Lena Dunham Admitted She Was ‘Heartbroken’ When Adam Driver Got Engaged
Lena Dunham and Adam Driver spent years acting opposite one another on Girls. Dunham described their working relationship as complicated; at times, she alleged he became angry and violent. On other occasions, though, she said he behaved lovingly toward her. She admitted that when he got engaged, she felt heartbroken.
Lena Dunham described her relationship with Adam Driver
In Dunham’s new memoir, Famesick, she described her complicated dynamic with Driver.
“I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering if Adam liked me,” she wrote, per Entertainment Weekly. “He could be short-tempered and verbally aggressive, condescending and physically imposing. He could also be protective, loving even.”
She said they were close creative collaborators and rehearsed more often than was strictly necessary. She said their relationship nearly reached a tipping point when Driver’s girlfriend was performing a play in Cincinnati.
“That week, the week of my empty apartment, he came over almost every night,” she wrote. “I was still frail and fawning, a careful and terrified version of myself — and maybe he liked me most that way. Maybe it made his heart go out to me, or maybe it just leveled the balance of power.”
At the end of this week, she said Driver implied that he wanted more than just friendship.
“You still home alone, Dunham?” she recalled him asking. “Okay. I’m riding down to you. But I’m warning you, if I come up, I’m not leaving this time.”
While she initially told him to come over, she ignored his call when he arrived. She worried about crossing this line.
“It felt as simple as ignoring your doorbell, as pretending to be asleep, as impossible as stopping your blood from flowing,” she wrote. “But some part of me knew-some wise part of me, some bold part of me — that if we crossed whatever boundary we were threatening to cross, the return to work would be tinged with humiliation, that I’d be minimizing any authority I still had, and that, however it went, my heart — bruised but improbably not yet broken — would crack.”
She said they discussed the incident again.
Lena Dunham said she felt hurt when Adam Driver got engaged
Several months later, Dunham said Driver told her he was engaged to his now-wife, Joanne Tucker.
“When my girl was away, I realized I’m no good alone,” Dunham recalled him telling her. “I need someone to keep me in line.”
She said that the news broke her heart.
“It was absurd to be heartbroken, to have thought I meant anything, that I occupied any role beyond distraction,” she wrote. “I was his scene partner, sure – and so when we were in a scene, his attention was piercing, his presence all-consuming. But in life? It would never be me who kept him in line. I didn’t have the chops. Even at work, I couldn’t do it, in the one place I was meant to make the rules.”
They also had a tumultuous relationship
While Dunham said Driver could be kind and loving towards her, she also alleged that he could get explosively angry. She froze while running lines, which she said prompted Driver to throw a chair.
“When I opened my mouth, all that came out was a stammer – until finally, Adam screamed, ‘F***ING SAY SOMETHING’ and hurled a chair at the wall next to me,” she wrote. “‘WAKE THE F*** UP,’ he told me. ‘I’M SICK OF WATCHING YOU JUST STARE.’”
She also claimed he punched a hole in the wall of his trailer and screamed at her. At the time, she said she didn’t feel equipped to address his behavior.
