'The Interview': Lena Dunham Is Still Trying to Figure Out Why People Hated Her So Much

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At NY Times.com/gift. From The New York Times, this is the interview. I'm David Marquezie. There are very few celebrity memoirs. I've been more eager to read than Lena Dunham's fame sick.

That's partly because she's such a sharp funny writer. It's also partly because her HBO show girls was a true generational touchstone, but a bigger part of it is because I knew she'd have smart things to say about what exactly she represented to people back in the 2010s.

“Dunham, if you'll remember, was a lightning rod for so much discourse.”

Her show was divisive and buzzy, sure, but probably not as much as she was. During the days of girls, which Dunham created when she was only 24, she was scolded for being unself-aware, unoversharer, privileged, not attractive enough self-absorbed, you name it. Now, she did, and she'll admit this, have an unfortunate knack for putting her foot in her mouth,

but there was something about the intensity of the reaction to her, that, in retrospect, seems awfully disproportionate. As she reveals in the new book, things were just as turbulent behind the scenes. In addition to writing about her toxic relationship with fame, Dunham tells, in detail, how she was concurrently dealing with drug abuse,

dysfunctional sexual relationships, and chronic illness. It's a lot, and now, at nearly 40, she's ready to talk about it all. Here's my conversation with Lena Dunham. Thank you so much. I like your, uh, thank you. I'm a bunny owner, so it's nice. Oh, you have bunnies. Oh, yeah, in my apartment,

every roaming bunnies. Yeah. I feel deeply connected to rabbits. They're the most, they have the most highly, like wound up nervous system, Vinnie Animal, and their nervous system is like their superpower and their curse. And I love that about them. And when a rabbit relaxes, it's a huge compliment because they don't do it in nature.

It's like completely, and then it's always straight up. Yeah, yeah. Unless they have

flat, unless they've been red to flop, but like, if a rabbit relax around you, you're like, I have achieved a feat because in nature, this rabbit would be ready to run at all times. Yeah. You know, we were just making small talk here and talking so nicely out in the hall. And now I just have a bunch of incredibly heavy questions. I can't wait. I can't wait. You said that, and I was like, yeah, that seems right. Yeah, who's, whose name are you most anxious about

popping up in your inbox and saying they've read the book? Who? I mean, any time you get feedback from someone you've written about that you love or have loved, who isn't in your life anymore,

“that's always a stressful name. But honestly, like having my parents read it was the most”

anxiety-producing part of the process because I knew they were both going to fact check, look at it in a sort of like macro career arc way because their artists will also looking at it in a protective parent's way. We'll also looking at it at their own depiction and like waiting through all of that. So I feel like my parents, when they popped up in my inbox,

that was a curl update. And what was their response? My father's a one most amazing

things, which is he said, it's hard for me to understand why anyone would want to publish a book such as this and the such as this and he said, it's beautifully written. I'm very proud of you. Some people are going to really understand it, connect to it and feel it's for them and some people are going to say why won't she shut the fuck up already? And I thought that was like a pretty accurate assessment of the options and I liked that. Just on the on the idea that some people

will read it and understand it. There's so much in the book about addiction, traumatic physical things that have happened to chronic illness, career ups and downs, personal relationships coming together and falling apart. And you're sort of amazingly candid about this stuff. And it's coming from someone who I think has often been misunderstood to do have a hope that in publishing the book,

I took so long to write the book was it was really important to me that I not put it out from a place of saying like here's a referendum on how I feel that I have been perceived because I feel like every two years they publish a new article about a woman and their like blank is finally telling

“all, beep is finally herself, ABC in her own words. And it's like like in a lot of ways I think”

it's about keeping a career arc alive. And I wanted to make sure that in publishing the book that I knew what my own aims were. And I don't like revenge writing. I don't like writing that's like here I am. Kiss my ass. Like it's it was really like hopefully I know there are other people who will understand this. And more than ever before I feel that I met peace with the fact that there are

people who will never understand and they don't need to. Right at the beginning of the book,

you write about your name, Lena Donna, and how you felt like your name almost started. And this is for you not even for other people. Your name for you started to carry negative connotations. Like I think you'd say it almost was like a joke that kind of felt like a slur or something. So what did your name represent do you think? Well it became so not like there was a period of time where I would be watching just like a show I enjoyed. And then I would hear my own name

and it would take me like three minutes to realize that there had been a joke that was synonymous with whether it was like myopic, millennial thinking, or hapless feminism, or manhading, or like liberal twit dumb, or, you know, it's a long list. That's a long list. And like there for the people who maybe shared my politics and shared my life style, but we're irritated that I was talking. But suddenly I was like it meant one thing to people who did connect me.

