Lena Dunhams Girls: Controversy and Complicated Legacy

Girls burst onto screens in 2012 as a raucous, realistic and rough around the edges portrayal of young women living in New York in their twenties. 

The series won a Award for Best Television series as well as the for Best International Programme and in 2023 Variety included it at 86th on its list of greatest TV series of all time. 

Yet 's career breakthrough moment also came with its fair share of controversies. 

This week, Lena, who both created and starred in the series, made explosive claims about her Girls co-star in her new memoir Famesick. 

The actress, now 39, has alleged the now 42-year-old Academy Award nominee threw a chair at a wall next to her, punched a hole in his trailer wall, and screamed in her face during their days working together.

Lena's character Hannah Horvath was in an on-off relationship with Driver's character Adam Sackler throughout all six seasons from 2012-2017 starting when Lena was 25, and Adam was 28. 

But aside from these new claims that Adam was 'spectacularly rude' to her, over the years the series has also faced claims of whitewashing, a controversial rape scene and nepotism.

Meanwhile Lena has been subject to intense body shaming, with critics questioning the series' need for such confronting nudity and sex scenes. 

Whitewashing 

Following the lives of the four main characters Hannah, Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams), Jessa Johansson (Jemima Kirke) and Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mamet), the show soon faced backlash for its lack of diversity. 

In 2016 writing in the Hairpin, Jenna Wortham was the first critic to raise the fact that almost the entire cast, including the secondary characters, were white. 

Addressing the race question in an interview with NPR a year later, Lena explained that she wished to 'avoid tokensim in casting'. 

She said: 'I wrote the first season primarily by myself, and I co-wrote a few episodes. But I am a half-Jew, half-WASP, and I wrote two Jews and two WASPs. 

'Something I wanted to avoid was tokenism in casting. If I had one of the four girls, if, for example, she was African-American, I feel like — not that the experience of an African-American girl and a white girl are drastically different, but there has to be specificity to that experience [that] I wasn’t able to speak to.'

Later in series two, Lena cast black actor Donald Glover to play Sandy, Hannah's new boyfriend, who starred in two episodes. 

However the casting sparked a whole new backlash of its own and people assumed that Lena had him join the cast purely to help combat the whitewashing claims. 

During his final scene on the show, where Sandy and Hannah are breaking up, Sandy hurled insults at his girlfriend by imitating her white privilege, in lines completely improvised by Donald. 

He mocked: '"Oh, I’m a white girl, and I moved to New York, and I’m having a great time.

'"Oh, I’ve got a fixed-gear bike, and I’m going to date a black guy, and we’re going to go to a dangerous part of town."'

Lena later theorised that his lines may have hinted at his true feelings about being on the show, adding that she later realised that he may have felt 'tokenized'. 

She went on to email him writing: 'I hope you feel the part didn’t tokenize you,’ and he replied: 'Let’s not think back on mistakes we made in the past, let’s just focus on what lies in front of us.'

'Rape' scene 

Lena never shied away from including realistic and often cringe-worthy sex scenes while filming Girls. 

Speaking back in 2015 she said: 'I never understand when people say "Sex scenes are so mechanical; it doesn't feel like anything." It feels like someone f**king you! It's confusing.'

However the show caused major controversy in 2013, when one scene in particular between Adam Driver's character and his new girlfriend Natalia (Shiri Appleby) left viewers wondering whether it was or wasn't rape. 

The scene explored the uncomfortable and blurred lines of 'bad sex' and sexual assault and the issue of consent. 

When Adam and Natalia have sex for the first time and Natalia explains she wishes to take it slow, he respects this.

However later the episode takes a dark turn when Adam tells Natalia: 'I want to f**k you from behind, hit the walls with you'. 

Although she consents, she seems hesitant and after the sexual encounter is over she says: 'I don't think I like that, I, like, really didn't like that'. 

 In a review of the episode for Slate, David Haglund described the scene as 'exceedingly uncomfortable sex', as it raised question of what happens when you want to have sex with the person, but not in a certain way. 

Body shaming 

Lena has been very open about the body shaming she received while starring on Girls, telling The New York Times that there 'was an intense rage about my body which is so crazy to look back on now, because I was this little slip of a 26-year-old.' 

In an interview last year with Variety, when asked if she thinks the success of the show made different body types more acceptable, she answered, 'I wish I could say yes, but I really don’t. I think we had this moment: Body positivity was here, and then it was gone.'

