Lena Dunham Gets Into Bed With Mel Ottenberg

Lena Dunham—actor, writer, director, showrunner, and voice of a generation—is back with Too Much, a semi-autobiographical Netflix series starring Meg Stalter as Jessica, a thirty something producer who moves to London to reset her life in the wake of heartbreak. The comedy has shades of Girls, the 2010s HBO show that continues to define Dunham’s career, but this time, her stand-in is all grownup. Or at least trying to be. “It’s about what happens when you start a relationship in your thirties,” Dunham tells Interview editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg over yuzu sodas in his Manhattan apartment.“You have the baggage of past relationships. The baggage of how you see yourself and how others have seen you.” The result is a sharp comedy laced with real dramatic stakes, but what shines through is Dunham’s humanity. Like Jessica, she’s a giver. And for the viewer, it’s never enough.

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MONDAY 4 PM APRIL 28, 2025 NYC

LENA DUNHAM: I wish the readers could see how tender you look right now.

MEL OTTENBERG: You look so amazing right now.

DUNHAM: It looks like you and I just spent the entire night raging and I’m looking into your eyes and being like, “I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you.” That’s the energy.

OTTENBERG: I feel it.

DUNHAM: The reports from your birthday party were major.

OTTENBERG: Oh, wow.

DUNHAM: I wish I had come because I think I’m refinding my New York footing and I could have really used your birthday, but as I told you, I was locked in an elevator for over two hours.

OTTENBERG: One doesn’t go to a party after that.

DUNHAM: These firemen had to cut their way into the top of the elevator. One named Brendan, I got out and clutched him as if he had just pulled me out of my mother’s vagina. I felt like I was really brave the whole afternoon and it was time for me to melt down in private.

OTTENBERG: [Laughs] Wait, I’m getting us two yuzu sodas. Don’t you love those?

DUNHAM: Yes. Also, I just need to let the record show the way you’ve color-coded your books and it’s like the only time I’ve ever seen it be right. Sometimes I have issues with people who color-code their books because then I don’t believe that they read them.

OTTENBERG: Yes. [Hands Lena a soda]

DUNHAM: Thanks, babe. Cheers. Ah, figs and yuzu.

OTTENBERG: Also, the Nicorette and the yuzu together.

DUNHAM: So nice. I stopped vaping six months ago. That being said, I did find a vape in a pocket of my brother’s friend’s leather jacket, and my mom had to fight it out of my hands.

OTTENBERG: I can’t ever smoke anything again for as long as I live, but I do bum gum every once in a while. I’m just so much better with this Nicorette.

DUNHAM: I know. It gives you that little lift. I roll over in bed in the morning, pound some water, chew a slab of Nicorette. I’m not hurting anyone.

OTTENBERG: I don’t know if you’re hurting yourself. Are you?

DUNHAM: I understand it’s a stimulant, but of all the stimulants, is it really the worst one? Would you rather I drink 18 Red Bulls a day—

OTTENBERG: No.

DUNHAM: Or that I chew a little Nicorette?

OTTENBERG: I did drink 18 Red Bulls at my birthday party.

DUNHAM: Did you really?

OTTENBERG: Yes. Wait—I really like your husband. I was staring at his hair and I was like, “He really thinks about his hair a lot.”

DUNHAM: It’s like a nonstop dialogue and I’m so happy that you picked up on that. [Laughs] When I met him, it was long on his shoulders and then I was like, “I think it’s time for us to get a big-boy haircut.” Now he’s addicted. By the way, you have the same haircut as my father. It’s just like, “man with hair.”

OTTENBERG: Mine is “retired Jew.” I’m looking at your hair right now; it’s a total rat’s nest, but it’s also unbelievable.

DUNHAM: You like?

OTTENBERG: I like it a lot.

DUNHAM: I love that you said “a total rat’s nest.” That means so much to me. I like how it looks best when it’s Amy Winehouse-fucked-up, when it’s so knotted that my husband has to pull out a comb and fight to get through it.

OTTENBERG: You have so much hair.