I meant something to it had a meaning and sort of a, I mean, I was very early. I had an early

“experience of the alt-right internet that I think was very specific. And then it also meant something”

different to people who were just like turning it into a sassy punchline. But I didn't feel, I remember there was a day and this is not in the book where I was going to vote with my father. And I'd been on the, I'd been campaigning for Obama. It was 2012. And I remember he said, like, I don't know, maybe he's just going, I don't know if I want to go vote with like Lena, don't him. And I was like, my father feels like going to vote with me is going to like signal something

when he just is like a waspy man who wants to get in and get out. Right. It's not like, ugh, voting. Yes. Like he's like, I don't want to go and have to be like a whole thing where we're voting together. And that's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy. That's your father. So it was like my

best friend in the world. But he was saying basically, can you just go around the block and vote on your

own? And that was the moment when I kind of understood some things going on here. Because the show had only been on the air for six months at that point. And I mean, with the benefit of hindsight, what do you think the intensity of the loathing, which seems so disproportionate? Like your person that had a TV show. Yeah. And it's crazy. And you know, the HBO numbers are not networks that come numbers. Show was watched by like less than a million people a week. So what do you think

that the depth of that negative feeling was really about? I mean, I'd be lying if I didn't say

“I haven't spent time thinking about this because you have to. It's, you can't, it can't be avoided.”

I'm going to say something that's going to sound like a cop out, but I can only phrase it this way. I have annoyed people since I was so small. Like I was an annoying kid. It was truly at school.

Like I was a try hard. I was loud. I was didn't always know how to operate in like I didn't always

know how to like move through space with other kids in a way that wasn't a little bit off or disruptive. And I remember one of my friends being like, but even when everybody's in preschool, like, what's good, but I also, that's coupled with there was like the intense rage about the female sexuality on the show. There was the intense rage about my body, which is so crazy to look back on now because I was just like little slip of a 26 year old and had I known my own powers. I would have

behaved very differently. And then like I would be lying if I didn't say that my own way of moving

didn't quelt it. And then of course, as detailed in the book, like my all of that had an effect on my health, my mental health, which then began to deteriorate, which was a secret I was trying to keep and

those secrets are hard to keep. A second ago, you were saying, when you were 26 and just a slip of

a person, if you had known your power, you would have behaved differently. What did you mean by that? Great. You're zeroing in. I guess what I'm saying is that I thought I was the most the feedback that I got, which was like, this is the most ungainly thing. This person is an

“I sort of like, that's why I perceived myself. The show is about somebody who had a negative”

self perception and made romantic and end platonic choices that reflected that. And I guess something that is, listen, would that we could all do our youth over. But now that I'm going to be 40 years old, it's like looking back, I looked a lot of photos and diaries and moments to put the book together. And I felt sad that that person didn't have a sense that she, sound even just about being normatively beautiful, although the way that I was spoken about, I mean, that's what so many women's

bodies look like. That's not when my body looks like anymore. But it was, I was like full of light and it's interesting as I looked at the photos over the course of the show. I could see it's such a cliche, but it was like the light's just went out. It's clear from the book and even just thinking back to how sometimes you would respond to critics online. You know, you were pretty aware of the negativity that was sort of circling around you all the time, online specifically.

And I'm wondering if, if you can talk about what the lure of engaging with that negativity was because, and maybe it's a naive thing to say, I kind of wonder like, why don't you just not go on the internet? You're right. And I remember my parents, you say, that doesn't exist. If you just shut your phone, it doesn't exist. And I was very like, you guys don't understand. This is a different world. You checked your email once a week, but they were right. I think

“one of the many contradictions of my life is that I like to express myself in totality. I like to”

maybe do make things that I never thought of anything that I made as controversial, but I also

like, I grew up in the New York art world. Like, I grew up going to see like video a country do seed bed. Like, I'm goes in having an experience of any kind of moralism. In fact, the opposite. The idea was like, if you say it's art, it's art and art is designed to like stretch the human capacity for understanding. And so I never thought of anything I did as controversial. And then my feeling was, well, yeah, I like to make whatever I want, but then I don't want anyone

to ever be upset with me. And so when it came, I think that what it seems like at the time was

that again that I was always trying to explain myself to people, not really realizing that actually

it was cyclical. And what do you think it is about either you or people that the negative stuff, even in the face of so much positive affirmation you were getting is what sort of sticks with you, because the other, you know, you were getting all this negative shit all the time, but also your mid 20s had like a very buzzy popular show, probably a lot of opportunities. Yeah, you know, making good money. You rewarded for what I did, you know? Why, why doesn't,

