Lena-Hillary chat gets lewd
LENA Dunham interviewed Hillary Rodham Clinton for Lena’s abouttolaunch feminist newsletter, “Lenny,” in which the presidential candidate will reportedly open up about twice turning down Bill Clinton’s marriage proposal, campus assault and Lenny Kravitz’s penis.
The interview, which critics have ridiculed as “millennial pandering,” has been teased in videos posted on Funny or Die with a cameo by Amy Schumer. In one clip, Clinton jokes to Dunham that she thought the chat was going to be with Lenny Kravitz — the newsletter is called “Lenny,” get it? Dunham replies, “Did you see the footage where his pants split? His stuff fell out of his pants.” Clinton then asks, “Do you think I could get that on YouTube?”
Discussing the interview on Thursday at AOL Build, Dunham said, “I was ready for more formality. Beforehand, we were so nervous, they were like, ‘OK, when she gets here you can go to the stairs and walk Madame Secretary to her chair.’ And she came down and she was like, ‘What’s up, girls?’ We fully got a hug.”
Lena added, “By the end, she was like, ‘You’ll have to give me the name of your ear, nose and throat doctor.’ I was like, ‘How would I ever get in touch with you? You didn’t give me any of your information.’ ” (Perhaps Hillary has given up on email at this point.)
Dunham also called Clinton “charming” but, “You could also see that presidential side.” When she asked Hillary about Bernie Sanders, “Suddenly, it’s laser focus,” Lena said, “and she’s ready to give you a presidential answer and then ... veer back into talking about her Donna Karan dress from 1993.” The “Girls” star added, “We don’t want to tell people how to vote . . . but we did want to make it clear that, to us, Hillary Clinton is a really powerful feminist figure.”
But a young female Daily Beast pundit wrote of the interview, “Say what you will about Generation Y, but we know a publicity stunt when we see one, and two selfcongratulatory white ladies praising each other’s career accomplishments won’t inspire us come Election Day.”