WASN’T this supposed to be the television season of the young woman? It was only last September when the arrival of network sitcoms like “Whitney,” “2 Broke Girls” and “New Girl” heralded the possibility that the urban exploits of women in their 20s, once largely invisible to television programmers, would become a genre as established as the gross-out crime procedural. But while those comedies found their followings, they also took criticism for their crassness, their fixations on punch lines about lady parts and their oddly inauthentic depictions of the women at the heart of those shows.
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Preview: 'Girls'
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Laurie Simmons, seated, with Ms. Dunham in “Tiny Furniture.”
All of which has created an exciting if potentially perilous opportunity for Lena Dunham and her new HBO comedy, “Girls.” It comes two years after Ms. Dunham’s film debut, “Tiny Furniture,” a comedy-drama that she wrote, directed and starred in, about a recent college graduate adrift in Manhattan. That film made a splash at the South by Southwest festival with its honesty and unsentimental sense of humor, and she has channeled that spirit into “Girls.”
Ms. Dunham, 25, the show’s creator, plays Hannah, a post-college Brooklynite with big if uncertain ambitions, a perpetual lack of money and a coterie of friends with personal lives as jumbled and complicated as her own: the headstrong Jessa (played by her “Tiny Furniture” co-star Jemima Kirke), the seemingly perfect Marnie (Allison Williams) and the innocent Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet of “Mad Men” and “Parenthood”).
“Girls,” which will be shown at South by Southwest this month before making its HBO debut on April 15, arrives with the imprimatur of Judd Apatow, the “Knocked Up” director and “Bridesmaids” producer, who serves as an executive producer on the series. And it is unafraid to use its cable-television freedom to the fullest degree: its characters talk frankly about their relationships, their bodies and sex, while having plenty of it on screen, in ways that are even more awkward and bittersweet than audiences saw on HBO’s “Sex and the City.” (That touchstone series gets name checked in the pilot episode of “Girls.”) The series is bound to be scrutinized, as much for its depictions of Brooklyn as for its blunt candor about youth and young womanhood.
Ms. Dunham; Jenni Konner, an executive producer; and the “Girls” co-stars Ms. Kirke, Ms. Williams and Ms. Mamet gathered recently to talk about their work on the show and the issues it raises. These are excerpts from that conversation.
Generation DIY
LENA DUNHAM The movie that made me want to make a movie was “Funny Ha Ha” by Andrew Bujalski. I felt like I was spying. I didn’t know you were allowed to take a conversation that feels stilted and people are saying what they mean but sort of not. I really like all the new network “girl” shows. But someone once described the attitude of women on network TV as “Check it out, guys: ladies be talkin’!” And I think we were really careful about anything that rung false.
JENNI KONNER That’s why I responded to “Tiny Furniture.” Judd makes the joke that I was the distributor of “Tiny Furniture.” I was such a huge fan that I would give out copies to everyone, like: “You need to watch this movie. It’s very important.”
School’s Out Forever
JEMIMA KIRKE My post-college experience was a bit — not disastrous, but now I’ve said it, so it was. It’s like you’re on a boat, and you’re used to the waves, and then you get off, and land feels really weird.
ALLISON WILLIAMS I graduated in 2010. That summer I floundered furiously and quickly. Like, “All right, this is go time.” I shot this video called “Mad Men Theme Song ...With a Twist,” and among the people who saw it was Judd Apatow, in the process of casting this show.
ZOSIA MAMET I didn’t go to college, so I cannot say that I had a post-college experience. Having been in the working world since I was 17 and watching all my dearest friends fall off the face of the earth when college ended, I read the pilot and loved it, greatly. I was shooting a movie in upstate New York, and I ended up making a tape in a barn, literally, on a Sunday and got cast off of my tape.
KIRKE I got pregnant while we were making “Tiny Furniture.”
WILLIAMS I didn’t know that.
KIRKE I didn’t know it either. [Laughs] Then I was really pregnant, lying on the bed, and Lena’s playing with my hair and rubbing my belly and she’s like, “Will you be in my TV show?” At first I said no way. I was like: “I’m going to be fat. I can’t do that.” But after some talking I realized this was no different than doing “Tiny Furniture” with her.
That’s What She Said
DUNHAM The stuff that I’m naturally drawn to writing is stuff I’ve felt but haven’t seen. I’d seen “Gossip Girl,” which was an aspirational high school story. And “Sex and the City,” which I grew up on and completely respect, was about women who had figured out the career, figured out their friendships and were really trying to lock the love thing down. To me there’s this time of life where you don’t even know what you want, and you don’t know how to want it. It’s much more abstract and wandering.
WILLIAMS Every time we would get sent scripts, I’d be reading it in my room and be like, [gasps] “I can’t believe that just happened.”
KIRKE I read it, and I was like, “You little thief.” Because she would take things that we’d done or said, like, last week.
source nytimes.com