“why didn't that part of it seem to stick? A really great question. And I think it's a human nature”

question, because, you know, one friend of mine who read the book was like, you know, you reflect so much on the relationships that were painful, but like, where are all the people that left you and supported you and to care for you? And I hope that, I mean, they're all unique knowledgements, but I was born with such a healthy dose of guilt, shame, and self-hatred, which is indirect contrast to my almost pathological need to continuously express myself,

and that is like the those things are dancing all the time. You think you're born with a self-hatred? I mean, not to get too woo-hoo, but sometimes I feel like we just are like, there's so much just ancient generational stuff, actually. Like, sterling McLean style, or? No, I'm not going to go as far

but, and, you know, who hasn't tried past life regression once, if they're going through something,

but I guess, you know, there's this, um, like pride mixed with this incredible

“desire to like self-imilated and self-arace, and I don't ever remember not having it. So,”

that makes me feel like it, and I don't look at my parents and go, you guys did this to me, so that makes it a little bit of an existential mystery. Yeah, um, I have some questions and relate to that, but I, I'm going to, because I have a theory about this existential mystery for you, but I'm going to save it. I want to save it. If Dave and Mark, is he can explain me to me? It would be, it would help me a lot and save me a lot of money. Well, you can make the check out to cash.

Okay, great. Um, but before that, you were, you were living through this period where there was

all this kind of, um, distracting and, and painful noise in the outside world, and you were having

“complicated relationships with the people you were working with. Yeah. And on top of that,”

you were, you were, you were feeling unwell. You were, you were ill. Yeah. Um, how did your health affect your relationships with the people around you? One of the reasons the book is called "Fame Sick" is because the two most corrosive forces in my relationships were celebrity, how it perverted the space around old relationships, how it colored my ability to understand new relationships and whether they were authentic and illness because illness like fame can make you

zero in and contract into self because like pain, physical pain is one of the most selfish feelings that exist because all you want is to be out of it. And then also, illness is really scary to people. So they want a narrative in which you, it happened. You had a cold for three days. You recovered. You got to appendicitis. They took it out and the relentlessness of it and the fact that it was like, I was like, okay, I got a surgery. I'm going to be better and then three months

later, something, and I didn't have a sense of like medical misogyny. I didn't have a sense of the I was raised to be like, I'm a good Jewish girl and what doctors tell me I listened to and to assume that they were right. And somehow my health picture kept getting less clear, not more clear, which also makes it very, I understand very hard for other people to empathize with because it seems abstract, amorphous, like, they lose sympathy or think that you're making it up. Yeah. And also, we live in a society

where the highest value for people is like, like, movies that people come know, like I slept two hours, a drink of coffee, I said, buy to my wife, I'm back. Like, they treat it like an extreme sport and the highest value is just to be able to go and go and go. And it took me a really long time to understand that wasn't like my only value that actually I could have a fragile body in a strong mind and have a lot to offer without like betraying my own physical self over and over and over again,

but it's still a dance all the time. You also, in addition to being chronically ill, you had multiple traumatic bodily experiences, which I'm really sorry that you went through, you know, but you write about being a child and a babysitter molesting you, you write about abusive sexual relationships. And so how did? And so all those experiences you know, what's the, you know, I haven't didn't coin this phrase, but the body keeps the score.

Yes. All those experiences with your body had, are you sort of a myriad emotional

“ripples? Yeah. How did your sense of your body affect your own sense of self?”

It's a really interesting. I mean, I have a whole sort of theory of the case about illness that would

take a long time. I was never a healthy kid and often that was perceived as, you know,

she just wants to lie in her bed. Like I really was always fighting against like laziness label. Like I was like, I will prove to you that it's not what I am. Even if my body is a little floppy, those experiences that you describe created a distance between myself and my body that then

but it made it hard to tune into my own body and identify what was happening to me physically. There's a book about EDS, about Ayla Danlos Syndrome, my sort of kind of like overriding diagnosis, which is called The Body is a doorway by Sophie Strand. And she said this thing

where I couldn't believe someone else was saying, which she said I always felt like I was a balloon

floating above my body. And I had said that countless times and had no idea that anybody else in the world experienced that. And then what was, you know, I once had a really interesting conversation with Gabor Mote, who's an amazing thinker. He was interviewing me for a book that he wrote about the sort of intersection between illness, addiction, and trauma. And he has like one of some of

“the most developed, I think thoughts about that of anyone working. And I asked him this question.”

I said, like, why I understand it happening once when I'm a little kid, why does this keep

happening to me? What is the this? And the this is finding myself in situations where I am suddenly not in control of what is happening to my body, another person is making the decisions. And he said, Lena, it's like once you have that experience as a kid, it's like like the weak wolf that gets picked off the pack. Like someone who is looking for that sees you. And it wasn't shaming. It wasn't it was so beautifully put, which is like these experiences build up in you.

