Breaking news: We know a lot about Lena Dunham. Over the past three years, we’ve tuned into her HBO show, “Girls,” most Sunday nights, we follow her on Twitter and we’ve basically already pre-ordered her book. But guess what? On the latest episode of comedian Marc Maron’s podcast, WTF, we get to learn even more about Dunham in an hour-plus-long interview. (This is not a bad thing.)
Dunham not only revealed that she sometimes dreams about Harvey Weinstein chasing her with a mallet, but also her nicknames for boyfriend, musician Jack Antonoff, how often she barfs for one reason or another, her feelings on the Woody Allen scandal and more. Here are the most exciting things we learned about Dunham on the podcast.
You Don’t Know Jack
“I call my boyfriend all kinds of s—,” Dunham said of Fun. guitarist Jack Antonoff, whom she has been dating for more than two years. “Just like Bucket, Bumpy, Bubbles. Just anything that comes out of my mouth that sounds cute to me is his name.”
She also called him “the most fun in the world.” D’aww.
The Business Of Art
Though both of Dunham’s parents are artists, you’d be hard pressed to find their older daughter at one of the galleries that she grew up in.
“I don’t really go to anyone’s art installations,” she admitted. “Maybe in a reaction to my parents and the art installations I was forced to go to as a child, it’s just very hard to get me to an art installation.”
A Clean House
Though one might expect Dunham to live in a cluttered space, quite the opposite is true.
“I also used to be really into like collecting Playbills or keeping my Archie comic collection or I used to have the world’s biggest VHS collection of movies from the ’90s,” she said. “I could become such a hoarder that i’ve gone the other way. I delete all my text messages, I throw everything out. My house is pretty stripped down because I’m afraid of going in the other direction.”
Heave Hero
“I vomit a lot. Like, once a month maybe?” Dunham admitted sheepishly. The reasons behind the heaving vary, she said: “Anxiety. Hormones. Sometimes if I drink green tea in the morning too much with no food I throw up. Sometimes I have a really bad headache and it makes me throw up. I feel like I function fairly well for someone who vomits as much as I do.”
Texts Freak Her Out
There are two people whose texts Dunham says don’t trigger anxiety: Her producing partner, Jenni Konner, and boyfriend Antonoff. (Née Bucket.)
Even when it’s her mom texting, she said, she thinks, “What the f— happened? What did I do?”
Play The Part
There’s a very specific image that Dunham would like to give off, she said.
“I have a lot of anxiety and a lot of neuroses, but I try not to inflict it on the people around me,” Dunham said. “I try to make it my own issue. I really try to seem like someone who you could, you know, trust with your house keys.”
Regarding Woody
Dunham had some strong words regarding fellow New Yorker Woody Allen, about whose movies, she said, “I haven’t wanted to watch his movies in a long time in part because I think they’ve gotten really bad.”
That’s separate from the headline-making accusations leveled against Allen. She said that it’s fine to make your own opinion, like she has, but that the man is separate from his work.
“In the latest Woody Allen debate, I’m decidedly pro-Dylan Farrow and disgusted with Woody Allen’s behavior, but when people like go through his work and like comb it for references to child molestation? That’s not the f—ing point,” she said. “I’m not gonna indict the work. You can decide that you don’t want to support the work of someone who’s molested a child.”
So rest assured: You’re still allowed to like “Annie Hall.”
She Doesn’t Have The Best Grasp On What Pregnancy Entails
While discussing her hypochondriac tendencies, Dunham revealed that she might not have the strongest idea of what happens to a woman when she’s pregnant.
“One time I was so sure I was pregnant that I told Jenni [Konner] that I could feel my baby crawling up and down my spine and she was like, ‘that’s not what babies do. At this point, they’re not big crawlers.'”
She Reads Your Mean Tweets
Yes, she sees those nasty replies you’re sending her on Twitter.
“That was my favorite of this week,” she said while recounting rude comments sent her way. “It was ‘rotten pears belong in the garbage, not TV.’…They were referring to my body as a rotten pear. Like a rotten pear-shaped body.”
She Has Big Plans For Joan Rivers
After describing an idea for what she dubbed the Too-Soon Summit, a safe space to discuss off-color jokes, Dunham recalled seeing comedian Joan Rivers get booed for making a Paul Walker joke shortly after his death. In honor of Rivers, she said, she had a plan for the future.
“The day Joan Rivers dies, I’m gonna make a killer zing. I’m gonna zing the s— out of her.”
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