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Lena Dunham on ambition, fame and illness
00:24:33
Lena Dunham rapidly rose to fame more than a decade ago as the comedic force behind HBO's breakout hit, 'Girls.' In a new memoir, Dunham candidly, hilariously, and sometimes painfully explores how she balanced celebrity with her struggles with chroni...
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, everyone. It's Amna. Welcome to the next episode of Settle In. Today we are talking to the prolific creator Lena Dunham. She has a new book out. It's called Fame Sick. It chronicles the rise of her HBO show Girls, but also the many, many struggles she was dealing with personally in her health and in her family, all at that same time. And we talk about it all. We talk about what it was like to become super famous, about the online attacks at the time, about addiction and sobriety and illness and love and where she is today and what she wants out of life. So settle in and enjoy my conversation with Lena Dunham. Lena Dunham, welcome to Settle In. Thanks so much for joining us.
- [00:43]
B
It's an absolute pleasure. I'm an enthusiastic PBS viewer. Those tote bags really got me through my school years, and I'm thrilled to be here.
- [00:53]
A
Thank you for that. We'll have to send you an updated tote bag. Listen, I think it's fair to say anyone who knows you and your work will say you have never been one to hold back, right? You are very comfortable sharing parts of your life. It's part of what people adore about your work and about you. But this memoir, this is intensely personal, right? It's about your family and your sex life and your traumas, your addiction, your illness. And I wonder now that it is out there in the world for all to read, what has that been like for you?
- [01:28]
B
So I started the book in 2018. I was newly sober. I had just gotten out of rehab, and I was really trying to figure out how to make sense of some of the experiences I'd had sort of in the first decade, almost decade of my career. And now it's 2026. Hard to believe that Pandemic did a number on us. And at this point, I just celebrated eight years of sobriety last week. And it's been a really amazing opportunity to be very intentional about what's in the book. I think when I was younger, I was a little bit more, I don't want to use the word careless, but perhaps naive just about what it was like to make really personal work, put it out in the world fairly quickly, and then process that in real time. And so the chance to really sit with this over an extended period of time and make decisions about sort of what experiences, not just that I wanted to discuss, but I thought might actually be useful to the reader. That was a really important part of the process. And I worked really closely with my editor, Andy Ward. And so it's a really lovely Feeling to put something in the world that I know is packed full of things that many people would still consider contain the signature overshare, but have been done with a certain amount of intention and hopefully integrity.
- [02:47]
A
I mean, what you do so beautifully and compellingly in the book is very candidly, very honestly, very painfully in some ways chronicling both your rise to fame with the success of this show, Girls on hbo, and your simultaneous battles with chronic pain and illness. And there's this moment really early in the book when you tell a story about your dad and you're talking to him and you say you're gonna be playing the lead role in the show, you're gonna be playing Hannah. And he asks you if you considered the effect that it would have on your life. And I just wonder how you look back on that question now.
- [03:25]
B
Well, I love that you caught that. I think it's a very classic parent child dynamic for a parent to have. You know, I always joke that he's like Cassandra, like he can see the future, but he can't do anything about it. He can. And when you have a 23 year old child, a willful 23 year old daughter, they are too young to know how young they are. And so everything my father said, I felt like this old fuddy duddy. He's never even picked up Instagram. He doesn't know what's going on. And I moved forward with this kind of abandon. And of course I look back now and go, my father had a complete understanding because he was an adult and I wasn't. And also because he's an artist and he knows what it's like to have his work consumed. He and my mother had a pretty complete understanding of what this might look like. And they also knew that they, this is what I love to do. And so they had to let me take the ride. And I know I tried to really touch on the idea in the book that I know that that was very painful for them, but I also feel a lot of gratitude that they kind of let me fly.
- [04:31]
A
I mean, the show, as we all know, went on to be an absolute cultural juggernaut, right? And you're one of the stars, but you're also, you are the force behind the show. You are writing it, you are co running it, you're the face of it. And you talk about how obviously exciting and how exhilarating all of that was, but also how isolating it could be at times. Were there trade offs that you, you maybe didn't realize you were going to have to make as your star was ascending.
