Lena Dunham Knows What You Think Of Her, And She Doesn’t Care

Amanda Hirsch doesn’t waste time when she lands a bucket-list guest. On Not Skinny But Not Fat, Hirsch was elated to announce she’s scored comedian Lena Dunham as a guest, promptly calling it the “craziest-dream moment,” and completing the line-up of Girls cast members who have appeared on her show.

From the outset, the HBO multihyphenate is both aware and unfazed by the hype surrounding her name.

If you’ve followed Dunham even casually, you know the rap sheet—accolades for Girls, backlash for everything from on-screen nudity to off-screen think-pieces, a string of Twitter pile-ons, and a résumé that still racks up Emmys and DGA wins.

But that “next” energy, borne of many a Twitter draggings (some justified, some not) and a battle-hardened approach to the industry, fuels the rest of the chat, which drops later this week. Expect discussions on body-shaming, her unbothered stance toward Internet outrage, and the mountain of projects she’s shepherding in 2025. Lena Dunham knows exactly how polarizing she is—and she’ll still invite you to tune in, hate-listen, or both.

She shrugs at all the headlines

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Critics have filled comment sections for a decade, and Dunham can recite every insult. But when Hirsch digs into how that noise shaped her self-image, Dunham answers with a sigh.“It’s really hard to have received that level of physical criticism and wanna step back on-screen,” she muses, seeming to contradict her earlier IDGAF assertion, and proving that she, too, is only human after all.

Creating without the noise

Instead of disappearing, Dunham has doubled down on making things—quietly, relentlessly, and on her own terms. She tells Hirsch she’s “quietly working away on lots of stuff,” adding that Hollywood only notices when “ they all hatch at the same time.”

One of her projects involves Natalie Portman, whom Dunham “wrote [a rom-com] for… and she’s producing it with [her], which is incredible.” Another sees Dunham knee-deep in a 10 Things I Hate About You musical that’s been gestating for four years—Carly Rae Jepsen and Jess Wang are on board. “This is the show we’ve always dreamed of,” Dunham gushes.

She’s polishing a book six years in the making—think memoir meets cultural study—and teases readers to “put those little CVS reading glasses on” because she intends to make them “read again.”

Too much? Try unstoppable

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If the Internet once labeled Dunham “too much,” she’s spun the critique into her personal branding. Her upcoming Netflix series, Too Much, riffs on that very descriptor. Hirsch laughs about the cheeky title, and Dunham explains it borrows from her own marriage, as Dunham’s husband, Luis “Attawalpa” Felder, reassures her, “You’re too much…in a good way.”

TikTok trends and a teensy indifference

@saraaelisabeth
Happens daily let’s be real #voiceofmygeneration #funnygirls #laughing
♬ original sound – cxcocouture

Gen-Z TikTokers recently turned “I’m the voice of my generation” into the audio meme of the semester. Dunham confesses she lurks behind a “ghost-burner TikTok” just to watch the phenomenon. “I’ll see a really cool sex worker in Australia using a sound from Girls, and I feel so happy,” she says.

What’s next for Lena Dunham

Between the Portman rom-com, a Broadway musical, a book, and the semi-autobiographical Too Much, Dunham’s calendar is a little full. She even jokes about DIY hair maintenance, laughing, “Everything’s gonna run out and I need to dye my hair at home,” a reminder that under the accolades and backlash, she’s still the woman who once shot Tiny Furniture on borrowed gear.

So yes, Dunham absolutely knows what you think about her. She’s read the tweets, skimmed the DMs, and stalked the TikToks. As she tells Hirsch, “I regret nothing.”