DUNHAM: It’s really an effort. My mother is always lecturing me, “You have all this hair, take care of it,” and I’m like, “No, I want it to look like I don’t take care of it.” But literally you calling it a rat’s nest is the greatest compliment ever. [Laughs]

OTTENBERG: How do people react to you on the street?

DUNHAM: I used to get recognized a lot when I was doing Girls. One time a guy literally called out to me, “Lena Dunham, you have tits just like my sister’s.” So much to unpack there. But that doesn’t happen anymore. I feel so lucky because whenever anyone says hi to me, it’s either a cool funny girl or a cool funny gay man. I mean, I look like most chubby 5′4′′ women. It’s like, “Is that my friend from camp? Or is it that the girl from Girls?”

OTTENBERG: You’re very goth today, and it’s working.

DUNHAM: Thank you.

OTTENBERG: Hannah Horvath was never goth.

DUNHAM: She was never goth. Her look was very specific and I think people assumed it was how I dressed. It was a nod to a kind of girl that I went to college with who, as my husband says, dresses like a teacup. You have a skirt that’s at an odd angle and an earring shaped like a donut and it’s a lot of, like, “Can you perceive my personality through my accessories?”

OTTENBERG: Was her apple necklace Marc by Marc Jacobs?

DUNHAM: I think so. It was her, like, “I’m in the Big Apple, so my necklace is an apple.” It was very “Put a bird on it,” to quote Portlandia.

OTTENBERG: Yes.

DUNHAM: As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gone goth more often because it was a fallback for my mother and I always felt that she looked elegant. In my twenties it was a lot of  “Here’s my personality and my garments.” Our friend Alissa [Bennett] has been a big influence on my adult dressing because she was the only person who was bold enough to say, “We’re adults now. We have to take it to a slightly secret place.”

OTTENBERG: I understand that. I was at Stumptown this morning and I was like, “Everyone is dressed the way I perceive people in Ohio to be dressed, and I cannot believe the lack of style here.” But you had a lot of fun dressing Meg [Stalter] in your show. I just want to say it’s April 28, and I’m currently watching Lena’s new show, Too Much, which is under embargo until June 18.

DUNHAM: Yes.

OTTENBERG: And I’m watching Girls at the same time, which is so luxurious. Who else is doing that?

DUNHAM: No one.

OTTENBERG: Last night I watched episode eight of Too Much and—

DUNHAM: The wedding?

OTTENBERG: Yeah. And the season finale of Girls season three.

DUNHAM: You saw Hannah and Adam break up at the Broadway play when she was accepted to University of Iowa, wearing that horrible red dress with shapes on it.

OTTENBERG: With the titty cutouts. Very teacup.

DUNHAM: I recently was faced with a picture of my haircut in that season and actually I thought, what is she doing?

OTTENBERG: It’s kind of cute. It’s like the scarlet letter of insanity because you had cut your hair off in the season before.

DUNHAM: Oh, yeah. That’s why we did it.

OTTENBERG: Did you really cut your hair?

DUNHAM: I cut a wig and then cut my hair the next day. I remember going to the bar at the Carlyle and feeling like a real woman.

OTTENBERG: Wow. Did everything in Too Much happen, IRL?

DUNHAM: Not everything. Has she set herself on fire? Yes. She being me, and it wasn’t on purpose and I was sober—just need to state that for the record.

OTTENBERG: [Laughs].

DUNHAM: Has she run away from her problems to London? Also yes. The character’s based on 18 of my friends, but it started out under the assumption of “dumb American girl moves to England thinking she’s going to have a rom-com, and she does, but it’s different.”

OTTENBERG: British Jones’s Diary.

DUNHAM: Trivia for you, I had written Bridget Jones’s Diary in the script and Meg was like, “Oh, I wish I was in British Jones’s Diary,” and Will was like, “Did you just say British Jones?” We lost our minds.

OTTENBERG: [Laughs] Incredible.

DUNHAM: This fig is so good.

OTTENBERG: How old is Meg?

DUNHAM: Meg is 34. She played 35.

OTTENBERG: Was she big on Girls? She must be a Lena disciple.

