This article discusses topics like drug addiction, disordered eating, allegations of sexual assault, and allegations of child sexual abuse.
This week, Lena Dunham’s personal memoir “Famesick” finally hit shelves — and it’s full of bombshell revelations.
Noting that the book would chronicle the decade in which her life “changed profoundly and permanently,” Dunham, 39, previously told fans that she began writing “Famesick” when she’d been out of rehab for 30 days. (She entered after developing an addiction to benzodiazepines, an anti-anxiety medication that she’d been prescribed.)
She wrote on Instagram last September, “When we finally set a publication date for Famesick, I felt something like grief. One of my steadiest companions was leaving. But it’s time. And I’m so excited to be able to tell you, in the best way I know how, about: years of impossible magic and years I thought I wouldn’t survive; illness and addiction and heartbreak; the lessons I no longer feel ashamed of having had to learn.”
As anticipated, Dunham’s book is incredibly raw and candid, detailing everything from her health struggles to her turbulent relationships with various celebrity peers. Here is a roundup of the biggest takeaways from “Famesick”:
1. Dunham alleges that her “Girls” costar Adam Driver was “verbally aggressive, condescending, and physically imposing” on set.
Dunham, who played protagonist Hannah Horvath in the popular HBO series, which aired between 2012 and 2017, claims in “Famesick” that her off-screen relationship with Driver, who played her toxic on-and-off boyfriend, was pretty turbulent on set.
Writing that Driver “hurled me this way and that” during their first sex scene, Dunham claims, “Stunned, I couldn’t speak for a moment, unsure of what had happened — had I lost directorial authority, allowed the scene to go off the rails, not given proper instructions? Would I be removed from my command post immediately? It wasn’t that I felt violated — and I also wouldn’t know if I had, as there was little in my sexual life that I hadn’t allowed to happen, and for no pay. But I felt that something intimate, confusing and primal had played out in a scenario I was meant to control.”
She also alleges that when she showed Driver the pilot episode of “Girls,” he walked out of the room and subsequently “didn’t answer any of my calls for the next three weeks.” She says that he later explained that this was because he hates watching himself onscreen.
Dunham later told the Guardian that she “didn’t have the skill” to call Driver out on his alleged behavior at the time. “It never entered my mind to say, ‘I am your boss, you can’t speak to me this way.’ And, at that point in my 20s, I still thought that’s what great male geniuses do: eviscerate you. Which is weird, because I was raised by a male genius who would never do that,” she said.
Driver has not publicly addressed Dunham’s claims, and BuzzFeed has reached out to his rep for comment.
2. Dunham writes about the moment she discovered her now-ex-partner, Jack Antonoff, allegedly getting close with an unnamed “teen pop star.”
At one point in the book, Dunham recalls FaceTiming Antonoff — whom she dated between 2012 and 2018 — only to find him in “the recording studio in our apartment, where he was ensconced with a teen pop star I was too oblivious to be jealous of.” She later claims that Antonoff spent his time “locked in a room with a teen pop star whose needs seemed as massive and complex as my own, and who called me ‘Aunt Lena’ when I hobbled into the kitchen with my walker to grab another bottle of green tea.”
Writing that her and Antonoff’s relationship deteriorated while she was dealing with various health issues, Dunham recalls coming home from a bone density test one day to find the unnamed teen pop star “sprawled across our sectional couch, weeping into Jack’s lap as he told her that ‘your teens are for experimenting’ in a tone so comforting, it almost brought tears to my eyes.” She adds, “It had been so long since he’d spoken to me with that kind of expansive generosity.”
Dunham says that she told Antonoff that she felt “like a ghost” when she saw him and the pop star together. She alleges that he told her in response: “‘You’re just mad because she doesn’t want to be your friend.’”
While Dunham doesn’t address the pop star by name, she does acknowledge viral online speculation that Antonoff had cheated on her with singer Lorde. “I had observed careful boundaries, never taking it far enough that I could be declared out of bounds. If I’d wanted to look, perhaps I may have seen that Jack was not observing them as closely as I was. I wasn’t paying attention, but the Internet sure was, and they made some pretty amazing PowerPoints on the issue, so convincing they had me rethinking events that I myself had been present for,” she writes, referring to the viral 29-page PowerPoint created by fan Hillary Benton in 2018, which broke down the speculation that Lorde and Antonoff had an affair.