- [04:58]
B
Now I think something that's very interesting about showrunning is it's a really creative job and it's also a little bit like running a company. Like you are worrying about like, you know, you're worrying about a workplace and making sure that it's a positive place to work. You're dealing with individual dynamics. Most of us were very young. I love the cast and I feel very, very, very grateful for them. And I also recognize now just how young we were. And so it was a little bit like someone I had gone from making independent films really actually in my living room starring my family, to suddenly sort of being in charge of a business, like being a sort of CEO without having been given any of those like nifty online TR is. And so suddenly I remember this feeling of going from sort of young carefree woman who's thinking like what party are we going to go to on Friday and am I going to get fired from my job at the baby clothes store for being 10 minutes late every day? And then suddenly I was looking around going, is there ever going to be a moment when there isn't something that needs doing urgently? And I think that whiplash going so quickly from one reality to the other and there really is no training for the job of showrunning besides doing it. But so some people, you know, this is the reason that people assist and they mentor and they learn. And I hadn't had any of those experiences. And so I look back and think it's sort of a wonder that everything, I mean I had great help. Jenny and Connor was there, Judd apart. There were, there were adults in the room. But it's a wonder that we made it for six years. And I'm very proud of that. In terms of trade offs, I think that there were moments and I feel extremely grateful for my job and I'm certainly not throwing a pity party for myself about what happened. But at the same time I was looking around at my friends lives who were still maybe having the chance to figure things out in a more private way, to have more spontaneous experiences, to travel, to sort of live a more quintessentially 20 something life. And I was recreating a 20 something life on screen, but I was basically never not at work.
- [07:25]
A
You're also not getting to live your 20s and make the mistakes of your 20s that all of us make in the privacy of your own life. Right. It's a very public experience and a highly scrutinized experience. And all of this we should remind people it's all unfolding at a time when blogging is taking off and social media is taking off, and everyone on the Internet has a hot take and an opinion that they really want to share in that moment. And you were the brunt. You bore the brunt of a lot of that. Right. A lot of it was focused at you in a really intensely, A lot of times, unkind, personal way. I wonder how you dealt with that at the time, how you navigated that on top of managing the responsibility of a successful show and running a team and trying to be creative in the moment.
- [08:12]
B
Well, I think, firstly, I'm going to hook onto two things you said. One is, I think, talking about the fact that this was the rise of blogging. I mean, I've said, I remember, like, joining Twitter the year that girl started. I remember, like, posting my first Instagram photo. This was sort of the wild, wild west. And now we're sort of. We've become used to, you know, I don't know if the Grammys happen. And then everybody gets on with, like, 57 opinions about Sabrina Carpenter's shorts. And we are used to that cycle, but it was new, and people were trying to figure out what it was and what it meant. And we happened to be in New York at a moment when New York media was really the center of that, and we were sort of adjacent to the people who were writing, but just far enough away that they could be pretty hypercritical, but just close enough that it could sort of feel a little like eating your own. And it was. Looking back, it's a kind of a fascinating cultural moment. It's a fascinating study in. In so much about creativity, human behavior, you know, how we adapt to new technologies. I wouldn't say in the moment, it felt like an incredible cultural study. In the moment, it felt like I was just fighting to survive, truly. And in terms of how I dealt with it, I loved what you said about holding onto your creativity. That was always the most important thing to me, which is like, what do I have to do to be able to continue to do this thing that got me here, which is write and direct and make this work. And I think in terms of how I dealt with it is that I didn't deal with it. And that was part of what was so. I think. I think unmanaged trauma, unhandled stress, we know, is, you know, a deep sort of. It's like pouring an accelerant on. On illness. And so these things that I had always dealt with, I'd always sort of been Like a sickly kid or someone who, you know, had my. Who had my rough moments. But suddenly that was neck and neck with the rest of my life as the most kind of the loudest theme.
- [10:25]
A
I wonder what all of that means for your relationship with social media today. How would you describe that?
- [10:31]
B
How would I describe my relationship with social media? I'm really lucky because I have some people, you know, I have a production company, and the young folks who work for me are very online, so they let me know if there's things that I have to know about or things that are special or amusing or really good memes, scandalous tiktoks that one must see. At the same time, I. I really treat it more like a part of my job. I have a social media manager, I have a creative director, and those are people that I sort of engage with in terms of, like, what is an interesting and new way for us to use social media. But I'm not actually on the apps, dealing every day with people's perceptions, which I recognize was like a pretty unhealthy cycle for me, and I. And I'd argue a pretty unhealthy cycle for anyone. And I look at. At what it means to be a young celebrity today, which is you don't just have to be an actor or a singer or, you know, you also have to be a content creator. And that means engaging with all of these voices. And I do think we'll find sort of the same way that we're learning how spending so much time on a screen is affecting the human brain. We're going to learn what this is doing, but it's going to take a little bit of time. And I think about it the way we think about the fact that, like, we didn't know in the 1940s that smoking was bad for you, and so for a while, you just get to smoke cigarettes with impunity. Until one day we discover the truth. And I think we will learn the same thing about social media. And it's certainly not going away, but learning how to mediate it in our lives so that we can actually engage with what's in front of us. Whenever I talk about this, I feel like I sound like I'm. I sound like my father talking to me when I was 23, but I'm gonna be 40 in a month and we all get here.
