Lena Dunham Says ‘Girls’ Was Her ‘First Grownup Job’
There are many television series that come and go and others that create an imprint in history. The HBO comedy-drama series Girls is the latter. Created by Lena Dunham, the series aired for six seasons on HBO. Dunham recently reflected on the success and cultural impact of the show on social media.
She created ‘Girls’ as a means to better understand and explore female friendships
Girls chronicled the lives and friendships of four 20-somethings living in New York City. All characters – Hannah, Jessa, Marnie, and Shoshanna – are at different stages in their lives, professionally and romantically. Throughout its six seasons, the series follows the friends’ ups and downs. By the series end, only Hannah and Marnie remain close. Dunham intentionally ended the series when the characters turned 30 as a symbol of them embarking on the next journey into womanhood.
“By the time I wrote Girls, I had 24 years of experience with feeling both connected to and separated from, well, girls,” she wrote in a Vogue Magazine essay. “Many people saw the title of the show as a pronouncement that I was speaking for all the girls, that I fancied myself a microphone for half the population and, in the process, was grinding us down to one monolithic and unlikable soapstone. But this was actually my attempt to understand, perhaps even master, my relationships with girls, with women.”
Lena Dunham calls the show her first grownup job
Dunham created the show in her early 20s. It was her first project, and one she credits as an introduction into adulthood.
“There’s no insta wrap-up that can describe the magic and mayhem of this journey, or room enough in a caption to celebrate the people I made the show with (though a big fat thank you to my @hbo family is the place to start,)” she captioned a series of photos of herself and the show’s leads on Instagram. “The audience is better equipped than I am to argue the finer points of what we did and didn’t do, so all I can say is: my life is too transformed to imagine a world without this having been my (admittedly singular) first grownup job.”
She’s also thankful for the support of the show. “I hope you’ll recognize some of yourself in it, just as you perhaps recognized yourselves in our maddening, imperfect but always striving-for-honesty show,” she wrote.
She wanted to end the show on a high note
Fans of the show were sad to see it go, especially as they felt there was still more to explore with the characters. But Dunham always knew she wanted to end the series when the characters turned 30. More importantly, she didn’t want the show to grow stale.
While speaking at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, she expanded further on that idea. “We were always conscious, especially because the show has been at times such a lightning rod, of overstaying our welcome,” Dunham said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “We’ve been very blessed to have the experience of people continuing to engage in the show in a really kind of rabid way after four — heading into five — years. We wanted to make sure we kept the momentum alive and didn’t allow it to soften over time.”
But despite its end, a reboot of sorts has not been axed out fully. Many have questioned whether the show can return in episodic or film form. Dunham says that time is not yet, but she’s hopeful for the future and always open to exploring new ideas around the characters.