DUNHAM: She’s a Girls girl but Meg is so her. On Girls, no matter what Hannah did, whether she was nice, whether she was mean, whether she was sexy, whether she was nerdy, she just rubbed people the wrong way. I’ve been like that since kindergarten. I’d come home from school and be like, “So-and-so says they hate me,” and my mom would be like, “Why?” And I’d be like,“They don’t like the way that I look or talk or speak or act.” People really get me or don’t and that’s part of life. But the thing about Meg is she’s so magnificently open and sweet and tender that even when she acts self-involved or bratty, she has a central goodness that makes you want to root for her.

OTTENBERG: Multiple people in the office are watching the passworded barricaded show, and some—

DUNHAM: Oh my god, I need the responses.

OTTENBERG: It’s funny because Meg sometimes rubs me the wrong way.

DUNHAM: One of my best friends was like, “I got Hannah but I don’t get her.” I was like, “I think it could be a little bit generational.” Also, fellow neurotic Jewish people cresting out of their millennial life got Hannah in a different way than they get Meg.

OTTENBERG: Yes. Also, there might be some self-loathing Judaism in me that wasn’t liking some of the Meg stuff that really didn’t hit this shiksa at the office the same way.

DUNHAM: Oh, yeah.

OTTENBERG: She was like, “I really like how Lena portrays Meg, I’ve never seen a bigger woman look that sexy onscreen.” And then I started watching Girls and I realized what an uproar your body caused, but your body—

DUNHAM: I’m tiny.

OTTENBERG: You’re, like, petite!

DUNHAM: People were scandalized. Looking back at it now I’m like, “Why?” Because I didn’t have a six-pack?

OTTENBERG: It’s because you changed the world. I’m sorry, it’s a fact. You watch the show now and you’re like, first of all, it’s so obvious that they’ve written these characters to be insufferable.

DUNHAM: But people never believe it. When you’re a young woman, they’re like, “You can’t do satire. This must be a reality show.”

OTTENBERG: The problem with Hannah—by the way, I’m a Hannah Horvath.

DUNHAM: Of course you are.

OTTENBERG: But the thing that’s so terrible about Hannah’s personality is the selfishness, the making everything about her.

DUNHAM: That was such a fun character to play, but with Meg, and her character Jessica, she’s a person who puts her foot in her mouth. She has an anxious attachment style. She doesn’t quite know how to operate, but she’s very tender and loving. I was interested in writing someone who you actually believe is capable of a relationship. It’s also the difference between being in your twenties and being an adult. But it was really important to Meg and me that in the show we’re not talking about what her body looks like, because Meg’s gorgeous and watching her play a character who’s in a loving, sexy relationship makes perfect and total sense. The goal was to style her in a way that was playful and fun and silly, but also flattering and lovely and a little old-fashioned.

OTTENBERG: Right.

DUNHAM: I don’t go online very often, but if I ever dare to look at comments about myself, someone will say something like, “I can’t believe we made such a big deal about her when she was so small, and now she’s huge.” Doing Girls made me realize that there was literally no version of a female body, especially one that was getting naked in public, that was going to fly with people. Now, people like to act like they feel bad about what they said before, while also commenting on how they’re worried about your weight gain. It’s part of why I’m like, “I don’t need to brush my hair.” It’s not depression; it’s just the idea that I’m going to protect myself by looking a certain way—that veil was pulled away very early. Does that make sense?

OTTENBERG: Yes.

DUNHAM: I still love to look fabulous, but that feeling you have when you’re young, where you’re like, “If my outfit is perfect every day I can prevent a world of hurt,” is gone. When Girls came out I expected people to have their thoughts about the sex or nudity, but I didn’t expect the uproar that happened around my specific body because I was moving through the world feeling like I looked pretty good. I love Meg in this show so much, and I really hope that people don’t make the show about that, because it’s about so many other things.

OTTENBERG: It’s about love. It’s about being sort of headless in life.

DUNHAM: Totally.

OTTENBERG: It’s about dysfunctional families. What else is it about?

