‘Girls’ will keep breaking taboos to the very end,
HBO comedy keeps breaking taboos as it enters its last season
Spoiler alert: We know exactly how Girls is going to end.
“We all die,” jokes Lena Dunham, who plays Hannah. “You’re fine to reveal it.”
“It was murder-suicide,” quips Zosia Mamet (who plays Shoshanna), as co-stars Jemima Kirke (Jessa) and Allison Williams (Marnie) riff on their characters’ hypothetical deaths.
Sure, an early grave is entirely in jest. But however HBO’s Girls (Sunday, 10 ET/PT) wraps its sixth and final season, it’s sure to be as audacious and polarizing as we’ve come to expect from Dunham’s landmark comedy, co-created with Jenni Konner with Judd Apatow as an executive producer.
Dunham and Co. sat down with USA TODAY to talk about saying goodbye to the flailing twentysomething New Yorkers and their hopes for the show’s lasting impact.
ON THEIR FIRST SCREEN TESTS:
DUNHAM: I remember Allison was wearing a Banana Republic dress. It had a safari element with pockets, it was like a khaki dress.
WILLIAMS: I know exactly what you’re talking about, I labored over that choice. It wasn’t Banana Republic, it was …
DUNHAM: It wasn’t not Banana Republic. I remember it was really specific and Jemima afterwards was like, “Is that a costume or is that like, her dress?” She had never seen a person dress like that in her entire life. Jemima literally just had a baby and was wearing tights and a giant T-shirt, and you were like, “I don’t want this job.” Which you kind of didn’t, because you showed up basically with breast milk on you. And I was like, “I know you just had a baby, but you could take it a notch up?”
KIRKE: I’m so sorry.
ON HOW THEIR CHARACTERS HAVE EVOLVED:
KIRKE: Some of the things that I’ve been going through I’ve brought to Jessa, and I don’t know where one ends and one begins. I’ve learned a lot about myself through studying her.
DUNHAM: Also, I know you really well, and usually know what you’re going through. We’re usually feedbacking off of each other, and it’s become that way for all of us. I think Zosia has started off and remained the furthest away from her character than any of us. But even some of the ways that Shoshanna is obsessed with detail and making sure things are in order, I feel like that came from you. That wasn’t all in there.
MAMET: Yeah, Lena and Jenni were so aware of what our strengths were, playing our specific characters, and started writing toward that.
DUNHAM: And I think Shoshanna started to become more sarcastic. At first, she had no sense of irony and no sarcasm, and then we started to realize that it was really funny in real life when you were deadpan.
WILLIAMS: It was like when a deer stands up after being born, watching Shosh learn how to be sarcastic.
ON AWARDS SNUBS:
WILLIAMS: I remember when Girls won the Emmy for casting, Judd was like, “That’s what happened to Freaks and Geeks, so now we’re going to get canceled after a year.” He’s a superstitious dude.
DUNHAM: People love to be like, “Emmy Award winner Lena Dunham,” and I’m actually like, “That’s not true. I am a Golden Globe winner and an eight-time nominee non-winner.”
WILLIAMS: Hopefully we’re leaning hard on some nostalgia awards going into this next year.
DUNHAM: Honestly, the only reason I want to win is so we can get up and be like, “Protect women.” I think it’d be fun getting up if it was our last year and being like, “Burn down the patriarchy!” And then just running offstage.
MAMET: If we win, we should have Meryl Streep go up and accept our award.
We should just write something on our boobs.
ON THE SHOW’S LEGACY:
KIRKE: It will be great when one day, our show will be dated. It’ll be like, “That scene was huge for that time.”
DUNHAM: I think kids will be like, “That’s so lame that Marnie was worried about cheating on her boyfriend, because monogamy hasn’t existed for 47 years.” Or the idea that one of them is like, “I think I might try kissing a girl.” They’re going to be like, “We don’t have genders, we’re sexually fluid and we denounced the patriarchy so long ago.”
WILLIAMS: Or if it goes the other way, it could have been the last very liberal, open show ever.