You develop more distance from your body. People who want to cross boundaries are able to identify

“that you are someone who might not know how to deflect that. And because before it felt like”

this like series of unfortunate, lemony, snicked series of unfortunate events. And I needed some like I needed some cohesion. And I needed some narrative cohesion to understand why there was this like consistent pattern of feeling at least violated. And that was really soothing to me. And then once you get sick, especially gynecological illness, which is still not like the most beloved topic in American culture, we might say, you're feeling of yourself as a

vital young person is extremely diminished. And you're feeling of yourself as like a viable partner is extremely diminished. And it is also a crazy hormonal ride, which so it's there's a lie

“I hoped that in the book, I was able to capture those different kind of like buckets in which”

illness separates you from yourself. The psychological paradigm that you just described sort of coming coming from Gabor Mate is his name where you know, it's like people saw something in you that they could exploit in a way. And and I want to say to anyone who's hearing this, that's not anyone's fault. People we know culturally now more than ever that people who are exploiters are going to do exploiting and they're looking for the people they can do it to in the

most consequence freeway. And that is not the fault of the person being exploited. That's the fault of the person doing the exploiting. I also want to know how that paradigm fits or doesn't with descriptions you give in the book of abusive or near abusive sexual relationships where you had feelings of you know like wanting to be degraded or like you were seeking out situations in which seemingly like you could confirm the bad feelings you had about yourself.

My experience was that there was something about recreating a situation I had been in not my choice with some measure of what appeared to be my own free will that somehow made me think that if I executed it right, I could erase the thing that had happened before and maybe I will even be loved for my ability to perform well in this kind of dynamic. And it's interesting because now like King can subdomest stuff and everybody's on field but like when I was 24 and these things were

I cannot even look my parents in the eye, no one has ever been a worse child than me. And of course

these things have existed since the beginning of time now we have language we have language for people to identify their desires in a healthy way. We also know that sometimes people use this language to

“excuse behavior that is actually not consensual or not healthy and I think in the book I wanted”

to capture the complexity of placing yourself in a situation that you knew was at least to the outside world unsavory and trying to find some shred of dignity or romance in it. And I think the saddest thing for me looking back was the idea that I thought at the other end of it there might be something resembling love. This is maybe a difficult question to have perspective on or maybe even a little too psychologically abstract in a way but might there be ways in which the dynamic

that you just described in terms of sort of like personal or sexual relationships had parallels in your relationship with the public? Yes, you know it's a classic is like I'm going to lean into what people think I am but I'm going to do it my way I'm going to find my version of it and actually

“leaning into a thing that you know makes you feel bad. A hundred percent and I think the”

thing that concern my parents is is this book another iteration of that. Yeah. And I had to explain to them sort of what I explained to you which is like I had to comfortable the idea that this is what I had to do to keep like I had to write this to keep living my life in a way that felt felt true but I know people who and have been in a dynamic where you're continuing to go in and go in and go in and it's like the girl in the horror movie where you're like don't put down the stairs. She's

going down the stairs. You know why she's been down stairs because she's a slut and she's going to get killed. So that's like it a hundred percent echoes it and what was also interesting was those dynamics which were in life scary at times lonely those would be recreated on television and people thought they were funny and fun and at times sexy and you know I didn't write Adam's character to be a romantic hero and by the end everyone was like I want a boyfriend like that.

I want a boyfriend who throws two by fours and spanks me and that is not what I was going for but it was certainly a lesson in what we desire cannot be untangled from what we have been through and what we fear it just can't. I want to ask about two of

sort of your central relationships during the girls period and the first is with Jenny Connor.

I mean so you write so Jenny Connor co-show runner sort of your your I don't what we call like consigliary during the show. Yeah she was my partner in making the show and she was my teacher and she was my best friend and you she had this incredibly supportive also kind of symbiotic relationship while you were working on the show and that ultimately that relationship sort of sourd and it seems that by the end of the book the the conflict there or the tension there is

really around values and you imply that sort of there was like a trans a business kind of transactional aspect to your relationship with Jenny from her perspective that was sort of not quite with didn't align with what your goals were you know what your values were which you in the books air-based art and family and I want to know if your relationship with Jenny we're not if I want to know what your relationship with Jenny taught you about the difficulty of being in business with friends.

I mean I have so much that this is not like when I say I have so much gratitude I have so much

“gratitude for Jenny the amount of times in a day that I think about something that you taught me or I”

say a joke that is deeply embedded in the history of our friendship and sort of laugh with my

self like she was my you know I mean I remember my own saying like this is your first real friend

and I also was extremely naive about the fact that when you work with people and your creative financial futures are intertwined there are going to be moments where that is just intention with friendship I was not an adult and I was I still lived with my parents and I was desperately looking for safety and for a sense of security and for a sense of something that was

are the conditional yeah by definition and I remember again my parents who come up a lot in this

book there was done my father being like you know not everybody like says I love you

