Things for Lena Dunham are showing absolutely no signs of slowing down—within the past week, she’s won a DGA, is developing a new show for HBO, is Entertainment Weekly’s cover girl and had a truly terrific episode of Girls air.
Over the weekend, Dunham won Best TV Comedy Director at the Director’s Guild Awards. She is the first woman to win in this award in the 42 year history—which while much hasn’t been said about it—is a huge deal. Dunham won for her direction of the pilot episode—an award that I’m sure she’ll be nominated for again.
And Dunham’s new show she’s developing with Girls co-showrunner Jenni Konner could be another Girls scale hit. Dunham and Konner are adapting All Dressed Up and Everywhere to Go, the upcoming memoir from Betty Halbriech, a famed New York based personal shopper. Halbriech, launched her own personal shopping business (which at 85 she still continues, based out of Bergdorf Goodman) in 1976 and went on to dress some of the most famous women in the world for the last three decades. She also has consulted on television and film—including a tiny show, Sex and the City. Konner and Dunham are planning on writing the project together.
Dunham was also the cover story of this week’s Entertainment Weekly. In a really great interview, Dunham talks her media favorites (My So-Called Life, Lolita by Nabokov, Take This Waltz), James Franco “I think someone told James Franco that it’s his duty to have an opinion on everything that happens in culture.”, and getting her new dog, Lamby (at a NYC shelter).
Dunham also addresses some of the larger questions that permeate the conversation around Girls. She discusses the conversation Hannah has with Sandy (Donald Glover), her black republican boyfriend from the beginning of season two.
When Donald to set, the shit had just hit the fan. And we were like, It would be interesting to tackle this by lending our own experiences as young people in this PC, ‘race-free,’ climate. So we wrote the script, but then we just went off.
She also talks at length about how she became comfortable using her body for her comedy—something she began honing at an early age, 14, while taking stand-up lessons. She has definetely helped further the discussion of women’s relationships with their bodies—for which she gets many compliments.
My point with getting naked is never proven. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I did it first season, and now you guys get that there’s a women of a certain size on TV, so I’m done.’ A guys came up to me while we were shooting and said, ‘My sister loves your tits.’ I was like, ‘Thank you so much!’
And this week’s (and maybe one of my favorite in the show’s run thus far), emotionally resonate episode of Girls really proved that Dunham isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
Lena Dunham ('Girls') makes DGA history as first female to win Best TV Comedy Director (Gold Derby)
Girls' Lena Dunham Writing Another New York Project (Television Blend)
This week's cover: Lena Dunham, the beautiful (and dirty) mind behind 'Girls' (Entertainment Weekly)
