When Lena Dunham first went to Hollywood at the age of 23, to work on the project that would become Girls, she was warned over and over again about what success might do to her. Her father, her new agent, her mentor Judd Apatow – even actors and journalists cautioned against the dangers of being “precocious and female”. Dunham listened with bemusement. “Even spinning out sounded kind of exciting if I could do it as a filmmaker.”
No one could have warned Dunham just how hated being “precocious and female” would make her. Almost as soon as it was broadcast in 2012, her show – the one she wrote mostly late at night in her childhood bedroom – became a sensation: a hilarious, clever, fearless and bold comedy that skewered millennial women as acutely as it validated them.
Dunham, its creator, writer, showrunner and star, was hailed the voice of her generation and a feminist icon. She was also, according to many critics, lots of feminist publications, and millions of trolls on the internet, annoying, fat, overprivileged, untalented, stupid, not as good as she thought she was, an exhibitionist, a misogynist, a pervert. Because of a misread anecdote in her first book in 2014, there is a vast population of the internet who accuse her of being a paedophile. Everything she wrote, said or did was twisted, every mistake she made magnified, to demonstrate she did not deserve her success.
She became enormously famous in the traditional way – Vogue covers, SNL appearances, Met Gala gowns, Emmys and Golden Globes – and the new, more corrosive way, as the nascent social media gave her critics a tool to say anything they wanted about her, and the opportunity for her to speak right back. (Which she did, far too often.)
Girls ran for six seasons from 2012 to 2017, and remains brilliant, original and unmatched by any of the many comedies it paved the way for. Its set out to be about the experience of being “thrust into adult life long before you know how to live it” – and is often misread as Dunham’s account of growing up. But Dunham’s own thrusting into adult life was considerably more damaging. Famesick, her second memoir, is the story of her real growing up.
Lena Dunham as Hannah Horvath in Girls (Photo: HBO)Like many celebrity memoirs, it is the brutal portrait of a woman torn apart when “my wildest dreams rolled out the welcome mat” – but Dunham’s bracing power for self-reflection and honesty make even this most rarefied, lonely experience somehow relatable.
Famesick is published a few weeks shy of Dunham’s 40th birthday. It takes us from her early recognition as an indie filmmaker through Girls – which was not just a show, but a “moment” – a cycle of bad men, her first real relationship, with the musician Jack Antonoff, endless doctor’s appointments for the crippling endometriosis that would turn out to be the rare Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, her decision to have a hysterectomy at the age of 31 and the infertility that followed, the metastatic impact of fame on herself and everyone close to her, and the break-ups with her life’s two partners: the romantic one, Antonoff, and the professional one with her best friend and Girls co-showrunner Jenni Konner (each as toxic as the other). Eventually, it takes us to rehab, for the accidental addiction to benzodiazepines. It is an account of chronic physical pain and regular emotional pain. When she told her mother she was writing it, she moaned. “Oh Lena. It’s so sad.”
It is incredibly sad, but not because Dunham feels self-pity. If anything, she doesn’t feel enough: Dunham accepts accountability constantly throughout Famesick, as if still not quite free of her lifelong belief that “you only get a certain amount of what you want in life” and that all this was the deal, if she got to do a job she loved. No, it is sad because she deserved so much better and never realised.
When Dunham got her own TV show, she very quickly absorbed the knowledge that “If I failed at this, if I acted flighty or foolish, it wasn’t just my future on the line… Every step forward would be a step for womankind, and every step back would be another excuse to resume the status quo.” She took this on like a “quiet oath”, one that “has fuelled my shame every time I failed, flailed, or fucked up”.
Girls stars Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke, Allison Williams and creator Lena Dunham, with executive producer Jenni Konner far left (Photo: Charles Eshelman/FilmMagic)It defined everything she did: the sense that she needed to be a good girl, on her best behaviour, be grateful, be liked. She said yes to every opportunity, terrified that the “clock would run out”, gave too much of her time and money away and felt like drawing boundaries would be “bad karma”. She accepted great responsibility for the hundreds of jobs and families that depended on her, when she was far too young and inexperienced to know how to be a “boss”.