- [12:27]
A
It happens fast, doesn't it, Lena? It happens fast.
- [12:31]
B
It's wild. I suddenly hear myself saying things where I just go, oh, my gosh. Like, I sound like when my mom and her friends would say, like, but what is it you like so much about the Backstreet Boys? Like, I'm so mortified.
- [12:45]
A
You know, the other thing you are, you're so open and honest about is your very real health struggles that it seems like in hindsight, you have a much clearer view of. But at the time, of course, you're caught up in the rise of girls and the work that you need to do. But you note how in the earliest days of the show, your body was sending you signals that it was not okay. And you had repeated emergencies and surgeries and pain, and you pushed through because this was your chance to create the work that you so badly wanted to. How do you look at the balance, if there's even a balance between those two, of working towards the things that you'd wanted for so long and so badly, but it coming at the cost of your own health?
- [13:26]
B
You know, I think that ambition is a very heady thing. And even if I didn't have an ambition to be a celebrity, I certainly had an ambition to be someone who made a lot of work and. And, you know, continued to work prolifically. And I also put a lot of stock in being somebody who could keep on keeping on to me, like the highest. And I think many people, many women feel this way, which is that. That the kind of, like, highest good is to push through their own needs over everything. And that has. That does have a cost. And so, of course, looking back, do I wish that I could have created a healthier balance and perhaps saved myself some of these traumatic experiences? Yes. Do I wish that I could have found doctors who could have given me a clearer picture of my health issues? Because there is one. And I spent such a long time feeling hysterical. I certainly do. But I also look back and recognize that there was not a. There was not a health conversation. There was not a robust women's health conversation for me to join. And there also. I didn't know that it was okay to say no. I didn't know it was okay to say, I need a minute. And I thought that if I kind of stopped the treadmill, I would be thrown off. And now when I work with younger actors, which I'm lucky enough to do often as a director, and it's always inspiring, one of the first things I tell them is like, this job is amazing, and do not ever sacrifice yourself for it, because hopefully you will be you for much longer than this show is on the air. You will be you for as long as you're alive. And this is the one body that we get to have on this go round. And I look back and I do wish that I had treated it with a little bit more kindness. But I'm catching up now.
- [15:31]
A
That women's health conversation you mentioned. Even today, there are a lot of things you unpack in great detail that a lot of women can relate to but don't really feel comfortable talking about. Endometriosis, for example, your decision to very courageously have a full hysterectomy at the age of 31. These are things women talk about privately all the time or consult with, you know, their best friends, but we don't speak openly about. Why was it so important for you to talk about it in the way that you do in this book?
- [16:03]
B
You know, it's interesting. When I first started talking about my endometriosis publicly, I think my family still felt a little bit. They had their hackles up. Why isn't this private? This is something that we're dealing with as a family. This is painful. Why does this have to be anybody's business? And I completely understand that. And then one day I came out of a doctor's appointment with my mother and a girl was crying in the street by herself. And she looked over and we locked eyes and she was like, it's you. And she came over to me and she said, I was just upstairs. And they told me that there is nothing that they can do besides take my uterus. We've tried everything. And I just feel so afraid. And we started to have this conversation because she knew that I was a safe place to do that. And my mother sort of looked at me and she was like, okay, I think I get it now, which is that it has created. I don't think of it as a gift I'm giving other people. It is a gift that has been given to me, which is that I was so alone in this. When I was first diagnosed with endometriosis, I could barely say the word. It was not. Even though one in 10 women deal with this condition. I mean, it was only two months ago that one very courageous 25 year old woman sued the Department of Health and was able to list endometriosis as a disability because she was fired from her job for having to miss multiple days of work around her period. I mean, this is a continuing issue. And by talking about my experience, other people piped up in a way that actually saved me. And when I talk about the dark side of the Internet, that's there. But there's also the really beautiful part where you're able to connect with other people, normalize your experiences. And for me, this book is just an expansion of that conversation. And I hope that it becomes a time capsule really quickly and that this is no longer how women. I mean, the statistics about women and the delay to diagnosis, the statistics are much worse for women of color. Those same statistics exist in, you know, birthing hospitals all around the country. And so these are issues. I am certainly not a politician, and I think my. I think, and I think my campaigning days are behind me. That being said, this is an issue that's really important to me on a lot of levels.
