? Put Megan Stalter in everything, please
The spitting. Megan Stalter has had it with all the talk about the spitting. In the trailer for Too Much, the new Netflix series from Girls creator Lena Dunham, British actor Will Sharpe is briefly – yet evocatively – glimpsed dripping saliva into Stalter's mouth in the midst of sexual revelry. Somehow, among the choking generation, a supposedly shockless cohort that's grown up with a free-for-all smorgasbord of online pornography, the spitting has become a talking point. 'People have just been going so crazy over that scene in the trailer!' Stalter laughs. 'It's like, guys, spitting isn't that far away from kissing and you see that every day on screen.' Having watched all of Too Much ahead of our interview, I didn't even notice the spitting in the show. Did Netflix cut the scene after the intense public reaction, or did I just miss it? 'No, you saw it!' Stalter says. (She's right, it's there in the show's fourth episode.) 'You saw it and it wasn't that jarring, was it? And you liked it. And it was completely normal to be in there and it was completely tasteful and everybody needs to get on board. It's real life! People spit in each other's mouths. It's not a big deal!' Maybe, but the YouTube commenters were outraged. 'The spitting in mouth scene violated me,' was the general tone of the clip's most up-voted comments. 'It's crazy. You have to expect a little spit. It was done in one take. What's wrong with everyone?' Stalter asks with escalating faux-hysteria. 'You know what? It's fine. People like to get riled up, and it's okay. It'll make them want to see how much more spitting is in the show.' The whole saga has proved a more salient point: it shows that even eight years after ending her Millennial-defining Girls – 'the show that turned TV upside down', as The Guardian once described it – Lena Dunham, perhaps TV's most maligned comic genius, can still strike up screen controversy with a simple exchange of bodily fluids in a trailer. Dressed in a navy silk shirt and a navy striped tie, her slick hair parted clinically down the middle, Stalter, 34, is Zooming in from London, a return trip for promotional duties after spending five months filming Too Much there last year. Produced by Working Title, the British studio famed for iconic romcoms including Notting Hill, Love Actually and Bridget Jones's Diary, the show skewers British civility through Dunham's own raucous style. Based loosely on Dunham's own post- Girls experiences – her breakup with former partner Jack Antonoff, her relocation from New York to London, and her transatlantic romance with an indie musician who eventually became her husband (Luis Felber, who is credited as the show's co-creator with Dunham) – the series marks Dunham's first scripted series in almost a decade. And at its centre is Stalter, in what's her first lead role on TV after garnering a cult audience online. At this point, if you know Stalter from anything, it's for her breakout role on the Emmy-winning comedy Hacks, where she steals scenes as Jimmy's excitable, boundary-averse nepo baby assistant-turned-business partner Kayla Schaeffer. As Kayla, Stalter's a walking billboard for Stanislavski's showbusiness maxim that there are no small parts, only small actors. ' Hacks definitely changed my life. It was my first TV job. I'd been performing for a long time, but nobody was filming it or putting it on TV,' Stalter laughs. ' Hacks gave me my chance. It definitely started my paid career.' Before Hacks, Stalter was already known among the heavily online for absurdist character-driven sketches she posted to TikTok and Twitter. Her characters were often rambunctious and overconfident, narcissistic and performative, and the skits driven by Stalter's silly energy and ironic delivery. 'When I started doing comedy, I always had something in me that was like, 'This will all work out, I just know it',' says Stalter of her early success making videos online. She recalls a video she posted in 2019, captioned 'My audition for the girl in the movie who the guy almost hooks up with before he goes after the love of his life', her spoof of romcom cliches in a blonde wig, that blew up and convinced her there was something to her online shenanigans. 'I remember that clip gaining some traction, and me being like, 'Oh yeah, this is what I should do right now.'' Views amassed, attention increased. In March 2020, as the pandemic gripped the world and our entertainment shifted online, the New York Times described Stalter as 'the most vital voice to emerge during this anxious, isolating moment'. But online success – even if that included queer cult status (a 2021 TikTok in which she mocked corporate pandering during Pride month continues to go viral every year) – has a ceiling, and Stalter felt the difficulty of legitimising internet fame to mainstream opportunity. 'I think some people can see you do a bizarre, crazy character online, and if maybe they don't get it, they'll be like, that must be how she is in real life. 'That TikTok woman, she's crazy, I can't tell if she's joking or not.' Someone could even like your videos but still not know how it'll translate onto TV,' says Stalter. 