“to everyone they work with and like sleeps over at their house and I look back at that and I think”

that I can recognize now as a 40 year old the inherent challenges of that and that in a way I I was looking for a different kind of relationship than the one that work can provide is there a way that you can imagine that things would have developed with her that would have allowed you to to continue working together or do you think it was

sort of a necessary break that had to happen I made a necessary break with everything so

I don't think I mean there was there's a moment that I talked about in the book where I broke up with my business partner I broke up with my partner I had a his direct to me I stepped back from work it was it was like I went from full on to like sitting in a back room in my parents apartment in silence collaging letters together and like making like my mom coming in to be like that's really nice which like you've made a collage that says see me or something like it was

not it it was not a time where I was capable of really keeping anything going and I'm not a big so much has happened in my life that's wonderful and so much has happened that's challenging I'm not a big redux person like I look back and I go I remember once I said to my mom like I'm so glad you're my mom and she was like it could have been no other way and there's so much it could have been no other way in this story and I like went I had to detach from this entity that

I had created and everyone who was responsible for helping me keep that entity alive um that line that your mom said you know they could have been no other way sort of echoes line that Adam Driver says in the book where sort of you guys are kind of wrapping up your work together on girls and I can't remember if you're apologizing or you're just sort of we're saying like what happened and he says something like you know it is how it had to be

that was my long-winded way of segue into an Adam Driver question yeah which the Adam Driver that you describe in the book just as as an artistic collaborator is I sort of this uh at least my reading of it is kind of like a volatile extremely intense artist who you know you could get really mad on set or you know do things that felt

“risky um what did you think was driving that behavior on the set you know I think that”

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's like it was very like seven strangers sent to live in a house in Seattle what's gonna happen you know a bunch of I mean it's one thing with miraculous is like no one dated and no one punched each other like it was in a way we did the

best you possibly could and always and I hope I portray this in the book like Adam is a meticulous

artist and where he has to go to get there is secondary to me to where he gets and I mean I love watching him I learned more from him than anyone I've ever stood across from on camera I feel like in a way like that was the best I'll ever be at acting and I don't 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 but you know one person wants to be left alone in the corner to breathe one person wants to be like talking shop

right until the minute we go I once did scenes with the guy who used to do the night at the rocks bury head bang until the minute that we called action which is like a little weird during

“sex scenes but you know it happens but um I think I have a deeper understanding and sometimes I I mean”

I'm not a big I just said I'm not a big redux person but like you did just write a memoir I did just write a memoir and I think that like were I to go back that I would so not take that behavior personally like I would understand everyone's just doing what they need to do to to make it happen there's this scene in in the book involving you and Adam where it it seems like they're

sort of and you make a plan for him to come to your apartment and you know he says yes and this

is this is in your telling and and what are you talking about that's not in the book I didn't put that in the book and he gets there and calls up to you and you don't answer the call because it seems you were apprehensive about what the sort of emotional fallout of sleeping together

“might have been I think the word you using the book is you were worried about maybe some”

possible humiliation or whatever it wasn't and like why was humiliation the the thing that you are worried about happening there I mean I was worried about humiliation happening everywhere so and I also want to say like when you're that age there's this like I remember in college you go out at night and it's like every you look around at like your 15 guy friends and it's like who's going to kiss who tonight like it's so there's something in the air all the time but it might

mean nothing and I think in that relationship what I was trying to capture was not necessarily um specific to that dynamic but was this feeling like we were all coming out of that phase and entering this adult professional phase where we were still kind of moving through the world in this

“youthful way where it was all right with possibility and not saying what we felt and trying to”

read each other signals and there was something scary about it and there was something glamorous about it and and then having an adult awakening that um having an adult awakening that

that wasn't always um I had you know I I had been so of the mind that like any scrap of

positive male attention was going automatically elevate me to some I don't know so I wouldn't be scared suddenly I would never be afraid of death again but um and then realizing actually that the Supreme Force was the work and that everything had much like Adam's acting everything had to be in service of that work uh another of the central relationships you write it in about in the book is your relationship with Jack Antonov and and I want to know how fame helped deep in that relationship

“and then how fame also may have destabilized that relationship so I'll just be saying like”

it's so thrilling now to look at sort of now to look at the to have met this person you know

the week that his first single came out and to see the trajectory of his career and his powers

it's a unique privilege to have every break up song you love written by your ex I feel blessed when I was I talked about this in book but when I was at rehab this girl kept playing this song or this pink song over and over and over again and at one point I was like my ex boyfriend wrote that and she looked at me like okay lady yeah and I and I'm the queen of England but um what I tried to capture in the book is like you know I was very I was a really late

bloomer so that was my first you know a lot of people are like had my high school boyfriend then I had my college boyfriend I didn't even have a um a language to think that like when you I felt like you fall in love with someone and then you're together for the rest of your life like I was so you know my parents got together when they were 27 they're 76 now they like met in so ho is young artist I was like okay I'm perfectly on time here we go and something I talked about in the book is like