DUNHAM: Something I really wanted to explore as a result of meeting Luis [Felber, Dunham’s husband] and trying to bring our lives together is what happens when you’re trying to find a relationship in your thirties or forties. You’re not a kid anymore. You have the baggage of past relationships, the baggage of your family, the baggage of your career, the baggage of how you see yourself and how others have seen you. It’s hard to meet a relationship in an honest way when you have all these ghosts in your head.

OTTENBERG: Yeah.

DUNHAM: So I was trying to realistically show what it’s like to move into someone’s house with all your stuff and your exes and their friends and their parents and their trauma.

OTTENBERG: Because you always think, “I’m going to be able to do it much better next time.”

DUNHAM: Yeah, and in some ways you are, but when I met Lu, I had the rattling noise of 15 relationships behind me, and I was the kind of person who, every time I fell in love, was like, “I’m going to die with this person in a shared tomb.” I was not a casual dater, and 20 years of relationships is a lot of time.

OTTENBERG: The show starts with Jessica having her relationship really fall into—

DUNHAM: Disrepair. She arguably acts out a little bit. Her behavior’s not ideal.

OTTENBERG: Just a touch.

DUNHAM: For the record, that’s never happened, otherwise I’d be in criminal court.

OTTENBERG: But it must be fun to take your resentments and make art out of it, because my resentments just swim around in my head like crazy people.

DUNHAM: It’s the best feeling in the world. In the opening—spoiler alert—she does some breaking and entering and attempts grievous bodily harm. That came from whenI’d been dating a guy, and I had a key to his house. Three years later, I found it in a purse, and I was like,“What if I covered myself in white paint and went into his house and whispered, and he said, ‘Lena?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s Lena’s ghost. She’s dead because she was so sad.’” I couldn’t stop thinking about how funny it would be. I didn’t do it, but I thought it could be like an Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode, a performance piece, if you will.

OTTENBERG: Absolutely. There’s a lot of actors that were in Girls that are in Too Much, and that reminds me of how Woody Allen casts a lot of the same people over and over. Is it just like, “I know I can trust blah, blah to crush this?”

DUNHAM: Robert Altman and Nora [Ephron] did it too. She made three rom-coms with Meg Ryan and two that included her and Tom Hanks falling in love as separate characters. When you find creative soulmates, you have to hang onto them. It also just makes it so fun. To have a simplified language with people who’ve worked with you for a longtime—that’s how I feel with Andrew Rannells. I hadn’t acted in a while, so being back in front of the camera, I was like, “I want to do this with someone who makes me feel safe.”

OTTENBERG: How does it feel to act now?

DUNHAM: It’s interesting. I love doing it, but I know the difference between what I do and actors do. They’re bringing something new to it every single time, and I more know how to say my own lines. I’ve had some amazing experiences acting in other people’s things, but in your twenties, you have that insane ability to work 24 hours a day and then also go out and see your friends. Now, my desire for balance has increased. That being said, I had the best job in this show, which was a chance to just pop in and work with iconic, funny women for two scenes and then pop out. And I got to cast my godson, Ollie, as my child. He’s a star.

OTTENBERG: I love Ollie. He’s our friend Alissa’s son. Do you need ice?

DUNHAM: I’m just going to pee, again.

OTTENBERG: There’s a bathroom right there. [Pauses recording] We’ve moved into my bedroom. I brought two different kinds of cookies to my bed. They’re both from Citarella, which low-key has the best cookies in town.

DUNHAM: They smell so good. I’m going to take a bite.

OTTENBERG: Let’s do it.

DUNHAM: Is this where you watch TV?

OTTENBERG: Yes. Last night I was watching Too Much in here at 1:27 a.m.

DUNHAM: That’s so tender. Did you like the wedding episode?

OTTENBERG: Of course.

DUNHAM: Thank you. That’s based on a real wedding I went to.

OTTENBERG: Relapse is a—

DUNHAM: Loaded term for us?

OTTENBERG: Yeah, but it’s also something that you come back to in all of your mediums. Is there anything you want to say about that?

DUNHAM: I mean, it’s not a secret I just had my seven-year sobriety anniversary, and that was thrilling. I was like, okay, now it’s been long enough that my sobriety could be a third-grader with real thoughts and feelings.

OTTENBERG: One hundred percent.

