Lena Dunham interview: Girls creator on campaigning for Hillary Clinton and endless media questions about nudity

Lena Dunham is preparing for the next stage in her life. We meet in Los Angeles two days after the news breaks that Girls, the HBO show she writes and stars in, will end early next year, drawing a close to a fulfilling but emotionally draining period that saw Dunham branded, only half-jokingly, as the “voice of her generation”.

“I’m thrilled that we’ve been given the opportunity to finish on our own time and on our own terms,” she says. “The thing really is that the job is non-stop and I’ve been doing it for five years. When I’m not shooting I’m writing, and when I’m not writing I’m editing, and when I’m not editing I’m doing press. And I love all that but it will also be exciting to chill out a little bit. Frankly, so much of my twenties were devoted to my work… it’s not like I’m planning on taking a two-year vacation, but definitely shifting the pace of my life a little is really exciting.”

In two months time Dunham will turn 30. She’s been in a relationship with the musician Jack Antonoff for the past three years, and admits that the longer the show has continued, the more she has struggled with her work/ life balance.

“I went into this experience knowing very little,” she says. “It’s very hard to get the balance between personal and work, and trying to be present for the people you love and your job and your family. It’s a huge challenge and something I’m still working on.” In what way? “I’m working out how to be a sister, a girlfriend, a friend, a businessperson. To do all that and to still maintain a little shred of that place where you have a little bit of privacy.”

Ah, privacy. This is the fifth time I’ve interviewed Dunham in five years and in that time she’s gone from almost unbelievably unfiltered (our first interview ended with her giving me her phone number and email with the instructions to call any time if there was something to check) to increasingly polished. It’s not that she engages any less over the course of our conversation. Her answers are still thoughtful and interesting, but they’re also more considered. Dunham might have made her name by presenting every aspect of her life to the cameras (memorably while at college at Oberlin in Ohio she filmed herself climbing into a fountain in a bikini, and pretending to shower and clean her teeth and then put it on YouTube. It went viral), but these days she’s clearly more interested in compartmentalising her life.

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Take social media site Instagram as an example. Currently her feed, which has 2.3 million followers, is a cheerful and not particularly curated mix of personal photos and things that have caught her eye – much like any average person’s in fact. She admits that may change.

“I’m going to have to play it by ear. Who knows – once I have kids or other things happening in my life, whether I’m going to have the time or the thought processes to respond on Instagram every day? I don’t know and I can’t promise it… but I do think that we all have to protect ourselves as we get older. Our standard for what we think feels good changes. I’m not going to force myself to live a certain way.”

She has increasingly used her success to push for causes she believes in – most notably by campaigning in favour of Hillary Clinton during this US election cycle, in an attempt to win millennial voters back from their support for Vermont senator, Bernie Sanders. Not, she stresses, that her support for Clinton breaks along gender lines. “Do I find it an exciting idea that we could have our first female president – of course and not just because when I was a kid I didn’t even think that was allowed… But I’m not voting for Hillary because she’s female. I’m supporting her because I think she’s the most qualified candidate and I support her beliefs, track record and plans for handling issues. I also think it’s a real problem that so many people aren’t engaging with that process. I didn’t get involved in this to force people to vote for someone specific. I just want them to vote.”

She’s equally vocal about feminism. “Honestly, I think it’s almost funny that it’s so easy to forget that feminism is actually a political movement,” she says. “It’s so easy to think that feminism is about being able to wear whatever you want or it’s about being allowed to sleep with people and not be judged for it. All of that is 100 per cent true, but feminism is also about equal rights. It’s about wage equality, health care for women, access to family planning, not having to constantly fight repeals of Roe v Wade and abortion laws, making sure that we have an adequate system in place to punish people who commit domestic violence and taking care of women who are on the receiving end of that domestic violence. Those are things that we have not gotten to the bottom of as a country, and unless we do we can not consider ourselves a place where women are equal to and have the same privileges as men.”

How does she feel when people describe Girls as being at the forefront of a new feminist movement? She laughs. “Look, I don’t think our show by any means put feminism back on the map, but I do think it was part of a time where a lot of female-driven television started being recognised and televised and that’s really exciting. The collective power and energy of that got people talking and I’m glad Girls was part of that conversation.”

She won’t, however, miss the endless media focus on her weight and body size, and the insistent sniping over her willingness to strip off during the show. She sighs. “Honestly, it’s been four and a half years of constant questions about why do you feel the need to do this, do you feel embarrassed, what’s important about it… and after you’ve answered five of those questions you’ve kinda answered them all. Plus, after a certain point you just feel can’t we all get used to this? My being naked as Hannah is not that shocking, and so much of it is to do with being a woman who doesn’t have an ideal Hollywood body type. At the end of the day we all have bodies and to pretend we don’t is just insane. It makes me miss the films of the Seventies where there’s just casual nudity, and a casual understanding that the human body is a part of the human experience.”

Given that frustration it’s no surprise to learn that Dunham sees her future behind the camera. She’s been working on a new show for HBO, Max, which follows a young magazine writer in the 1960s “coming face-to-face with second wave feminism” and admits that she’s increasingly drawn to writing and directing.

“I feel more focused on that than I do about the idea of going out and continuing to try and get acting parts,” she says. “I love acting but I’m totally aware that there are people who are true professionals at it, and I’d rather have the chance to direct those people and make my own living on the other side of the camera.”

Failing that she’ll always have prose. “I started out as a writer and it’s a great way to express yourself because it’s just really personal. I’m going to keep doing my newsletter Lenny and writing for The New Yorker and books…”

Does she worry at all about adjusting to life after Girls? She laughs again. “Look one of the great things about pop culture is that we have a fairly short attention span. I literally think that six months after a TV show ends no one will recognise you in a grocery store. And actually that’s fine. I’m great with that.” µ

‘Girls’ returns to Sky Atlantic on Monday at 10.45pm