{"id":379301,"date":"2026-04-14T17:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/379301\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T17:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:18:08","slug":"on-jack-antonoff-jenni-konner-adam-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/379301\/","title":{"rendered":"On Jack Antonoff, Jenni Konner, Adam Driver"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn Lena Dunham<\/a>\u2019s second memoir, Famesick<\/a>, the Girls creator details the highs and lows of creating the hit HBO series, which included contending with erratic behavior from her onscreen co-star Adam Driver, as well as the accompanying anxiety that came with acting as head writer and star of the series and being alternatively praised and torn apart online.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the memoir, published April 14, Dunham also reveals more about what happened in her five-year relationship with Jack Antonoff, as well as the falling-out she had with her business partner Jenni Konner.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd, as the title implies, Dunham delves deeper into her Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and endometriosis diagnoses, which involved multiple surgeries and daily pain management, as well as a stint in rehab, brought on by an addiction to the anxiety medication Klonopin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Hollywood Reporter got its hands on a copy pre-release. Here are the five big takeaways from the book:<\/p>\n

\t\tThe erratic behavior of Adam Driver\t<\/p>\n

\n\tDunham describes Driver, who played her boyfriend Adam on Girls, as an incredibly present actor and scene partner, whose unexpected choices often brought out the best in her own acting abilities. But his behavior on and off set could also be unexpected, ranging from abruptly leaving post-filming to more. \u201cLate one night, as we practiced lines in my trailer, I found that mine were suddenly gone. I knew I\u2019d written them. \u2026 But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a stammer \u2014 until finally, Adam screamed \u201cFUCKING SAY SOMETHING\u201d and hurled a chair at the wall next to me.\u201d\u00a0She also noted that during an early sex scene the \u201ccareful blocking went out the window and he hurled me this way and that.\u201d Dunham said she did not feel violated but questioned whether she had \u201clost directorial authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven after that, she says the pair were close during the first season, to the point where she would go to him for advice about the show and he helped care for her after an ear injury (see below). But after growing close, Driver got engaged and the pair grew further apart so that by the time his last scene was filmed, \u201cAdam and I had barely spoken in three years for reasons I could not explain and did not really want to analyze,\u201d Dunham writes. His last day of filming was the last time they met.<\/p>\n

\n\tDriver has not responded to requests for comment from THR.<\/p>\n

\t\tThe Q-Tip incident and Scott Rudin\t<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Girls fans may already know, many characters and incidents from the series mirror Dunham\u2019s life. In the book, she details a moment where she has just been asked to start a writer\u2019s room for season two and is facing remaining press obligations from the acclaimed first season. Because of the time commitment, Dunham had to step away from a job writing and directing Dash and Lily\u2019s Book of Dares, which she had previously been hired to do by producer Scott Rudin.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer exit from the project unleashed \u201ca torrent of emails\u201d from Rudin, in which she says he called her a \u201cspoiled little girl\u201d and threatened to sue over the project. \u201cI had been found out. I was going to lose it all,\u201d Dunham writes. The next day, while in a dissociative episode, Dunham put a large Q-tip in her ear and perforated her eardrum. This storyline later appeared in the second season of Girls, as Dunham\u2019s character Hannah is overwhelmed with the anxiety of writing a novel and similarly injures herself.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn real life, Dunham recovered and returned back to New York to write and receive counsel from mentor Nora Ephron.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRudin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\t\tHer fallout with Jenni Konner\t<\/p>\n

\n\tKonner acted as a supervisor for Dunham in the first season of Girls, guiding her through the process of writing a TV show for the first time and ultimately acting as showrunner alongside Dunham throughout the series, as well as becoming one of her best friends and sitting by her bedside during surgeries, according to Dunham.<\/p>\n

\n\tDunham does not pinpoint one moment where the two stopped becoming friends but lays out several moments where their relationship turns cold, including early on in shooting Girls, when she told Dunham that L.A. thought she was \u201ctoo pretty\u201d in her camera test and she needed to gain more weight order to differentiate the show: \u201c\u2018It\u2019s not that hard,\u201d she hissed. \u201cJust put food in your mouth.\u201d The two were also tested as Dunham went through multiple medical procedures and addiction to drugs, with Konner remaining on sets and guiding their projects and questioning her illness, according to Dunham. Dunham also points to a moment where the two released a statement<\/a> in defense of a Girls writer accused of rape, as a moment that further imperiled their relationship and one that she deeply regrets.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter setting a last-ditch therapy appointment for the two to work on their relationship, she writes that she wanted to remain friends, but Konner told her, \u201cPlease don\u2019t write about this immediately,\u201d and walked out of the appointment.<\/p>\n

\n\tKonner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

\t\tThe dissolution of her relationship with Jack Antonoff\u00a0\t<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter being set up with Jack by his sister, designer Rachel Antonoff, moving in together and hinting at marriage and children, Dunham\u2019s and Antonoff\u2019s relationship began to fray. Dunham details his frequent time away on tour and in the studio, as well as the toll of her frequent medical episodes and surgeries \u2014 she recalls Antonoff turning up two hours late to the hospital after she underwent major surgery \u2014\u00a0among the main contributors. The two frequently exchanged barbs: \u201cHe spent a lot of time telling me about the kind of person I was, and it wasn\u2019t the good kind,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore the eventual breakup, the two entered couples therapy, with a shared commitment to stay together, even though they couldn\u2019t envision a future together. \u201cLooking back, it\u2019s hard to understand why two people with seemingly endless options, financial freedom and almost nothing that they enjoyed doing together besides talking shit about the occasional third party would not simply break up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRehab and a surprise engagement\u00a0\t<\/p>\n

\n\tDunham began taking Klonopin as a means to treat the anxiety she felt while writing and filming Girls and then later became addicted to the medication after recovering from surgery to treat a burst ovarian cyst. As Dunham faced more procedures and an eventual hysterectomy to help treat pain from endometriosis, other prescription drugs were added to the mix. She entered the upstate rehab Center for Motivation and Change as her HBO show Camping was in its first month of production.<\/p>\n

\n\tLeading up to rehab, post-hysterectomy and just before officially breaking up with Antonoff, Dunham reconnected with a childhood boyfriend, Nick. Three months later, they were engaged (and hooked up in an ICU, she admits). This was short-lived, as she would later find out that he, too, struggled with substance abuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Lena Dunham\u2019s second memoir, Famesick, the Girls creator details the highs and lows of creating the hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[489,430,156,17167,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-379301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-lena-dunham","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}