- [18:26]
A
You talk about your chronic illness and wrestling with that in the book, about your fame and wrestling with that. You also speak very openly about your struggles with addiction, which culminate in you going to rehab after years of taking anti anxiety medication and pain medication. And I should say in a very delayed way, congratulations on eight years being sober. That is no small thing. How has sobriety changed your relationship not just with yourself, but with your work, which you're still very actively engaged in?
- [19:02]
B
I think that something that was interesting was that when I was dealing with my health issues in the earliest years, it was really, really important to me to sort of distinguish, this is real, this is in my body, this is not a mental problem. Because I felt like the first thing that a doctor asks you when you go in and you complain about diffuse pain, you complain about feeling anxious as a result of said pain, is you start to get questions about your personal life. You start to be asked whether you're experiencing depression or anxiety. And the answer I wanted to give was always, well, now I am. And because of this conversation, I certainly am. And, and so I also spent a long time kind of keeping the idea of addiction and illness separate. But addiction, illness and trauma all feed each other in ways that we're. We understand so much about how humans work, and yet there's still so much about that kind of trio and how they each kind of light the other on fire that we still don't fully grok. And so something that's been really amazing in sobriety has been able to look and go, okay, I've just had this experience. How does that make my body feel? What are the situations in which I can feel the healthiest and strongest? What. How can I create a workplace that doesn't just let me do my best work, but lets everybody do their best work and feel safe to tap out if they need to feel safe, to actually ask for what they need? Because we are so lucky in the film industry and to be basically playing make believe as adults. And often it's treated as this very militaristic male kind of a set is like it is being run on a clock. It can be a little dictatorial. And I really try to relax all of that. And I think all of that perspective just came from unclouding my mind. And also the work that you do in sobriety, looking back to understand where you are, and that's also the work of a memoirist. So they go together really beautifully.
- [21:08]
A
So in the looking back to understand, I'm curious about this because you do what is very difficult for a lot of people, which is look back at past relationships in a very self aware, very honest way. Relationships that in your own descriptions were not necessarily very healthy. And you talk about not just those relationships, but some related traumas, your own assaults in the past when you were a child and later in life. And I wonder, as someone who is where you are now in your life and in your body and in your marriage now, right of four years, five years, how do you look at those relationships?
- [21:51]
B
I think something that was really important to me in the book was to look at my own part in the kind of. In the way that those relationships frayed because I know that I was not self aware enough and I was not healthy enough to be able to express my needs or to be able to really hear anybody else's. And so there may have been a lot of love, but perhaps there wasn't enough understanding. And so I. Part of the reason I took so long is because I wanted to make sure that all of these relationships, I can never convey everything that they were to me and in some ways are to me. But I can try to convey the kind of two sidedness of these dynamics and to reflect on my own role in them. Which only makes you a better spouse, a better, you know, parent, if I'm lucky enough to get to do that job. And looking back, one of the things that's great about sobriety is that you're encouraged to really look back in a pretty unflinching way at your own life and to kind of not live in a state of denial. And so I feel extremely lucky that I've had that chance. And I hope that, you know, I hope when people read it that what their takeaway is, is not just the kind of challenges of these relationships, but also how much love there was in them. Because I was lucky enough to experience a lot of love in my 20s, even if it didn't always end up the way I had hoped.
- [23:22]
A
Would you like to be a parent? Is that something you want out of life?
- [23:26]
B
I would love to be a parent. You know, I think the book makes I talk about my journey to trying to do that biologically. That's not necessarily. Well, that is certainly not in the cards. I've made it pretty clear in the book that it's not in the cards. But it's a job that I've always wanted and I feel lucky that I didn't. I actually feel lucky that I didn't get the chance to do it earlier in life because I am certainly more equipped now than I was then. But for now, I'm the parent to many pigs, multiple rabbits, five cats, two dogs. I would list all their names, but it would overwhelm you. But trust, they're all named for glamorous 1940s movie stars. And they are beautiful children.
- [24:09]
A
I would expect nothing less from you. Lena Dunham, thank you so much for making the time to speak with us. Your new book is out now called Fame Sick. It's been such a pleasure. And the tote bag is on its way.
- [24:20]
B
Oh, thank you so much. I did it all for the tote bag. Amna, thank you. It was a pleasure.