She pushed through pain when she shouldn’t have – which led to the addiction – she was refused breaks for grief or ill health, she was treated poorly by more powerful, older people who should have protected her and still wagered that this was the bargain she had struck, exactly what she deserved, and to complain would be proof that she didn’t.
She was burnt out, buckling under the weight of expectation, spending every waking and sleeping hour writing, filming or promoting, and going home to Google her own name and reply to her trolls to try and convince them she was grateful and had good intentions. She felt like a “faulty doll”. No matter that her job rested on her mind, face and body – she still feared that it could be taken away. “We paid for you, but we’ll still return you if you break.”
I felt furious, reading, that despite all these warnings, these mentors, Dunham’s close, supportive family, therapists and doctors and a loving – for a time – partner, she was isolated, distant from her friends who never asked about the toll of “the work, the press, the pressure” and never reassured her that she could share the load. I suppose they couldn’t. It is clear that Dunham’s father wanted her out, home and safe, yet she has always been fuelled by her need for self-expression and approval, and could not stop even when it was for her own good.
Since Girls, rehab and the break-ups, she has only taken on a few creative projects – her first TV show since Girls was last year’s Too Much – and has moved to the UK, found a new husband, and balance, at last.
She now exercises her compulsion for self-expression with restraint and in Famesick, she writes with remarkable measure about even the most terrifying truths, from doctors and babysitters sexually abusing her to her trans brother who needed several years away from any association with her, or her beloved mother, her “original frenemy”, who feared her artistic career would be eclipsed by her more famous child’s. These are ugly things to confront, but Dunham manages it with thought and candour.
Lena Dunham at the Too Much premiere in 2025 (Photo: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire)There aren’t really any villains in Famesick, so reluctant is Dunham to apportion blame, but a few characters come off very badly indeed. Chief among them is Antonoff, who comes across as dismissive and impatient with his sick girlfriend and who Dunham says didn’t even show up to her hysterectomy in time. Konner, 15 years Dunham’s senior, should have never blurred the personal and professional boundaries when they were paired up to make Girls. Dunham believed they were soulmates, but feared the moments Konner would turn on her, treating her either like a whining child or the sole reason the Girls crew could feed their families.
Adam Driver, who played Dunham’s on-screen boyfriend, is portrayed as violent, taciturn and unpredictable and left Dunham both in thrall to his talents and scared. She writes that he once threw a chair at the wall next to her. Obviously Dunham believed she deserved that. You get the feeling that even now, with a healthy relationship, a more stable life, and a break from social media, she is still only just recognising that she was never the only person at fault. That what it all took from her might have been worth far more than the money in her wallet.
No matter Famesick’s extremes and its trauma and Dunham’s uniquely mangled ascent to celebrity, there is so much wisdom and recognition in this book. Dunham is so intimate and candid that on subjects like love, self-worth, burnout and the pursuit of perfection, you feel she is writing only for you.
It is with heartbreaking originality that she describes feelings that most of us can never quite articulate. Simple ones, like breakdown of her relationship: “on different iPads, watching different shows”. And very complex ones: the jealousy she felt about the pop star her boyfriend began to spend all his time with and the actress he would go on to marry, because she’d wanted to be their friend and they’d picked him.
She explores the wildness of embracing a kindred spirit and the humiliation of learning that some relationships are not unconditional. The feeling of being 20, and “heartbroken over nothing in particular”. The infertility her body was warning her about all along – and the irony that her ability to accept it was something that would make her a good parent. The compulsion to keep trying at everything – a friendship, a TV show, a relationship – until the bitter end, to prove it had all been worth something. To prove that she had.
Dunham writes that she wants to make other people feel “seen, heard, understood, perhaps even bolstered or like their own life had been improved by knowing me or reading me or watching me”. Once again, she has triumphed. I only wish it hadn’t cost her so much.
‘Famesick’ is published by 4th Estate, £18.99
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