Lena Dunham and Megan Stalter on love, ageing and being ‘Too Much’

Lena Dunham offers me a simple explanation: Girls was about sex, but her new Netflix series, Too Much, concerns love. In 2012, Dunham was a 26-year-old New Yorker who wrote, directed, and starred in the pilot of Girls, a generation-defining show that ran for six seasons and taught women to avoid dating men if they can help it. Dunham’s character Hannah even famously quipped in that first episode, “I think I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice of a generation.”

Since then, Dunham has been involved with hit TV shows (Industry) and films (Catherine Called Birdy), as well as a few controversies that threatened to eclipse her artistic achievements. Yet, throughout moments where it seemed like she may become the enemy of her generation – or an enemy of a generation – Girls has remained a show that everyone, especially Gen Z, keeps binging. Where Too Much fits into that is that Dunham, who’s now 39, has moved on from Girls but her writing has maintained the keen, observational humour and introspection that may or may not come from her own life.

A 10-episode romcom co-created, co-written, and often directed by Dunham, Too Much stars Megan Stalter (Hacks) as Jessica, a heartbroken New Yorker in the TV industry (her boyfriend starts dating an influencer depicted by Emily Ratajkowski) who moves to London and falls in love with a ramshackle musician, Felix, played by Will Sharpe (The White Lotus). Dunham, too, moved to London after a breakup and fell in love with a musician, Luis Felber, her husband and co-creator of Too Much. Is the positivity all a little… too much? Not exactly.

Too Much is still a show with bite, sadness, and sharp humour. It’s just that, unlike Girls, episodes end in a warm hug, often literally between Jessica and Felix. A similar bond played out in front of me with Stalter and Dunham in March, in a London hotel, when the duo held hands for the majority of a conversation that covered why you’re welcome to fall asleep to Too Much, Gen Z using psychological jargon to dissect Girls, and if Dunham wishes someone else had starred in Girls.

Lena, you said something on Marc Maron’s podcast in 2014 that’s always stuck with me. You described having a nightmare where everyone lives their life in a single day, and they die at midnight. In the dream, you were at 2:30pm in your life, and you were concerned that you didn’t have enough time to achieve your goals. You were 27 when you said that. How does Too Much, a show you’ve made a decade later, fit into that?

Lena Dunham: It’s wild you mention that, because I recently had the dream again.

Megan Stalter: What is it?

Lena Dunham: It’s this dream where instead of life being in years, midnight is the end, and you look at the clock, and you’re like, “I’m 5:30pm years old.” You realise: it’s ticking away.

After Girls, which was an all-encompassing experience, I had to take time to figure it out. I started so young. It’s like when you hear a child actor say, ‘I had to go to college, and then go back to acting to know I loved it.’ I worked on movies. I wrote prose. Coming back to TV as a grown-up, I realised this is my favourite job in the world.

Did you say you’re at 5:30pm in your life now?

Lena Dunham: Well, in my dream I was at 5:30pm. I don’t think I’m at 5:30pm yet. People are living longer and longer.

Megan Stalter: You’re not at 5:30pm yet. That’s almost dinner.

Lena Dunham: I was thinking I’m now at 2:45pm or 3pm, but tell me if I’m delusional.

Megan Stalter: More like 1:30pm. In the grand scheme of life, I don’t know if we’re at lunch yet. But we’ve had breakfast.

Lena Dunham: The question is if we’re ordering lunch, or finishing lunch up.

In your 20s, everything is a possibility. I remember thinking that things had so much consequence, but looking back I realise how little effect they had on the grand scheme of life – Lena Dunham

Girls was about people in their 20s, and in Industry, which you directed the pilot of, the characters only care about their job. With Too Much, what did you want to explore in terms of being in your 30s?

Lena Dunham: What I loved about doing Industry was that it’s just a show about ambition. It’s about people who are almost skipping over the classic life stuff because their job is everything. In my 20s, I skipped a lot of 20-something things because I was so focused on making Girls. What I loved about making a show about people in their 30s – technically Jessica’s 35, and I’m 39, so I might as well be 1,000 compared to her – and Meg is playing a little older…

Megan Stalter: I’m playing a year and half older!

Lena Dunham: She’s got a lot of dramatic range to play a year and a half older [laughs]. In your 20s, everything is a possibility. I remember thinking that things had so much consequence, but looking back I realise how little effect they had on the grand scheme of life. Once you’re in your 30s – I don’t know if you’ve had lunch yet, but you’ve definitely done things, and unless you make a really radical choice like moving to a monastery, you’re kind of who you’re going to be.

