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\n Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
Happy New Lena Dunham<\/a> Memoir Day to all those who celebrate. Dunham\u2019s latest book, Famesick, finds her reflecting on Girls, chronic illness, and her relationship with Jack Antonoff<\/a>. It\u2019s all incredibly juicy, but perhaps the most attention-grabbing moments come from her tumultuous personal and professional relationship with Adam Driver<\/a>. Dunham paints Driver as both a hothead who once screamed at her during rehearsals and also a brilliant collaborator with whom she shared a unique intimacy. Let\u2019s unpack everything she wrote about their relationship, shall we?<\/p>\n According to Dunham, Driver came into his Girls audition as a gangly boy and \u201cmorphed into half-man, half-beast.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t understand what he was doing, exactly, but I had the rare feeling that I was standing in front of someone who was at the very beginning of an ascent, who \u2014 whether I cast him or not \u2014 couldn\u2019t remain a secret for long,\u201d she writes. In his callback, Dunham writes, Driver\u2019s acting style \u201cforced me to make new, almost panicked choices. I didn\u2019t just want what he brought to the show. I wanted what he brought out of me.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, when they were filming their first sex scene, Dunham says she tried cracking a joke and, instead of responding, Driver did push-ups over her body. Once cameras were rolling, he was \u201ca man possessed.\u201d Dunham describes him shouting \u201cfilthy improvisations\u201d and says he \u201churled\u201d her around without regard for the blocking they had previously established. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that I felt violated \u2014 and I also wouldn\u2019t have known if I had, as there was little in my sexual life that I hadn\u2019t allowed to happen, and for no pay,\u201d Dunham writes. \u201cBut I felt that something intimate, confusing, and primal had played out in a scenario I was meant to control.\u201d The two silently acknowledged each other with a nod afterward, which to Dunham meant that they were promising to \u201cdo what was required to make these scenes surprising, to make them true, to make them sing.\u201d \u201cIt was the rare situation where, in the lack of boundaries, there was a safety,\u201d Dunham remembers.<\/p>\n During the filming of Girls\u2019s first season, Dunham experienced a dissociative episode. One day, while rehearsing lines with Driver, she writes that he flew off the handle when she forgot her lines. \u201c[W]hen I opened my mouth, all that came out was a stammer \u2014 until finally, Adam screamed, \u2018FUCKING SAY SOMETHING\u2019 and hurled a chair at the wall next to me. \u2018WAKE THE FUCK UP,\u2019 he told me. \u2018I\u2019M SICK OF WATCHING YOU JUST STARE,\u2019\u201d Dunham recalls. She writes that she \u201cdidn\u2019t tell anyone\u201d about the incident, but that she said her lines correctly afterward.<\/p>\n Alleged chair throwing aside, Dunham writes that she and Driver \u201cfelt like partners\u201d while filming the first season. They spent time together rehearsing on the weekend, he hugged her often, and one time he smiled at her in his kitchen \u201cwith something so tender, it felt like it could only have been love\u201d and told her, \u201cYou really don\u2019t know how beautiful you are, do you?\u201d<\/p>\n The pair also \u201cfought often,\u201d according to Dunham. \u201cI 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,\u201d she writes. \u201cOne day in his dressing room, as I apologized for a perceived slight I couldn\u2019t remember committing, he got close to my face and hissed, \u2018Never forget that I know you. I really fucking know you.\u2019 \u2018What do you know?\u2019 I yelped. \u2018You don\u2019t go to parties. You love animals. And you hate being whispered about.\u2019 And he was right.\u201d (Wisely, Dunham notes in hindsight that no one likes being whispered about.)<\/p>\n At one point, Dunham remembers spending a week alone at her parents\u2019 apartment after Girls\u2019s first season had wrapped and she was writing season two. She writes that Driver \u2014 whose \u201ceyes would flash with anger when I described mistreatment by one of the random guys I was dating\u201d \u2014 visited her almost every night. One night, he told her he was coming over, but, he said, \u201cif I come up, I\u2019m not leaving this time.\u201d Dunham says she didn\u2019t answer when he called. \u201cSome part of me knew \u2014 some wise part of me, some bold part of me \u2014 that if we crossed whatever boundary we were threatening to cross, the return to work would be tinged with humiliation, that I\u2019d be minimizing any authority I still had, and that, however it went, my heart \u2014 bruised but improbably not yet broken \u2014 would crack,\u201d she writes. A month later, he was engaged to his girlfriend.<\/p>\n After his engagement, Driver disappears from the narrative a bit, save for an offhand mention of him punching a hole in his trailer because he \u201chated his new haircut.\u201d He reemerges in the book as Dunham recalls filming their final scene together, at which point, she says, they had \u201cbarely spoken in three years, for reasons I could not explain and didn\u2019t really want to analyze.\u201d<\/p>\n However, when they were filming Hannah and Adam\u2019s good-bye scene in the diner (during which Dunham had an untreated broken elbow), the two shared a tender moment once again. \u201cAll I know is that between takes, we kept crying, eyes locked,\u201d Dunham writes. \u201cIt felt, for just a moment, like he was saying sorry. Maybe I was, too \u2014 for never knowing how to manage him, what he needed, how to avoid making his face contort with frustration and rage.\u201d<\/p>\n That night, the pair shared a ride home, which Dunham says that they never did despite living so close together that she could see him and his wife watching TV from her window. \u201cIn the car, he held my hand in silence,\u201d Dunham writes. \u201cWhen we reached our block, he took me in his arms. I let him kiss my cheek, my forehead.\u201d She then told him, \u201cI know we\u2019ve had our hard moments, that we are really different people. I\u2019m sorry if the way I am ever wasn\u2019t good for \u2026 the way you are.\u201d Driver then told her that it was \u201cjust as it needed to be\u201d and added, \u201cI hope you know I\u2019ll always love you.\u201d Dunham says that she never heard from Driver again.<\/p>\n