that ending was extremely um intense for me in a way where I looked around and I was like is everybody this upset about their breakup but it was also because of what it represented publicly for me which was the idea that like if you have this dynamic intelligent talented man who is signing off on you how bad could you really be right yeah I just you know I've not experienced a relationship with a famous person but uh I would I would think there's gotta be something where like sort of

exhilarating or intoxicating or it's like you're you're you're super cool and I'm super cool and the world's telling us we're all super cool and like I love you and I love you and everything's super awesome and then like but then at some point life has to happen and it's it's like well also what delays life more than the things that prevent you from having to deal with life right are like lots

play house for as long as they want and something that I really respect about Jack and love is he's like

“a real entertainer he brings like positivity and joy and has a deep deep connection with his”

audience and cares and I'm a much different internal weird other kind of creature and it's like on the one hand we have Bruce Springstein and on the other hand we have I don't know what I was about to be like Edna St Vincent Millet after she got addicted to opium and fell down the stairs and they're living together in an apartment it's an interesting reality show um and it was so special to have that buddy through everything but then life does happen and the most intense version

of life happening is illness and I try to make it really clear in the book that any young person who

is around that and thought this isn't what I want my life to look like right now I have no blame because I was like this is what I want my life to look like either um you're pretty coy about who the teen pop star was in that Jack is hanging around with in the book there's no teen pop star in the book David you miss Red do you think it would be a uh uh giving people a green light of pure heroin to really say who the pop star was that for that was really good

but it was Connie Francis oh interesting you know I'm conscious of the time I don't want you to feel tractor but no I love hanging out with you I feel like I'm just hopscotching around because there's so much in the book and it's hard but um can I ask about rehab now yeah of course I loved rehab I did I genuinely did and just just for for sort of chronological context so girls is done girls finished in in September of 2016 it'd be ten years this year you kind of bought them out

for the right and so probably it's about 20 April of 2018 I turned 32 the day that I left and about to be 40 so I've been sober for it'll be willing um eight years in April good for you

thank you it's been a really good thing for me something that I didn't know I needed because I never

drank I never smoked weed pretty much until the minute I got there I had no idea that I belonged there I thought I was following doctor's instructions a little too well and suddenly I realized that I had a like many American people a dependent relationship with pharmaceuticals and that I was lucky enough that I could go somewhere and work through that rather than sort of like so many people have to you know grip the walls in their car their bedroom and and um and it was a really important

page-turn experience a lot of addiction is feeling a positive feeling that is in direct contrast

“with the rest of your life looks like your life is falling apart and you're like sitting on your”

bed in a good mood there's nothing in that and I want to have good feelings that like you can explore and move through and are layered I want to have good feelings where you look under them and there's more good feelings you know earlier in the conversation you know you said you kind of felt like you were born with certain feelings about yourself and those feelings you know then had all sorts of ramifications for the life you let in the feelings

that you were comfortable with and the feelings that you pursued and uh I want to just throw a fear that my theory out before you thinking I was born with it is like a cop out do you know what I mean it's not actually wanting to go and I was born that way great lady Gaga song very positive message this is a different story so yes I would love your theory thank you David and you tell me if it's who on but um I I wondered if because of your chronic illness

your normal state the state of being which was actually comfortable for you was a state of extreme discomfort and as a result in all these different ways whether it's your relationship with the public or maybe with other people or your relationship sexually you put yourself in

“positions where you were going to feel bad yeah because feeling bad was your baseline I think that's”

I'm taking that back to therapy David that's really thoughtful and compelling and true and the yes and I would add because there's no no is that when you're in pain the only thing

if you're in pain and then somebody's tattooing you for an hour that's what your focused on and if you're in pain and somebody else takes the reins and puts you through an experience

“that's what you're focused on and it's interesting because my capacity for discomfort has also”

been something that has helped me a lot in my life my ability to withstand stress my ability to deal with like like my husband is like you have like more shit going on in an hour than I do the entire year he's like if I was having your day which is just a normal day doing show business things he's like I would go to bed and I wouldn't get up

the first time that we we created a show together the show too much um and we got our first review

and he was awake and he gets the guardian and it was a like one star and he threw up and I like I turned into like a coach I was like do you like your life you got to pay to play brother like I turned I got I became someone completely different but I was like that ability to handle negative

