![\"Dunham](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ad_ld-copy.jpeg\")
Dunham claims her co-star Adam Driver could be \u2018verbally aggressive\u2019 and \u2018physically imposing\u2019 towards her (HBO)<\/p>\nYour support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n
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When Lena Dunham announced her new memoir Famesick, one might have assumed that its title was in reference to the nauseating, feverish experience of celebrity. An ailment that can feel parasitic in nature but really is more akin to Munchausen\u2019s because, well, as Dunham admits early on, don\u2019t these stars bring it on themselves?<\/p>\n
The book, published this week, is indeed about that. But it\u2019s also about literal sickness \u2013 a med-moir that recounts how Dunham\u2019s rise as the creator and star of HBO\u2019s Girls dovetailed with an onset of ailments including but not limited to: endometriosis; ovarian cysts; migraines; acute colitis; shingles, disordered eating, depression; and a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Medications flow freely across its pages, an open drip of Percocet, Klonopin, Lexapro, Demerol, Oxycontin, and Adderall. There are doctor visits, and a hysterectomy that is followed by some wince-inducing post-op sex. <\/p>\n
Her life is one of \u201cscraping and biopsies and cysts\u201d superimposed awkwardly onto a backdrop of awards shows and magazine shoots. The gap between those worlds closes when her name becomes an affliction of its own \u2013 the public turning on Dunham as Dunham\u2019s body turns on itself, leading to such odd moments as when, mid-medical procedure, \u201ca nurse from Staten Island wonders aloud why I was so often nude on television\u201d. <\/p>\n
At 40, Dunham is as funny and besotted an observer of life as ever. She writes of one acquaintance: \u201cHe\u2019d been on Gossip Girl, which at the time was as impressive as saying you\u2019d had a supporting role in an Orson Welles movie.\u201d On her strained relationship with her mother, she says: \u201cI had been in a period of conflict with my mother that felt, to me, like a biblical battle between good and evil but was really just about the fact that I never, ever cleaned up after myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Good humour is an antidote in Famesick, where the good times roll but the bad times somersault. Dunham paints a wistful portrait of her life pre-Girls in a section that covers her early attempts at guerilla filmmaking, a first encounter with the Safdie brothers, and when her mother, never the type to tape her drawings to the fridge, unexpectedly did a whip-round to raise funds for Dunham\u2019s debut film Tiny Furniture. \u201cThose first experiences of creative life are unparalleled, because you don\u2019t know enough to worry,\u201d she concludes. <\/p>\n
Dunham claims her co-star Adam Driver could be \u2018verbally aggressive\u2019 and \u2018physically imposing\u2019 towards her (HBO)<\/p>\n
The subsequent chapters make good on that warning, as life gives Dunham plenty of reason to worry \u2013 including a relationship with an older man named Lip, with whom the sex grows more violent, more ominous. But there is joy too, in the exhilarating thrust of fame as Girls began raking in rave reviews and Dunham became someone to know. Is there any better feeling than grinning up at your ex-boyfriend from the front cover of New York Magazine? \u201cI couldn\u2019t help but thrill,\u201d she writes. <\/p>\n
As ever, there is nostalgia to be mined. When falling in love with the musician Jack Antonoff<\/a>, Dunham says they bonded over SNL sketches and theatre kid gags. \u201cThat\u2019s where we really came together, in our collective memory of the culture, touchpoints that felt uniquely ours,\u201d she writes. In much the same way, Dunham peppers similar touchstones throughout: MySpace; Barbara Walters; the simple fact of wearing a crushed velvet minidress in the 2010s. <\/p>\n Famesick feels largely unfiltered, revelling as it does in bodily functions and fluids, which is uncharacteristic for a celebrity memoir, but unsurprising for Dunham, who has spent the better part of two decades treating Twitter like her own private journal \u2013 all the while putting on screen and on paper things that would make others blush in private. One person likely blushing (or ringing his lawyers) after reading Famesick is Adam Driver<\/a>, Dunham\u2019s Girls co-star, whom she claims was \u201cverbally aggressive\u201d and \u201cphysically imposing\u201d towards her. She recalls forgetting her lines during rehearsal one night: \u201cAll that came out was a stammer \u2013 until finally, Adam screamed, \u2018F***ING SAY SOMETHING\u2019 and hurled a chair at the wall next to me.\u201d <\/p>\n You\u2019ve won. You\u2019re only 28, and you\u2019ve been called a racist, a fat whore, an ignorant rich girl, and a child molester. What else is left? Nothing. You\u2019ve won<\/p>\n Lena Dunham on her father\u2019s reaction to the blowback from her 2014 memoir \u2018Not That Kind of Girl\u2019<\/p>\n The moment has been singled out by publications \u2013 and rightfully so, Driver\u2019s alleged behaviour is wrong in every way \u2013 but one gets the sense that Dunham recalls it here not to publicly shame her former co-star but to try to understand her response to it. Her response being, to do nothing at all. She invokes other situations, like how she remained at the beck and call of a man for months after he punched her squarely in the chest during sex. \u201cAfter all, when I was a kid, when the doctor hit my knee with that little hammer, they often had trouble getting a response,\u201d she writes. \u201cSlow reflexes. Which is why, when Adam threw the chair, I didn\u2019t have any further questions. I didn\u2019t tell anyone. But I said my lines correctly after that.\u201d <\/p>\n The same is true of her recollection of the movie producer Scott Rudin, who allegedly tormented Dunham in her twenties, sending her an average of 70 emails a day in which he threatened to sue over an unfinished project \u2013 bear in mind, she never signed a contract. \u201cWithin minutes, I had received a torrent of emails I can still quote from memory but won\u2019t, because I don\u2019t want you to be as traumatised as I was,\u201d she writes. Still, the memory feels less like score-settling, and more a means of personal introspection \u2013 a way of understanding what came next, an incident that gave birth to that one agonising scene in Girls where Hannah jams a Q-tip so deep into her ear canal that it pierces the drum and releases a gush of blood. <\/p>\n![\"She](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-491322824.jpg\")
She paints her ex-boyfriend, the musician Jack Antonoff, as a sweet, if absent, presence in her life (Getty)<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Final-FAMESICK.jpeg\")
A med-moir of sorts, \u2018Famesick\u2019 recounts how Dunham\u2019s rise as the creator and star of \u2018Girls\u2019 dovetailed with an onset of ailments (HarperCollins)<\/p>\n