Megan Stalter: Also, in your 20s, you’re basically a teenager. In your 30s, you’re like: I’m going to accept who I am. But guess what? It’s time to explore what I want to do. In your 40s, maybe you go to school. You want a family? Let’s think about it. 50s? Let’s hit the ground running with our career. 60s? You start to feel a void. 70s? Maybe take a little time off. We’re at the peak of our career. 80s? Now we can start thinking about the future. 90s? It’s time to go on vacation.

Lena Dunham: I want you to make that chart and publish it.

And then when you’re 100, it’s midnight, and you’ve had a fantastic day.

Lena Dunham: That’s exactly right. Two of my great-aunts lived to be 103, and I’m begging to have their genes.

If you keep writing for characters your age, eventually there’ll be a funny show about 90-year-olds.

Lena Dunham: My dream is to be in my 80s and writing whatever the equivalent of Golden Girls is. Both of my parents are artists, and they always say, ‘Artists never retire’. Although the film industry is intense on your body, I do feel in general that artists never retire. Elaine May is 94, and she’s still out there writing scripts.

People act like comedy is a young person’s game. But you’re laughing your whole life, and you need people to understand your experiences to create laughter for you. I doubt my grandma, Dot, at 96, was laughing at Girls, but she sure as heck was laughing at that adorable show with Jane Fonda.

Megan Stalter: But of course she’s laughing at Girls. Girls is universally funny.

Lena Dunham: Except for my grandmother.

Megan Stalter: I hope that every decade you write a show that either I can be in, or be obsessed with.

Lena Dunham: Both.

Lena, can you put Megan in the Netflix show you’re writing about young spies?

Lena Dunham: I’d love for Meg to play a villain. It’s funny because I’ve been working on something with college-age kids, and I’m like, ‘I sound 150’. When I write college students, they’re like, ‘Gee whiz, this is a crazy party.’ I can’t believe how not on my game I am.

Megan Stalter: But you love TikTok.

Lena Dunham: My favourite person on TikTok is Meg. That’s a large reason why I have her.

Megan Stalter: My favourite person is you sending me the videos that you haven’t published.

Lena Dunham: On my ghost TikTok. I make them, download them to my phone, delete them because I’m so paranoid anyone will find them – even though they’re just me making a sassy face with a filter.

I’m obsessed with the therapeutic and psychological terminology that’s now become really mainstream. When I was in my early 20s, we were not using a lot of psychology language. We were using basic terms like, ‘He’s a jerk’ – Lena Dunham

I like the line in episode two where Jessica doesn’t understand why “love bombing” is a bad thing, and needs it explained to her.

Lena Dunham: I had to Google it, too. I was like, ‘Isn’t this just when someone’s a sweetie and brings you flowers?’ I’m obsessed with the therapeutic and psychological terminology that’s now become really mainstream. When I was in my early 20s, we were not using a lot of psychology language. We were using basic terms like, ‘He’s a jerk’.

Megan Stalter: ‘Gaslighter’.

Lena Dunham: Yeah. Now we have ‘gaslighter’, ‘love bomber’, ‘narcissist’. It’s very popular to give a DSM-5 diagnosis to someone just because they hurt your feelings. I think it’s great. The more access people have to conversations about mental health, the better. But I’m awestruck by it. I never thought that I would be having to catch up in that way.

Megan Stalter: Not everyone who’s mean is a gaslighter.

‘Gaslighting’ is quite mainstream. Nowadays you have to read up on the Enneagram Test.

Lena Dunham: I know. I didn’t take the Enneagram Test. I took a different personality test that my brother sent to me. It took 45 minutes to complete. Basically, the result was: ‘You’re a pain in the ass.’ I was like, ‘I’m not keeping this with me.’ I took an IQ test recently, and I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a lot of math.

Megan Stalter: If you judge my IQ based on my math, you’d think I was a third-grader. But if you judged it on other things…

Lena Dunham: I’d think you were a 28th-grader.

Is it daunting or helpful to read young people nowadays dissecting Girls using these terms?

Lena Dunham: I’ll only read things if someone sends them to me, and the only people who send things are friends who secretly want to make me feel bad, or my mom, and she doesn’t mean anything bad by it.

Megan Stalter: Why would a friend ever send anything negative?

Lena Dunham: Sometimes an old friend will send a negative review, and say, ‘This person’s awful.’ I’m like, ‘I would never have seen this if you hadn’t sent it to me.’

Megan Stalter: But you’re aware of the Girls rewatch podcast, and the viral TikToks about Girls this past year?

Lena Dunham: I only find out because some cutie who knows things will send it to me. It’s amazing to me. When we made it, the idea that we would someday be older people, and it would be watched by a younger generation? The thing that’s wild is that Instagram didn’t exist when the Girls pilot was shot. Twitter was new. We were living in a totally different reality. You couldn’t share your phone location with anyone. We had a line at the end of the first season where a character said ‘drop a pin’, and the other person was like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Because dropping a pin was so new. I got an iPhone a month before we shot the Girls pilot. Before that, I had a pink Razr flip phone.

