‘Girls’ Lena Dunham Does Interview Magazine

Lena Dunham! We love her. That’s about the size of this.

Here’s Lena’s interview with Interview, and it’s pretty great.

Lena on being a writer-director:

“I think I’ve sort of made it all into one giant job where all of the parts feed one another. I remember going to see Les Misérables on Broadway as a kid. I was so jealous of the girl that got to play young Cosette, but I never had a moment where I was like, Oh, that’s something I could do. I just felt like, Oh, that’s what certain people can do. I also never got good parts in school plays, and it would incense me to no end, but I was like, ‘I’m not cut out for this.’ I started writing plays, and I would be all of the characters in my head, but I never auditioned or anything. It was only when I started making short films in college and I was looking for girls to play the me-ish parts that I thought, Well, maybe I’m just going to try doing this myself before somebody else comes in and handles it. For a long time my acting was just a marriage of convenience between me and these characters that I was writing”

On her “Girls” co-stars:

“It’s almost like when you’re young, your friends take on the romance role, and then guys take on the role of your friends later. I remember huge fights in college that were like, ‘You don’t want me to have a boyfriend because you don’t want me to be happy and not be around all the time!’ Those are the kinds of things that are really hard to imagine an older woman saying… But I’m so glad that those female friendships on the show worked for you, because that was the biggest thing for me-having all those interactions feel genuine. I wanted this show to fill in a gap in TV for women this age. I feel like there’ve been high-school shows—and My So-Called Life is one of them—that have been honest about what teenage girl friendship can be, that sort of Angela-Rayanne romance. That is all stuff that’s been captured really well in the high-school age range. But 24 to 25-that seems like an age that is so specific and that hasn’t been done.”

On writing from a non-female perspective:

“I didn’t want to write in guys who felt like girl fantasies of a good boyfriend or like a voodoo doll of ex-boyfriends whose lives I was trying to ruin. I wanted it to feel like guys that you would know who are a little weird. I do think girls in their twenties accept certain kinds of lesser treatment than they would at other times in their lives. They’re willing to experiment with what it means to be treated well. You know, what’s it like to have a guy who totally demeans one aspect of your life? For Hannah, at least, it’s an intellectual exercise.”

Love, love, love this girl.