DUNHAM: But I think that even when I was doing Girls, I didn’t understand that there was anything unhealthy about my relationship to substance use. I look back on the amount of times that character—she never goes and has a glass of wine.

OTTENBERG: Never.

DUNHAM: Every time she drinks, she gets absolutely zooted, and then something horrible happens. What’s interesting about making art is that often we don’t even know what we’re telling ourselves about ourselves. It’s like when you listen to a tape of a psychic reading from 11 years before and everything came true. This is a strange example, but I was really obsessed from the very beginning that Hannah would have a baby at the end of the show. I think there was some part of me that knew I wouldn’t get a chance to do that in the traditional way, and I was like, “The closest thing I have to an approximation of myself is this person I’ve played for years, so she’s going to get the chance to do it.” When I was getting my hysterectomy, I was like, “I’ve never been pregnant, but I did get to wear that pregnant belly around for weeks, and men kept stepping out of my way.” And when I look back on Girls, I’m like, there’s never been a more addict piece of art. No one is casually smoking a joint and then hanging out with their friends. Drug use always equals some form of disaster. With Jess—firstly, I’m not interested in showing the program on TV. I think it’s really hard to do right, because it’s such a magical, freaky universe.

OTTENBERG: It’s so major.

DUNHAM: It’s like when someone tries to approximate Studio 54 and it’s like, babe, you weren’t there.

OTTENBERG: You’re right. The rooms and Studio 54 are very parallel like that.

DUNHAM: I also didn’t want every time she relapsed to be a “Oh my god, I’ve ruined my life” moment. I liked the idea that Felix had a more evolved relationship to sobriety. She’s the last one to figure out that she’s not a charming alcohol or drug user—breaking and entering and attempted grievous bodily harm were not enough for her to figure that out. But I also liked that when she relapses or breaks her promises to herself, it has more to do with massive social anxiety. And when he does it, it has to do with crazy amounts of shame. There’s lots of different reasons that people abuse drugs and alcohol, and even though these two are approaching it differently, they’re kind of made for each other.

OTTENBERG: Without a doubt.

DUNHAM: One of my favorite improvs Meg did is when he’s like, “You just snorted three lines of coke just to be polite at this party?” And Meg goes, “Who cares?” It really killed me.

OTTENBERG: [Laughs]

DUNHAM: And I get it. Who cares?

OTTENBERG: That really stuck with me because I’ve been that person who’s just like, “Fuck it.” All the promises are gone. And literally, who cares?

DUNHAM: There are worse things. Bye. Also, I’m always amazed by how much casual drug abuse is embedded in U.K. culture. The amount of people who will tell you that they’re sober and then do cocaine at a party in England—you’re like, “I think we have different definitions of what this means.” No judgment, I’m delighted to watch people frolic as long as they’re safe. It’s the same way I’m a vegetarian—you can eat meat in front of me. But I’ve been awed by some of the narratives. I had someone tell me about their sobriety and then start glugging champagne. I’m like, “Oh, that’s champagne,” because I thought they didn’t know. And she’s like, “Oh no, babe, I’m just sober from ketamine.”

OTTENBERG: Now a lot of people are “sober” but on ketamine therapy. Don’t even get me started. Wait, so what are the influences on the show besides your personal life?

DUNHAM: [Laughs] “Besides your personal life” is killing me. My biggest influence is me and my personal life and a little bit of my husband’s personal life. When I made it I was like, “I want it to be like Bridget Jones’s Diary meets The Worst Person in the World.” That kind of woman who, despite her misgivings, every day tries her hardest. Then I watched The Worst Person in the World four times in the fall of 2021. I love how honest it is about the complexity of relationships and there being no good guys or bad guys. At a certain point, she goes to visit her ex-boyfriend who’s dying of cancer and he’s like, “You’re a selfish bitch.” [Laughs] Another influence—major—is Ally McBeal.

OTTENBERG: I see it. What can you tell me about your movie that you’re shooting this summer?

