Lena Dunham is revealing troubling details of her experience acting alongside Adam Driver.
In her new memoir Famesick, the comedian opened up about her HBO show Girls, which she created and starred in from 2012 to 2017, and dished on the one aspect of the filming that’s stuck with her since. The 39-year-old alleged that Adam, who played her character’s toxic, on-again, off-again love interest in the show, exhibited shockingly aggressive behavior on set. Specifically recalling an incident while filming their first sex scene, she claimed all the blocking they rehearsed ahead of time “went out the window” as Adam “hurled me this way and that.”
“Stunned, I couldn’t speak for a moment, unsure of what had happened — had I lost directorial authority, allowed the scene to go off the rails, not given proper instructions? Would I be removed from my command post immediately?”
She continued:
“It wasn’t that I felt violated — and I also wouldn’t know if I had, as there was little in my sexual life that I hadn’t allowed to happen, and for no pay. But I felt that something intimate, confusing and primal had played out in a scenario I was meant to control.”
Oof.
The Too Much actress claimed that after she showed Adam the pilot episode they filmed, he walked out of the room and “didn’t answer any of my calls for the next three weeks.” But while she was sure it was because he quit, he apparently claimed it was because he hates watching himself.
After the show was officially picked up, Lena’s anxiety only grew as she was tasked with running and starring in a show at just 24 years old:
“At work, I found it was hard to act or direct when I wasn’t, in fact, a person. I wondered if everyone on set could tell that an alien had replaced me. I wondered if my scene partners could feel how barely human I was.”
During another incident with Adam, Lena claimed he “hurled a chair at a wall” next to her when she couldn’t remember her lines while rehearsing for the season 1 finale:
“I remember doing a fight scene with Adam and how scary it was to meet someone so totally present with such absence. Late one night, as we practiced lines in my trailer, I found that mine were suddenly gone. I knew I’d written them. I’d known them only minutes before. But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a stammer — until finally, Adam screamed, ‘F**KING SAY SOMETHING’ and hurled a chair at the wall next to me. ‘WAKE THE F**K UP,’ he told me. ‘I’M SICK OF WATCHING YOU JUST STARE.’”
Holy s**t!!!! How terrifying!!!
Lena noted she “didn’t tell anyone” about the incident, but that she “said [her] lines correctly after that.” She also continued to rehearse lines with Adam despite the pair fighting “often,” as she “spent an inordinate amount of time wondering if” he even liked her:
“I reasoned that the intensity of his anger at me, anger that could make him spit and throw things, was proportionate to the intensity of our creative connection. One day in his dressing room, as I apologized for a perceived slight I couldn’t remember committing, he got close to my face and hissed, ‘Never forget that I know you. I really f**king know you.’ ‘What do you know?’ I yelped. ‘You don’t go to parties. You love animals. And you hate being whispered about.’ And he was right.”
She continued:
“He could be short-tempered and verbally aggressive, condescending and physically imposing. He could also be protective, loving even.”
Lena specifically wrote about Adam coming over to her apartment on a nightly basis to keep her company during a period of high anxiety while filming the show. And when they wrapped the series, he left her with a notable message:
“I hope you know I’ll always love you.”
Lena concluded:
“Who knows — maybe I’d write him new parts. We would tell new stories. We would laugh at the way things had been, and smile at the way they were now.”
What a wild dynamic they shared…
While speaking to The Guardian about Adam’s alleged behavior, she dished:
“At the time, I didn’t have the skill to … it never entered my mind to say, ‘I am your boss, you can’t speak to me this way.’ And, at that point in my 20s, I still thought that’s what great male geniuses do: eviscerate you. Which is weird, because I was raised by a male genius who would never do that.”
She also talked about the Star Wars actor during an interview with the New York Times:
“I think that was all of our first job. So, I wouldn’t presume to know how anyone… I wouldn’t say that Girls would be a road map for how anyone behaved anywhere else. It was very like ‘seven strangers sent to live in a house in Seattle. What’s going to happen?’ One thing that’s miraculous is, like, no one dated and no one punched each other. In a way, we did the best you possibly could.”
She went on to gush about the actor:
“Adam is a meticulous artist, and where he has to go to get there is secondary to me to where he get. I love watching him. I learned more from him than anyone I’ve ever stood across from on camera. I feel in a way, like, that was the best I’ll ever be at acting. And I don’t know if I could even pull that off again because so much of it came from what was being handed to me.”
Adam has yet to respond to the allegations.
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