Lena Dunham Dares To Step Back Into Spotlight, Releases a New HBO Comedy
After sparking controversy just four years ago in her memoir, Lena Dunham is returning to television, co-writing a new HBO comedy series called “Camping.”
The eight-episode series is based on a British series of the same name by Julia Davis, Entertainment Weekly reported.
Jennifer Garner has even been tapped to play the main role in the series.
The project is going to be produced by Jenni Konner who also worked with Dunham on the show “Girls.”
The writer and producing pair called Garner’s role, “messy, tough and provocative and really really fun.”
“We love Jennifer’s restraint and comedic timing, and we can’t wait for the warmth and intelligence she’ll bring to our central character, Kathryn,” Dunham and Garner said. “It’s truly a dream to have her first on our call sheet. Now we just have to write her some stunts.”
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, the controversy surrounding passages in Dunham’s memoir “Not That Kind of Girl” seems to have been forgotten.
Feminists and those on the right side of the political spectrum highlighted Dunham’s descriptions in her book that show her sexually abusing her younger sister, The Guardian reported.
In the memoir, she admits to bribing her sister with sweets or coins to “kiss her on the lips for five seconds.”
“Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was trying,” Dunham wrote.
The most controversial passage critics highlighted was a description of Dunham opening her sister’s vagina while they were playing in the driveway when they were kids because “curiosity got the best” of her.
“My mother didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina,” she wrote. “This was within the spectrum of things that I did.”
Dunham said that she was “dismayed” by people’s interpretations of her childhood recollections.
“If the situations described in my book have been painful or triggering for people to read, I am sorry, as that was never my intention,” she wrote in Time. “I am also aware that the comic use of the term ‘sexual predator’ was insensitive, and I’m sorry for that as well.”
Guerrilla Feminism’s Lachrista Greco responded to these passages in a Facebook post: “Do I think what Lena Dunham did to her sister was sexual assault? Yes. And to those who have defended her heinous actions, YOUR voice is silencing to many commenters who openly discussed their own experiences of incest, sexual assault, etc. … It’s NOT NORMAL. It’s NOT OKAY,” according to USA Today.
After the controversy came out, the premiere of the new season of “Girls” fell by 39 percent from the previous season, the Truth Revolt reported.
“I don’t care what conservative white men think about me,” Dunham responded on Bill Simmons’ podcast in 2015. “But I do care if anything I write is painful for survivors of sexual abuse, if anything I write is painful for other feminists.”
With her new HBO show coming out and stars signing on, it seems as though people from all sides have forgotten what Dunham had admitted to.
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