DUNHAM: It stars Ms. Natalie Portman, Rashida Jones, Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, and a really amazing young musician who is now acting for the first time called Role Model. I saw him on TikTok, where I find out about everything cool, and it turns out he’s totally divine. Anyway, it’s a romantic comedy inspired by Orna Guralnik of TV’s Couples Therapy. She plays a couples therapist who’s having trouble figuring out the dating pool after she’s broken up with her long-term partner. Then she meets two men, different ages, different energies, and suddenly she goes from being in a total dry spell to swimming in sex and romance. The goal was to make a sort of Nora [Ephron], Nancy [Meyers], Mike Nichols, Elaine May rom-com that also hopefully says something about what it’s like to date when you’re a woman who’s cresting into her 40s. Obviously, Natalie Portman looks 12, but she can do anything.

OTTENBERG: Yeah.

DUNHAM: And it’s my first time shooting in New York since Girls, which I love. We always shot summers here.

OTTENBERG: I think it’s a good time to shoot here. The city’s disgusting, but I’m obsessed with it.

DUNHAM: Well, a big part of the movie is that moment between Memorial Day and Labor Day where the city becomes a cesspool, but also everyone’s out and sweaty and wearing cut-off shorts and staring at each other.

OTTENBERG: So you’re going to shoot in Eric Adams’ New York.

DUNHAM: A new place for me. It’s definitely feeling a little Gotham City out here.

OTTENBERG: Definitely. I should be asking you about London, though. You escaped New York. Why?

DUNHAM: It was a mix of things, but I felt like I had really ridden it till the wheels came off in my twenties, so I planned to go for a sojourn and then return.

OTTENBERG: Eat, Pray, Love.

DUNHAM: I planned to eat, pray, love and come back and be like, “I’m fixed.” Then two weeks in I met Lu.

OTTENBERG: Where did you guys meet?

DUNHAM: We got set up on a blind date by our friend, Honor Titus. He and Lu had toured together back when Lu was in a band called Turbogeist and Honor was in a band called Cerebral Ballzy.

OTTENBERG: Wow.

DUNHAM: I was on a Zoom with him and our friend Jessie, and they were like, “What’s going on in London?” I was like, “Nothing.” And they were like, “Who have you seen?” I was like, “No one.” They’re like, “What are you doing?” And I was like, “Just listening to Fiona Apple.” They were like, “This is not right.”

OTTENBERG: “Let’s get it together.”

DUNHAM: It was the middle of COVID and I was like, “Where am I going to go? Museums are closed. You can’t even go into a Joe and the Juice, guys.” And Honor said, “You should take a walk with my friend Lu.” He said, “He’s not going to be your husband or anything, but you’d really like him.”

OTTENBERG: My god. The quote.

DUNHAM: And when he showed up an hour and 15 minutes late, didn’t say sorry. Didn’t act like it was anything. To do that to a woman—waiting for someone to show up once you’re already in your outfit is purgatory, actually.

OTTENBERG: Yeah.

DUNHAM: I changed outfits like nine times and then I kept being like, “Why are you changing outfits? You don’t even know this guy.” Then he showed up, and he was like, “Can I come up and use your bathroom?” I was like, “Okay. Do you have COVID?” He said, “I don’t think so.” And then he started picking up and putting down all my stuff, really inspecting it, and I thought, this is the strangest man I’ve ever met. He looks like a vampire from the Victorian times. What is happening? Then we talked for two hours and I was like, “This person’s alarmingly compelling to me.” We’ve been together since that day.

OTTENBERG: And then did you fall in love with London as you fell in love with him?

DUNHAM: Yeah. I was supposed to go home at the end of making the movie, and he was like, “So what’s going to happen when you leave? Are we going to stop dating?” And I was like, “That seems terrible. Do you want to move to New York?” And he’s like, “Not really.” And I was like, “Wait, I don’t think I want to go back to New York.” I’m so involved with my parents that it seemed insane—I never even thought I’d move out of my parents’ apartment, much less to London. And then the first time they met Lu was when they came for our wedding.

OTTENBERG: Wow.

DUNHAM: Which is an insane thing to do to your parents.

OTTENBERG: Yeah.