Megan Stalter: It’s so scary how fast technology is.

Lena Dunham: This is what it was like for me to text as the Girls pilot was happening. [mimes slow texting] You had to hit the number three times to get your letter. It’s crazy and thrilling that people who’ve had such a different experience of their 20s, and such a different experience of culture and politics, still connect to the show.

Megan Stalter: It’s so timeless. The show’s sense of humour and everything about it is still so relatable that Gen Z are watching it.

Lena Dunham: My favourite thing is when someone says they like to fall asleep to it, because my biggest compliment is if I feel cosy enough with a show to want to fall asleep to it. Mine are always odd choices, like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Girls was about sex, and this is about love – Megan Stalter

Because of the rhythm of the dialogue?

Lena Dunham: The rhythm of the dialogue. Matthew Perry, may he rest in peace, has a voice that gets me. It’s the rhythm of the way he delivers a joke – immediately I’m sent off to the happiest dreamland. I watch Friends to fall asleep. Sometimes The Mindy Project. It’s certain shows that feel like a safe world.

Did you have that in mind with Too Much? Episode two ends at night-time with that really gentle Cate Le Bon song.

Lena Dunham: I love when there’s a shot that maybe goes longer than you would typically hold on TV. The two characters are just listening to Cate Le Bon and lying on the bed. I liked the idea that you’re staying past where you think it would cut, and you’re getting to see the sweetness and awkwardness of learning to be comfortable next to another person. I remember sitting there with my editor, being like, ‘Can we get away with this?’ But we just extended the shot, and extended the shot. Just before the credits hit, they’re both lying on their backs, and then you see him roll over to her and close his eyes. You see this little smile as she feels it. It’s one of my favourite moments.

Lena, was it the case that you starred in Girls, had that experience, and didn’t need to go through it again? Or, in hindsight, would you have cast someone else in Girls?

Lena Dunham: It was an amazing experience to perform in Girls. That was a moment in history before we had really started embracing the idea of women of different body types, heights, styles. Every star of a TV show, there was a cookie-cutter mould for what they were supposed to be. It was almost a failure of imagination that I didn’t put anyone else in.

I knew from the beginning of this that I was writing a role for Meg. She reminds me of great romantic comedy heroines, whether it’s Judy Holliday, Meg Ryan, or Ms. Julia Roberts – you know, these women who have charm, beauty, but also this relatability. Women who are great with physical comedy, but also have complexity under the surface. I never had anyone else in mind for this part. I had a picture in the deck that we sold; a little photo headshot of Meg. I hadn’t even met her yet. I’ve always said I recognise the difference when I’m working with a true actor, and what I was. I was more a person who could say my own dialogue, and Meg is a true, multi-faceted star.

Megan, you told the New York Times without much explanation: ‘Jessica is the straight version of me.’

Megan Stalter: [laughs] First of all, I am bi. I have dated men. I understand that I’m not Jessica. But there’s a lot of me in her. When I’m seeing her be in love with a man, sometimes I’m like, “I wonder if that’s what I would feel like if I was a fully straight person.”

Lena Dunham: There are times where I look at Jessica, and I go, ‘Girl, open up. You can probably stand to take a walk on the other side of the street for a second.’

Megan Stalter: There’s part of her that comes from me when I thought I was straight.

Is Too Much a version of Girls for Gen Z? I suppose Gen Z are already watching their version of Girls – it’s called Girls.

Lena Dunham: It’s for everybody, the show. It’s for your 80-year-old grandma. It’s probably not for a four-year-old. There are parts that’ll make them uncomfortable, and we should cover their eyes. That being said, what’s been fun is that I’m getting to age along with the audience.

If Girls was for young millennials, then those ageing millennials get to see some version of themselves. I love that Jessica is in the office with a Gen Z kid and doesn’t know half of what he’s fucking talking about. She gets to be like, ‘Now we’re the old people in the office.’ And that’s really fun to capture. Girls represented all this hope and excitement that we had for what our lives would look like, and this is a realistic depiction of some of the ways that hope went wrong. And also some of the ways it went right.

Megan Stalter: I think one of the first times we met, you said – and we can not put it in if you don’t want it in.

Lena Dunham: No, I want it put in.

Megan Stalter: I remember you saying that Girls was about sex, and this is about love. I’ve always kept that in mind.

Lena Dunham: It’s 100 per cent true.

Megan Stalter: Of course, there’s still sex in it.

Lena Dunham: Girls was about figuring out who you were as a sexual human being, and that was more important than finding love. And this is about realising: you’ve done maybe what you needed to do in that department, and started to feel a little bit broken by it. What does it look like to try to find someone who accepts you in all that broken glory?

Too Much is streaming on Netflix from July 10