Lena Dunham memoir details ‘Girls’ star Adam Driver throwing chair, screaming at her
NEW YORK — Lena Dunham said she struggled to work with “genius” Adam Driver on “Girls” when the hulking former Marine got upset.
Driver, who stands around 6 feet and 3 inches, played Dunham’s love interest in six seasons of her popular HBO show. In an excerpt from her memoir “Famesick” obtained by The Guardian, the 39-year-old Brooklyn writer and actor recalls Driver hurling a chair in her direction, punching a hole in his trailer wall and shouting at her.
“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.
Dunham was 23 years old when she sold “Girls” to HBO and 25 when production began.
“At that point in my 20s, I still thought that’s what great male geniuses do: eviscerate you,” she told the Guardian. “Which is weird, because I was raised by a male genius who would never do that.”
Her father is painter Carroll Dunham, whose work hangs in many of the world’s most esteemed museums. She reportedly praises him in her memoir for bringing her coffee in the morning when she’s feeling down and fondly recalls her dad taking her to doctors’ appointments.
Dunham also said she has a lot of male friends and has worked with men on projects that went smoothly.
“But there were years when I thought, ‘Can’t I just make things that only have women in them?'” she confessed.
Dunham now lives in London with her husband, musician Luis Felber, whom she married in 2021.
Driver is known for his intense performances. The 42-year-old Academy Award nominee’s representative couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
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NEW YORK — Billy Crystal will return to Broadway this fall in a very intimate one-man show that will take the audience into his family's longtime Los Angeles home that was leveled in wildfires.
“860,” written and performed by the Tony- and Emmy-winner, will begin previews this October at a theater to be revealed later. The title comes from the street address for the home Crystal and his family lived in for 46 years, a house lost in last year’s devastating Palisades fires.
“I invite you to come inside 860 and I’ll tell you all the funny and touching things that happened there, not only in my career but to our family,” Crystal said in a statement. “It’s a joyous and heartfelt visit, about how with the love of family and friends and your inner strength, you can get through tough times.”
This is Crystal’s first return to Broadway following his “Mr. Saturday Night,” which he premiered in 2022 and earned Tony nominations for best book and lead actor in a musical. Scott Ellis will direct his new work.
Crystal has had success with one-man shows before. He turned his memoir “700 Sundays” into a stage show — in 2004 and revived in 2013 — that won him a Drama Desk Award in 2005.
The Palisades and Eaton fires erupted starting Jan. 7 2025, killing 31 people and destroying about 13,000 homes and other residential properties. The fires burned for more than three weeks and cleanup efforts took about seven months.
At the televised fundraising concert FireAid, held at the end of January 2025, Crystal appeared as the first host in the same clothes he was wearing when he fled his family home.
Crystal said he returned to the wreckage of his home and began to wail: “I had not cried like that since I was 15 and I was told that my father had just died.” His daughters soon found a rock in the wreckage with the word “Laughter” engraved in it.
Crystal made a name for himself first in comedy, from stand-up to TV’s “Soap” to the films “When Harry Met Sally” and “City Slickers.” Then in 1992, he got serious with the movie “Mr. Saturday Night,” which he directed, co-wrote and starred in.
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NEW YORK — Hoda Kotb reunited with Savannah Guthrie Monday on the “TODAY” show desk, for the first time since the former’s departure from the NBC morning show over a year ago, as she fills in for anchor Craig Melvin, whose absence has caught the eye of viewers.
Kotb left the show in January 2025 to prioritize her young family. However, the 61-year-old veteran broadcaster was a frequent fixture for the several weeks she filled in for Guthrie, 54, amid the investigation into her mother Nancy’s disappearance.
“I’m so glad to have you here, Hoda,” said Guthrie Monday morning, just a week after her own return to the show, from which she’d been absent all of February and March.
“I’m so happy sitting next to you in this chair again,” said Kotb.
The former co-workers appeared to have coordinated their outfits, with Guthrie wearing blue and Kotb donning periwinkle.
Guthrie reminded viewers that the absence of Melvin, 46, needn’t cause alarm; he’s merely “on a well-deserved vacation with his family this week, probably watching the Masters.”
Upon Guthrie’s return last week, Melvin referred to her as the show’s “North Star.”
Just before Guthrie resumed hosting, she and Kotb reunited during an emotional “Today” show interview centered on the search for 84-year-old Nancy, its impact on the family, and how they’d forge ahead.
The matriarch, who has her mental faculties but suffers from limited mobility and a heart condition, was snatched from her Tucson, Ariz., home in the early morning hours of Feb. 1.
At the time of publication, multiple rewards — including $100,000 from the FBI and $1 million from the Guthrie family — have been offered in exchange for information leading to the discovery of Nancy or the conviction of those involved in her apparent abduction.
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From combined wire services
