Goodbye, ‘Girls’: Checking in With Lena Dunham and the Gang One Last Time
Q&A
If these Girls are planning to become grown women, then they’d better step on it. After six seasons, HBO’s zeitgeist comedy about a group of navel-gazing Millennials in New York City is signing off. We asked the quartet—from left, Jemima Kirke (Jessa), series creator Lena Dunham (Hannah), Allison Williams (Marnie) and Zosia Mamet (Shoshanna)—to reflect on the farewell.
How much has your character changed since the premiere?
Williams: Marnie started out feeling like she was almost done growing up—then she was thrown off her axis and has been unraveling ever since. By the end, she’s getting back to the person she was before, but she needed to go on that walkabout.
Kirke: Jessa used to be a parody of the free spirit—you could sum her up in one sentence. As time has gone on, she’s been realizing how little of what she’d decided about herself was actually true.
Mamet: Shoshanna has been incredibly obsessed with doing life right and was a little bit of a doormat at first. She’s been embracing her power.
Dunham: Hannah’s always refused to bend to the will of others, but she genuinely wants the people around her to be happy. Her journey has been learning how to unify those two parts.
There’s already reunion talk. Will it happen?
Dunham: I really want to make a movie, but I want to leave some time. The Sex and the City movies are a delight, but they picked up pretty close to where they left off. I want to come back and one of us could be morbidly obese!
What did it feel like to shoot your last scene?
Kirke: Sort of like when you’re moving—you’re about to leave the house, and all of the sounds are different because there’s nothing in there anymore. It’s not sad so much as nostalgic, and just for a moment you look around and give [the moment] the credit it deserves.
Girls, Series Finale, Sunday, April 16, 10/9c, HBO