Presenting a realistic portrayal of sex and nudity in the series, Lena was hit with cruel backlash after Linda Stasi's scathing review in 2013. 

Writing in The New York Post, she asked why 'a woman with giant thighs, a sloppy backside, and small breasts is compelled to show it all.'

Howard Stern later took a swipe at the star as he said: 'It’s a little fat girl who kinda looks like Jonah Hill, and she keeps taking her clothes off, and it kind of feels like rape. She seems — it’s like — I don’t want to see that.'

Hitting back at the presenter, Lena called into his radio show, stating: 'I’m not that fat, Howard. 

'I don’t mean to take major issue with you about this. I’m not super thin, but I’m thin for, like, Detroit.'

When Lena's character engaged in a weekend-long affair with a wealthy, attractive doctor (Patrick Wilson), the internet was full of discourse that Lena was not attractive enough to 'deserve' a man so handsome. 

In 2014 at the Television Critics Association press event, Lena and executive producer Judd Apatow were questioned about the nudity on the show. 

The Wrap's Tim Molloy asked: 'I don’t get the purpose of all the nudity on the show. By you, particularly. I feel like I’m walking into a trap where you say no one complains about the nudity on, but I get why they’re doing it. They’re doing it to be salacious. To titillate people. And your character is often naked at random times for no reason.'

Lena shot back: 'Yeah. It’s because it’s a realistic expression of what it’s like to be alive. But I totally get it. If you’re not into me, that’s your problem.'

Murray Miller rape accusations

In 2017 Lena found herself the subject of a major backlash again when she and her Girls co-showrunner Jenni Konner publicly defended Girls writer Murray Miller after he was accused of rape by actress Aurora Perrineau. 

In a statement defending Murray, Lena inferred that Aurora was lying about the alleged assault, which she said happened in 2012, when she was 17 and Miller was 35, according to The Wrap.

Lena and Jenni claimed to have 'insider knowledge' that the accusation was false, as they penned: '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.'

After massive backlash on social media - including from actress/feminist activist Asia Argento - Lena backpedaled and issued a subsequent statement apologizing over her first take on the situation involving Murray, who has denied the claims made by Perrineau.

'Every woman who comes forward deserves to be heard, fully and completely, and our relationship with the accused should not be part of the calculation anyone makes when examining her case,' Lena wrote November 18. 'Every person and every feminist should be required to hear her.

'Under patriarchy, "I believe you" is essential. Until we are all believed, none of us will be believed. We apologize to any women who have been disappointed.'

Nepotism 

The cast of Girls were plagued by nepotism speculation after word began to spread that the majority of the show's stars had successful parents. 

Lena, who's father is painter Caroll Dunham and mother is the artist and photographer Laurie Simmons, addressed the nepotism claims in 2012. 

She said: 'I really did want to challenge all the people crying nepotism to actually tell me who either of my parents were, because it’s the contemporary art world. 

'Okay, I’m Laurie Simmons’s daughter. In one sentence, give me the concentrated version of her Wikipedia entry. You cannot! She’s had a lovely career, but she’s a feminist photographer from downtown New York.'

Allison Williams has also spoken out about such claims, insisting that she and her co-stars didn't receive proper credit for their performances due to the criticism of their privileged backgrounds. 

Allison is the daughter of former NBC news anchor Brian Williams and journalist Jane Stoddard Williams, while Zosia's mother is Broadway actor Lindsay Crouse and father is playwright David Mamet. 

Jemima also comes from privilege, her mother is the vintage boutique owner Lorraine Dellal, who supplied a number of outfits for Sex and The City and her dad is Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke.

Allison reflected: 'We were all pretty privileged people who were the leads of this HBO show that was definitely skewering our own, but we weren’t given credit for that, or for being on it.' 

'The shame is that, when it is coupled with misogyny and fatphobia and everything, the valid criticism gets lost. We were easy targets, I get it.'

Adam Driver  

In her shock new memoir, Lena has claimed Adam was 'spectacularly rude' to her while filming, claiming he threw a chair at a wall next to her, punched a hole in his trailer wall, and screamed in her face during their days working on the HBO series together.

Daily Mail has reached out to representatives for Driver and Dunham and has yet to hear back.

She addressed the claims about Adam in a new interview with The Guardian as she said: 'At the time, I didn’t have the skill to… 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.'