Lena Dunham Says Hannah From Girls Is a ‘Bad Writer’

Mike Coppola/Getty Images

Everyone tends to assume that Lena Dunham modeled Hannah from Girls off herself (which would not be the most flattering self-portrait). But Dunham actually says no. For starters, Hannah is not actually that good of a writer. In fact, according to Dunham in a July 9 interview with The New Yorker, Hannah is a “bad writer.”

“For so long, people were, like, ‘You are Hannah. Hannah is you.’ They had no sense that there was any level of satire in it. I swear, even my friends started to get confused,” Dunham told the magazine. “She’s not dumb, but she’s dumb. You know? She’s a blogger. She’s just exactly mediocre. She’s mediocre at sex. She’s mediocre at friendships.”

Dunham made the comments when discussing the show’s resurgence among Gen Z with the magazine. Obviously, Hannah the character never saw herself as mediocre, but Dunham says that was the joke. “The funniest characters in the world see themselves in totally different ways from how the world sees them,” Dunham explained, going on to describe the four main characters in Girls as “delusional.”

“The other thing I always say to people is, ‘Do you think Hannah could have made a show?’ Hannah can’t even shop for groceries. No one ever got that the ‘voice of a generation’ line was a joke.”

After Girls ended in 2017, Lena Dunham told Nylon, “I wouldn’t do another show that starred four white girls.” But, she continued, “That being said, when I wrote the pilot I was 23. Each character was an extension of me. I thought I was doing the right thing. I was not trying to write the experience of somebody I didn’t know, and not trying to stick a black girl in without understanding the nuance of what her experience of hipster Brooklyn was.”

Originally Appeared on Glamour