3. Dunham admits to cheating on Antonoff amid their relationship struggles.
As mentioned, Dunham says that her and Antonoff’s relationship declined while she was dealing with health issues, including fighting chronic illness related to endometriosis. After a hysterectomy “changed the game” in 2017, Dunham says that she wrote to an ex-boyfriend from middle school named Nick “with impunity,” saying: “l’d just had major surgery and I needed to be cheered up. ‘Meet me by the bridge? Bring me a stuffed animal?’”
Writing that she “let my lips wander slowly across his face and onto his,” Dunham recalls remembering: “My high school friend Marissa’s mother once told us how, when she conducted an affair in the 1970s, cheating on her first husband with Marissa’s father, she insisted on wearing a red velvet cape with a hood everywhere she went.” Noting that she was wearing “a sweater the size of an airstream trailer,” Lena says, “I too, was ready to do adultery.”
Dunham recalls telling Nick, “I’ve been through something awful. I don’t want to talk about it, but I need you to fuck me and I need you to do all of the work.” Noting that the affair lasted several days, Dunham eventually tried to convince herself that everything with Antonoff was fine once he returned from tour. “I had fixed myself, proved I could be the freaky sexy lively young woman he fell in love with. I had exorcised the demon. In a way, I had fucked Nick for both our sakes, to make our house a home again. It would all be better now. I fell asleep to the rhythm of Jack’s breathing, like I had been doing for almost six years,” she writes.
However, she eventually approached Antonoff about the subject of them not “making each other happy,” writing that the pair “put our foreheads together and wept” before parting ways.
4. Dunham addresses her controversial defense of “Girls” writer Murray Miller after he was accused of sexual assault.
In November 2017, Dunham and “Girls” showrunner Jennifer “Jenni” Konner defended Miller after actor Aurora Perrineau filed a police report accusing him of sexual assault. Miller “categorically and vehemently” denied the claims.
Dunham and Konner said in Miller’s defense: “During the windfall of deeply necessary accusations over the last few months in Hollywood, we have been thrilled to see so many women’s voices heard and dark experiences in this industry justified. It’s a hugely important time of change and, like every feminist in Hollywood and beyond, we celebrate. But during every time of change there are also incidences of the culture, in its enthusiasm and zeal, taking down the wrong targets. We believe, having worked closely with him for more than half a decade, that this is the case with Murray Miller.”
“While our first instinct is to listen to every woman’s story, our insider knowledge of Murray’s situation makes us confident that sadly this accusation is one of the 3% of assault cases that are misreported every year. It is a true shame to add to that number, as outside of Hollywood women still struggle to be believed. We stand by Murray and this is all we’ll be saying about this issue,” they said.
After the statement was widely criticized, Dunham retracted her comments and issued an apology. “I naively believed it was important to share my perspective on my friend’s situation as it has transpired behind the scenes over the last few months. I now understand that it was absolutely the wrong time to come forward with such a statement and I am so sorry,” she said in part. “Every woman who comes forward deserves to be heard, fully and completely, and our relationship to the accused should not be part of the calculation anyone makes when examining her case. Every person and every feminist should be required to hear her. Under patriarchy, ‘I believe you’ is essential.”
Now, Dunham claims in her memoir that she “doesn’t remember” writing the statement in Miller’s defense. She says that based on timestamps, she must have written the statement on the same day that she returned from the hospital — but claims to have no memory of doing so. “Therefore, how I managed to make a public statement about, much less a careless, blithe and damaging one about a subject that should only ever have been approached with full-spirited care and precision — confounds me to this day,” she says.
