Lena Dunham’s forthcoming memoir features several startling allegations about Adam Driver, including claims that her Girls co-star once threw a chair when they were practising lines and punched a hole in his trailer wall.
The pair starred opposite each other in all six seasons of Dunham’s HBO drama. Girls aired from 2012 to 2017, but has gained cult status thanks to its rewatchability among millennial and Gen Z women.
Driver played Adam, an emotionally fraught actor and the on-off boyfriend of series lead Hannah, for all six seasons of Girls’ duration. Hannah was played by Dunham, who was also the creator and showrunner on set.
Writing in her new memoir, Famesick, Dunham, 39, described Driver in this period as “something feral”, calling him “half-man, half-beast” as she alleged that the future Star Wars actor was difficult to work with and occasionally violent.
In one part of the book, Dunham claims that Driver, 42, threw a chair at the wall next to her when they were running lines and she was unable to get her words out (something she puts down to her dissociating due to her then-undiagnosed endometriosis).
“When I opened my mouth, all that came out was a stammer – until finally, Adam screamed, ‘F***ING SAY SOMETHING’ and hurled a chair at the wall next to me. ‘WAKE THE F*** UP,’ he told me. ‘I’M SICK OF WATCHING YOU JUST STARE,’” she wrote.
Dunham says that she “didn’t tell anyone” about the incident at the time, as her experience with the real-life man who had inspired the character of Adam had left her used to violence.
Elsewhere in the book, Dunham claims that Driver punched a hole in his trailer wall because he hated his haircut and screamed in her face on another occasion.
While intimacy coordinators were used far less frequently in Girls’ time, Dunham said that she wanted to cultivate a “safe” environment on set when it came to sex scenes.
However, the Too Much creator wrote that her “careful blocking went out of the window” when filming intimate scenes, because Driver would allegedly “hurl me this way and that”.
“Part of me was afraid that when I turned around, I would find I was suddenly in a full-penetration 1970s porno. But after a few mimed thrusts, I called cut,” she wrote.
According to Dunham, when Driver wrapped his final scene for Girls, at the end of season six in 2016, he told her: “I hope you know I’ll always love you.” She wrote, however, that she “never heard from him again” after that.
The Independent has contacted Driver’s representatives for comment.
Speaking in a new interview with The Guardian, Dunham was asked about Driver’s alleged behaviour on the set of Girls.
“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,’” said Dunham.
“And, at that point in my twenties, 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.”
Famesick by Lena Dunham is out on 14 April.
The View condemns ‘blasphemous’ AI-generated image of Trump as God
Sid Krofft, co-creator of H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost, dies at 96
Jennie Garth says she developed agoraphobia due to Beverly Hills, 90210
Euphoria pays tribute to Eric Dane and Angus Cloud as it reveals Fez’s fate
The Pitt star calls out theatergoer who shouted ‘Dr. Santos’ mid-Broadway performance
Beloved Nineties series to return to Channel 4 after 11 years