'But the creators of Hacks – Paul [W. Downs], Lucia [Aniello] and Jen [Statsky] – they gave me my chance. They saw potential in me that what I do could work on TV, which was encouraging for other people to hire me! To see, okay, she is crazy online but she can behave too. She can be naughty when she's supposed to, but can make it work on set.' People have said crazy, mean, stuff about me... I think I'm lucky that I'm 34 and I already know myself so well. On Too Much, Stalter brings her immense charm to Dunham's cypher, playing Jessica, an American line producer who accepts a stint in London after a horrible breakup with her long-term boyfriend (played by The Marvelous Mrs Maisel 's Michael Zegen). Dunham wrote the role with Stalter in mind, after her friend Andrew Scott (Fleabag 's Hot Priest himself) showed Dunham Stalter's online videos. 'That's what she says!' says Stalter. 'And I did a movie called Cora Bora that she loved. I still can't believe it. I'm truly the luckiest girl in the world.' Stalter had long been a fan of Dunham's. 'To me, Girls is the best show ever. I literally always felt connected and obsessed with her. She had DM'ed me on Instagram and said that she had a project in mind for me, and I freaked out for days. But I was like, okay, yes. Whatever it is, yes, of course. I didn't know it was gonna be such a major show and a life-changing role.' As with Girls, Too Much doesn't shy from the more uncomfortable, intimate and revealing corners of romantic relationships. Stalter, best known for outlandish comedy, is tasked with emotional nuance. In scenes, she casually holds her own not just alongside Dunham, who plays her older sister, but actors including Adele Exarchopoulos, Richard E. Grant and our own Naomi Watts. Stalter never went to acting school, but found support in Too Much 's intimacy coordinator Miriam Lucia, who doubled as her acting coach. 'I love Miriam so much. Every time she came to set, I would be like, 'Miriam's here!' and I don't think people knew that she was also my acting coach, so I think they just thought I was really excited to see the intimacy coordinator,' Stalter laughs. 'But she is so incredible, and it helped me so much. It makes sense that an intimacy coordinator would be an acting coach, you know? Because they think about things in such a specific way. You can approach those dramatic scenes by prioritising safety and thinking about the character and making sure everyone feels comfortable. If you're comfortable, you're able to do those harder, more dramatic things.' Dunham was a guide, too. 'Lena always said, 'If crying is in the script, you don't actually have to cry', and that took the pressure off me, where it's like, 'okay, if I don't feel like crying in the scene, maybe the character doesn't cry and it's fine!' As long as you're feeling comfortable and feeling in the character, everything's ok.' Much of Too Much' s appeal is in the charming chemistry between Stalter and Sharpe, who plays the emotionally off-kilter, delicately sober musician Felix. An internet boyfriend following his work in The White Lotus and Jesse Eisenberg's A Real Pain, Sharpe brings a certain British aloofness that's both alluring and callous, like if Girls ′ Adam Sackler (Adam Driver) was from the home counties. 'I loved getting to know his family, he got to know my girlfriend, everyone just loved each other and felt comfortable,' says Stalter of working so intimately with Sharpe. 'I think I get nervous sometimes that someone who's, like, a serious actor is gonna think I'm too naughty, crazy, playful. But he loved to be mischievous with me. It was perfect.' Considering the ire Girls consistently drew – back in the 2010s, a river of opinion pieces followed almost every episode – and Dunham's polarising reputation, did Dunham give Stalter any advice on handling any potential fallout from the series, from its frank sexuality to, yes, the spitting? 'We were just so focused on making what we wanted to make that we didn't really focus on what other people would say, and I think that was the best way to do it. Also, I'm a comedian so I've had stuff online for over 10 years. People have said crazy, mean, stuff about me. I've been picked apart. I mean, I literally have a viral set on Reddit that's like, 'Fat, white comedian does worst stand up in the world',' Stalter laughs. 'Like, I've already had it all, so it doesn't really matter to me if anybody has anything horrible to say about me. I think with negative things, you just can't, can you? I think I'm lucky that I'm 34 and that I already know myself so well. And, I mean, Lena is so confident and knows herself so well, I don't think anyone could say anything that would make her feel different about herself. Plus, of course, everyone's gonna love the show and say only compliments.' Loading If Stalter's comedy aspirations began when she moved to Chicago in her early 20s to take improv classes at the famed Second City – where she met much of the same class of comedians she now runs with in Los Angeles including Saturday Night Live 's Sarah Sherman, Benito Skinner, Mary Beth Barone and Kate Berlant – on a recent appearance on Marc Maron's WTF podcast, she discussed some unlikely beginnings to her journey becoming the internet's favourite comedian. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Stalter grew up in a deeply religious Pentecostal household. 'Even in high school, I was the kid trying to convince everyone to go to church multiple times a week,' Stalter laughs. 'My family has always loved God and gone to church, and now I feel very spiritually connected to God. I'm basically a gay Christian, but I don't have a church I go to. But I would go to church if and when I find the right one.' Are her parents still around? Will they watch this show? 'My parents are, and they will. But I think that maybe they shouldn't watch all of it,' laughs Stalter.
