“It never entered my mind to say, ‘I am your boss, you can’t speak to me this way,’” Dunham said.

Lena Dunham reflects on Adam Driver’s alleged violent behavior on Girls set, thought ‘that’s what great male geniuses do’: Report

"It never entered my mind to say, ‘I am your boss, you can’t speak to me this way,’" Dunham said.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and NME.

EW's editorial guidelines

April 13, 2026 1:57 p.m. ET

Leave a Comment

Adam Driver and Lena Dunham on 'Girls'. Credit:

HBO/Courtesy Everett Collection

Lena Dunham is sharing why she never confronted Adam Driver over his alleged violent behavior on the set of *Girls*.

The actress and series creator, 39, opens up about her intense experience working with Driver, 42, on the Emmy-winning dramedy in her upcoming memoir, *Famesick*. In the book, she claims that Driver once screamed in her face, chucked a chair at a wall that was next to her, and punched a hole in his trailer wall, *The Guardian** *reports.

Dunham, who was 25 when the series premiered in 2012, explained in an interview with the outlet that she didn’t feel prepared to address Driver’s behavior on set during the show’s six-season run.

Ali Paige Goldstein / HBO / Courtesy: Everett Collection

“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,’” she said. “And, at that point in my 20s, 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.”

While Dunham noted that she’s fortunate to have “lots of amazing men in my life,” she admitted that her experience working with Driver made her hesitant to incorporate male roles in her future projects.

“Judd [Apatow] is a great hero of mine; Tim Bevan at Working Title is a huge part of my life and so is cinematographer Sam Levy,” she said. “I just worked with Mark Ruffalo, the most thoughtful, sensitive, politically engaged, beautiful person. There’s plenty of them walking around.”

Jason Mendez/Getty

Lena Dunham was surprised by fan response to Adam Driver’s 'Girls' character

Lena Dunham is open to a 'Girls' spinoff about Shoshanna

Dunham continued, “But there were years when I thought: Can’t I just make things that only have women in them?”

Representatives for Driver did not immediately respond to **’s request for comment.

Dunham and Driver starred as Hannah and Adam — a toxic twenty-something couple that continuously broke up and made up — on *Girls*. The award-winning HBO series, which aired from 2012 until 2017, also starred Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, and Zosia Mamet.

***Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our ******EW Dispatch newsletter******.***

During a recent conversation with* **The New York Times*, Dunham revealed that she never intended Driver’s character to be seen as a perfect boyfriend and was shocked when viewers began to fall for him.

"I didn’t write Adam’s character to be a romantic hero," she said. "By the end, everyone was like: I want a boyfriend like that! I want a boyfriend who throws two-by-fours and spanks me.'"

Bruce Glikas/WireImage

She clarified, "That is not what I was going for."

*Famesick* hits bookshelves on April 14.

- Celebrities & Creators

- Celebrity Feuds & Controversies

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Celebrity”