“inputs I'm not going to say with elegance because that's not a word anyone will associate with me”

but at least with a certain kind of stoicism and moving ahead is something that has like sustained me and has certainly come from being sick this is this will be the final question for this go around and then we're going again so you're someone who particularly early in your career was criticized for oversharing yeah it's term oversharing and I want to know what you've learned up to this point from having the experience of sharing so so deeply in your art on uh you know

arguably over-long Instagram comments yeah some people some people might say they're long I might say I'm using the medium and a fresh new way David who says Instagram is not a platform for half-baked essays about your relationship to bikinis uh and and now also having shared so deeply and such detail fashion in the book yeah so so what do what do you now understand about sort of processing who you are in kind of a public fashion well is interesting like the

idea of oversharing because now we have all these words like trauma dumping or like the idea that like you can share in a way that's sort of like and you can share in a way that's a violation of other people like I know and I'm not people think I'm joking but all like be having conversation I'll be like are you comfortable with me sharing something about sexual violence and they're like

what like I I never want to people will make the choice to pick up my book they'll know what it will

“be but I'm actually like I think I try to be quite conscious of in life like not”

loading people up with stuff that they don't need and I certainly have lots of people come up between the street and load me up with stuff I might not need but I like it anyway keep it coming and I think that I also think that oversharing is a label that's almost exclusively assigned to women like a memoir about the same things for a man would be considered brave, incisive, rebellious like we're having we're having fun he's barred that's all the words and and the idea is

like your feminine female whatever spirit queer whatever it may like insert experience belongs behind closed doors where it was meant you know like keep it stuff it down and get back on your

fainted couch and I always as a kid looked around and felt frustrated by what people weren't saying

I was always trying to understand like when we're making movies we're like what's the note behind the note like I was like I know there's something I'm missing and I know there's something people aren't saying and I don't like this feeling of being on the other side I don't know who when said it there's a quote someone I don't like being on the other side of secrets I don't like it and when I have felt it's not even about how other people reacted when I haven't felt

satisfied with my own work is when I've tried to take a complex thought and trivialize it like I'm no longer interested in like big sweeping statements about female sexuality or the experience or like I'm interested in long-term exploration of topics that I will return to again and again hopefully time a very old lady and I'm looking forward to returning some of these

she got a second opinion about my theory by the way I did you know how I said I'm going to take

“your theory to my therapist. Hi I'm Solana Pine I'm the director of video at the New York Times”

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download the New York Times app from your favorite app store to start watching and if you're

more of an audio person there's a listen tab too will I get in trouble if I bring a lock hello latte by my face occasionally I don't think so okay good I didn't know there's like a branding issue okay maybe they won't want to be associated with me do you you do feel so for you seem to me so at peace or reconciled maybe would be better heard with so much of what you write about in the book but there is one area where sort of into it that maybe you don't feel

quite as much at peace and that's around the statement that you put out in 2020 2017

which you write about in the book and it like a slightly oblique way but you know you defended

the girl's writer Marie Miller uh against accusation of rape you later apologize for that defense

“uh you also write about in the book how you know I think maybe you had you were not in a great”

headspace at that time you were sort of in a confused place um I was wondering it's okay to say I was wondering okay and that but yeah but it it seems like that still sort of ways heavily on you so and I was just wondering like have you forgiven yourself for that? I think and by the way didn't say I was on drugs to kind of like create a blanket excuse just when you said confused headspace I was like no need no need to be polite about it um the reason I wrote about it in a oblique way is just

because I felt like it that story touches on a lot of other people's lives and I struggled with whether to even include it but it felt important because it was a real bottom in my sense of myself in my sense of my relationship to the public and as for the question of will I ever forgive myself

“or will I think that I think what I was trying to say is that there were lots of things that”

publicly I look back and I go that was so dumb that was so dumb how people responded that was so I did not have to apologize that the entire thing was the strange dance but that was one where I did have to apologize and I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to and I can only hope that the way that I included in the book won't feel gratuitous or like it judges too much up for other people and it was um it was definitely a dance to figure out how to

do that. I have another question that connects to my my big theory I had about some of your behavior. Okay by the way I did you know how I said I'm going to take your theory to my therapist yeah I did and I mean she seemed pretty in she seemed to agree she seemed to think like yeah that guy's got the got the joint case then she offered some further thoughts that had to do with my childhood and I was like I got to go sleep. Okay so let me let me let me

air it out so you know we were talking about how you know sort of people could really just be mean to you like you became a punching bag and I you sort of was wondering if if it was sort of you know fine because it was safe to do it on the right and it was safe to do it on the left and we do need things like that. Don't make me laugh I ask you series. Okay okay but but you know the thing I I left out of that was you know and so sort of my theory was that

out of that was of course that you were at times saying provocative things that made people angry or or irritated you know and you know I I don't I don't want to go through the list uh I don't think we need to I don't think that would be necessary we're not doing it we're not doing but but you know I just I just wondered if you know there there obviously was a way in which

