Lena Dunham’s Girls Is Getting a New Season
Nostalgic Brooklynite millennials and people who love to engage in online discourse about Brooklynite millennials, rejoice: Lena Dunham’s generation-defining series Girls is headed back to TV. HBO, which famously hired a 23-year-old Dunham in 2011 based off a one-page “tone poem about millennial life” to create Girls, has ordered a limited five-episode run of the comedy.
Girls first premiered in 2012, facetiously establishing Dunham, via her character Hannah Horvath, as the “voice of a generation.” It ended in 2017, six seasons and a thousand think pieces about feminism, sexuality, and the depiction of the female body later. Judd Apatow served as executive producer on the ‘Sex and the City for millennials’-style show, which also starred Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, and Zosia Mamet as a quartet of twenty-something friends navigating relationships, work, identity, and making mistakes in mid-aughts New York City. Despite its uncanny ability to spark controversy, Girls earned 19 Emmy nominations and two wins.
Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke, Lena Dunham, and Allison Williams
The idea of a reboot has been floated by fans since the series ended—and especially since the release this year of Dunham’s second memoir, Famesick, in which she wrote about the Girls years, their aftermath, and the toll they took on her health, both physical and mental. The majority of the cast is reported to be on board, with Williams, Kirke, and Mamet reprising their original roles as Marnie, Jessa, and Shoshanna, respectively. Andrew Rannells, who played Dunham’s ex-boyfriend, is also returning.
Becky Ann Baker, Lena Dunham, and Andrew Rannells in a scene from Girls
In a video announcement posted to Instagram, Dunham asks the core cast on a Zoom call if they want to return for “one summer” of shooting the show. They’re all in, they say, though Dunham isn’t sure about referring to themselves as “girls” anymore, given that they’re “old as sh—.”
Notably missing from the announced cast and crew are Adam Driver, who played Dunham’s boyfriend, and Jenni Konner, who was co-showrunner and executive producer on the show and, at the time, a close friend of Dunham’s. In Famesick, Dunham addresses her relationship with both Driver and Konner, and especially her falling out with the latter.
Production for the Girls reboot will reportedly begin next year, 15 years after its premiere. Stay tuned for updates.