She also recalled feeling guilty in the wake of the backlash to her statement, writing, “I could try — would have tried, if I had written this book any earlier — to explain to you all of the backstory that informed the statement I don’t remember writing, the specificity of the relationships, the obligations and emotions bound up in the decision to defend someone against an accusation I had no business attempting to debunk, no clear reason to fight, no fucking right to an opinion on. But none of that matters. It does not materially change what happened, the shame I feel about it, or — most crucially — the pain it caused. I was so deep in my own distress — physical, emotional, existential — that I had ceased to be able to imagine or invest in anyone else’s.”
5. Dunham details her and Konner’s alleged toxic friendship — and eventual fallout — at many points throughout “Famesick.”
Recalling the “first time” Konner allegedly “switched roles” from “cozy bestie” to “supervisor,” Dunham claims that while she was struggling with an eating disorder, Konner told her: “I think the issue is that you’re too thin. And the thing is, it’s not funny if you’re too thin, it’s just ‘Sex and the City’ all over again. What made your movie special was that you weren’t that. If we lose it, we don’t have a clear voice… It’s not that hard. Just put food in your mouth.”
Dunham later writes that her and Konner’s friendship finally came to an end after she underwent her rehab stint and had her hysterectomy. “Later, my mother would confess that in the days before rehab, [Konner] had called her. She had told her that she didn’t understand — now that the hysterectomy had happened, I was well. That last excuse had been erased. ‘And she’s clinging to this random diagnosis like it’s an answer,’” she alleges.
Dunham says that after rehab, she opened up to Konner about being 62 days sober, saying, “You do not make me feel safe or proud, and I cannot speak to you until we are in front of a therapist.”
The pair indeed went to therapy, and Dunham writes that she immediately broke down in tears as she told Konner about how much their friendship meant to her. However, Dunham claims that Konner responded, “Please don’t write about this immediately,” before leaving the session three minutes in.
Konner has not publicly addressed Dunham’s claims, and BuzzFeed has contacted her representative for comment.
6. And finally, Dunham looks back on allegations that she sexually abused her younger sibling, which stemmed from a revelation made in her first book, “Not That Kind of Girl.”
In “Not That Kind of Girl,” which was released in 2014, Dunham shared that when she was 7, she touched her 1-year-old sibling Cyrus’ genitals and, later, masturbated next to them when they shared a bed. This revelation led to widespread accusations of child molestation, which Dunham now writes that she was “shocked” to see unfold.
“I was shocked when a conservative media site analyzed the book carefully, pulling choice passages and coming to the conclusion that I had engaged in sexually inappropriate childhood behavior with my sibling,” she says in “Famesick,” maintaining that the incident was nothing more than innocent childhood curiosity.
“I didn’t consider what I’d written to be particularly salacious. And anyway, what about the things I hadn’t included? I’d decided against describing the time, age four, I announced to a group of near-strangers that my punishment at home for misbehavior was having ‘a fork stuck up my vagina.’ (It was not.) I don’t know where I came up with that, but I’ve always been confused by anyone who doesn’t recognize that children are inherently innocent, and yet their imaginations are endless and deranged,” she says.
“I mounted every defense I could: I took to Twitter to cry smear campaign, male bullshit, to say YOU’re the creepy ones for even thinking this,” she writes. “And while I do believe there were people who were genuinely agitated by the phrasing and what it evoked for them, who felt betrayed by the words — and to them, I am sorry — I believe there were many more who saw the chance to eradicate someone who had heretofore been only a nuisance to them, whose picture they didn’t care to scroll past, a person they deemed unworthy of her accomplishments and her adulation, who was taking their chances and their cash in the zero-sum game of life.”
Amid the controversy, however, Dunham admits that she feels regret over the way that sharing the anecdotes has impacted Cyrus, who identifies as transmasculine nonbinary. “What I had been guilty of on the page, what the Internet should have charged me with and given me a short sentence for, was poor phrasing, maybe a second count for TMI. What I was now guilty of seemed to be a laissez-faire attitude about what was mine to confess, which had derailed the life of the person I had felt most tasked with protecting,” she writes.
Dunham’s memoir is available for purchase now.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local center here.
If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 (4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.
The National Eating Disorders Association helpline is 1-800-931-2237; for 24/7 crisis support, text “NEDA” to 741741.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, you can call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).