DUNHAM: They were actually so fucking cool about it considering they could have been like, “Knock, knock, do we need to take possession of you?” And then finally, four years in, my mom was like, “I’m really starting to love you, Lu.” And I was like, “Wait, but we’ve been married for four years.” And she was like, “Yeah, that’s a normal amount of time for it to take to know and love someone.”

OTTENBERG: Right. Okay, tell me about a day in the life of expat Lena in London.

DUNHAM: Great question. If I’m shooting, I’m up and out of the house by 6:30 in the morning, on set all day, and then home and on TikTok watching videos. If I have a day that’s just for Lena and Luis, we wake up around 7 because it’s pet feeding time. My husband blessedly wakes up with vigor that I don’t have, so he often takes the morning shift. There’s five cats, two dogs, and international pigs, so there’s a lot of work to do in that department. Then, he’ll come back to bed and do his admin, and I’ll wake up. We’ll enjoy a blueberry matcha in bed, gab about what our day might hold. What I love is that you can wake up late in London and sleep till 10, and by the time people are awake and doing their thing in New York or L.A., you’ve achieved everything.

OTTENBERG: I was just watching a TikTok with Kris Jenner saying that she wakes up at 4 in the morning every day because she gets so much done; this is your version of that.

DUNHAM: Yes. And then I can stay up until my desired hour of two, three, and still get a full night of Zs. Then, I will often enjoy lunch with a pal. A favorite is Fischer’s in Marylebone. I like to get the spaetzle noodles with butter, some spinach, maybe some French fries if I’m feeling crazy. After that, I’ll head home and gab on the phone with my father for a while, then my mom. Then I’ll spend the afternoon between writing and Zooms. Lu loves to cook dinner. If we’re not doing anything out in the world, I’ll write until 9 or 10:30, check back in with family, maybe say hello to a pal in California. Then, I usually watch a movie. I like to think, “What haven’t I seen from the ’90s for a while?”

OTTENBERG: Oh yeah.

DUNHAM: After that, my husband falls asleep and I will read or listen to an audiobook of an Irish crime thriller and then drift off into my thoughts with all my pets around me in the bed. Does that sound like a good day to you?

OTTENBERG: It does. What are you writing?

DUNHAM: I’ve been working on a book for six years. It’s coming in for a landing.

OTTENBERG: Oh, cool.

DUNHAM: So, I’ll work on that or an essay if I have one due. And then I’m always toggling between a few script projects. It’s like every writing project is a little Tamagotchi. One’s like, “Feed me.” And one’s like, “I need a bath.” And one’s like, “Please help me hatch out of this egg.” So, I move between them, and I have a very ornate Notes app system where I keep track of my writing, what I’m working on, deadlines, notes from producers and actors. I’ve always said that if I ever had the opportunity to teach writers, I would just teach my Notes app system.

OTTENBERG: I love the Notes app. Okay last question. I’d mentioned that I’m rewatching Girls. What are you hearing from people who are rewatching Girls in 2025?

DUNHAM: It’s interesting because social media was so young when we started it. We weren’t even FaceTiming yet then, guys. It was pre-COVID, pre–Me Too. It was a whole different world, so just the fact that it’s still resonating with people is a crazy feeling. I don’t think I ever imagined it having another life. Occasionally, Emily Ratajkowski, since she’s very on TikTok, will send me a supercut someone made of Marnie and Charlie set to “party4 u,” and that stuff is a dream.

OTTENBERG: Absolutely.

DUNHAM: I just have to say, I love looking into your eyes.

OTTENBERG: Oh my god, thank you so much. Are they green right now? Sometimes they look green.

DUNHAM: They look like a glowing sea-glass green. Also, you’re a really good interviewer.

OTTENBERG: Am I? It’s so fun to talk to you.

DUNHAM: I love talking to you. Thank you for interviewing me so beautifully. I’m really glad I know you and I love you.

OTTENBERG: I love you too. Thanks for letting me interview you.

DUNHAM: Do you want to go to dinner later this week?

OTTENBERG: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Pick a night.

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Hair: Peter Butler at Tracey Mattingly.

Makeup: Matin using Retrouvé at Tracey Mattingly.

Nails: Nori using Dior at See Management.

Fashion Assistant: Chejolie Collins.