“you were interested in pushing boundaries and you probably always I think you even write about”

in the book you've always been interested in pushing boundaries but I wondered if maybe the

thing that you were interested in wasn't just the pushing of the boundary but getting scolded for pushing the boundary you know self-awareness like I wouldn't say it's the specialty of the house for twenty some things so I probably wouldn't have been able to hear that and receive that when things were going on I mean my it was a complicated mix because I also like I was always interested in pushing boundaries but I also came from a very boundary pushing place like I was

ten and like going to see an art show where it was like a woman sold herself to an art collector as the art and so you're watching a video of the two of them having sex and I'm standing there and watching it between my parents like my sense of what was was like naughty behavior was different

like you know one of my fathers big thoughts things he always said when your kids is there are

no bad thoughts only bad actions a lot of people think there are bad thoughts and that you're supposed to I mean a lot of them and that you're supposed to keep your bad thoughts to yourself and I always thought like if we're all just saying what our we're thoughts are then we're saying them and we don't learn alone with them and isn't that better so there was a part of me that just had a really different like world view but also the thing that you're saying is 100 percent

accurate too like I and I think I said to in the last interview is like one of the great

“conflicts of my life is that I like to do and make whatever I want and then have no one ever”

be mad about it and I remember once saying that to my parents and my mom being like well that's actually the most self-aware thing you've ever said you know so so one thing that actually I was thinking about with the book was something that felt a little absent for me and and that was you know the book is so much about the life and I felt it wasn't so much about the art you know sort of where where the art comes from who you know sort of what you were trying to

convey at different parts of your career what you know what you took from the artists who were important to you and I know all that stuff can can be very hard for artists to write about sometimes they don't even know the answers to the kinds of questions but was that an intentional choice on your

part the first part is that there were so many other people telling us what they thought that

girls was about in positive ways in negative ways practically more people talk about what it was about than even watched the show so many people had thoughts and and I also learned to sort of keep it was like was so precious to me what I was maybe actually trying to say and so expansive that it was easier to talk about other things and to keep that stuff close to the best but then also I'm still so in my life as a writer and as a director and it grows and it changes it all the time

and so there's something about talking about your sort of vision for your work or your or your very specific creative interest that feels like you're 88 and like looking back on a complete life but now that you're saying it I mean those when you said you know what you took from the artists that were important to you that could be a whole separate book in which I talked about who I was obsessed with at any given time and what I took from their life and what I took from their work

“and and so it was almost too vast to touch I think yeah you know the what you just said about”

other was so much discussion around the work you know it's it's obvious that sort of the the insane amount of attention you were getting back then you know it's it's receded you're not the the focus of the of scrutiny in the same way now is there anything that feels freeing creatively about not sort of being a sort of a public figure in the same way because I'm just thinking of an example like I was trying to think of analogies earlier when I was thinking about this question I

a Paul Newman who who arguably when he stopped being like tipy top of the alist leading man

“and started doing kind of quiet or smaller more care parts like his work actually got kind of”

more interesting you know in a way I wonder if sort of that resonates for you at all I mean I would love to feel analogous to still tend and sexy midlife Paul Newman taking on more independent and character roles so thank you I mean for me personally I can't everything feels

freeing about it and now it's this kind of miraculous thing where I get to make work that's

exciting to me of course there are projects still that interest me that I know are not going to necessarily excite you know some of the things when I go like you know I'd love to do a slow and meandering depiction of women who spent time around Jack Carawak that's not going to like light up the air waves but I get to work a lot I have time to think I have time to dream I'm engaged with so many other artists that are compelling to me every day has like an exciting

“creative wrinkle to it I think some people there there are people who are really good at”

being artists and also maintaining this sort of dance that you do with the public and it wasn't my gift and I also just had to realize that everybody's capacity is different and I thought that what I had to prove was that I had the that I could take it all that I was tough enough to take it all and now that is not doesn't seem like an important character trait to me and I

feel that I was always sort of meant to be where I am now.

lead I really enjoyed speaking with you thank you very much it was a really a pleasure David thank you. That's Lena Donna her memoir fame sick is available April 14th to watch this interview and many others you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com/@symbol the interview podcast this conversation was produced by Wyatt O'Mar it was edited by Annabelle Bacon mixing by Sophia Landman original music by Diane Wong and Marion Lasano photography by Philip Montgomery

the rest of the team is pre-a-mathue Seth Kelly Paule Newdorf, Joe Bill Nunoz, Amy Marino, Jeremy Rockland, Kathleen O'Brien and Procheminters our executive producer is Alison Benedict next week Lulu talks with actor Charlize Theron about the childhood trauma that shaped her into the action star she is today. I'm scrappy and I'm a survivor and I feel like sometimes that's the

“thing that sets you apart from actual skill. You know I think there are people that would probably”

take somebody down way better than I can but if my life depended on it I'm gonna bet on me. I'm David Markazie and this is the interview from The New York Times.