On Wild Card, well-known guests answer the kinds of questions we often think about but don’t talk about. Lena Dunham talks about the advice from childhood that sticks with her.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Each week, a guest draws a card from NPR’s Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. Lena Dunham became famous after creating and starring in the HBO show “Girls.” She tells Wild Card host Rachel Martin she has been figuring out how to juggle stardom and chronic illness ever since. She writes about it in her new memoir called “Famesick.”
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LENA DUNHAM: It’s really about that decade between – it’s really about – what do we call 2010 to 2020? Was it the – it’s not the aughts. It’s the…
RACHEL MARTIN: What do we call that?
DUNHAM: I don’t know.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
DUNHAM: A nightmare? Do we call it a nightmare, Rachel?
MARTIN: I think…
DUNHAM: Do we call it my…
MARTIN: …That’s the official term.
DUNHAM: …Personal hell?
MARTIN: (Laughter).
DUNHAM: No. It’s about those years, which did have a lot of magic in them. And there was also some really challenging stuff that had become pretty normalized for me.
DETROW: Dunham spoke with Rachel Martin about her life before “Girls.”
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MARTIN: What’s something someone told you that changed your trajectory?
DUNHAM: What is something that someone told me? When I was – I don’t know – probably in, like, fifth grade or something, I had agreed – not agreed to – I had wanted to go to this very specific drama camp that was for musical theater. I think it was called Applause. I think it was called Applause.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
DUNHAM: And I was very excited about it, and I couldn’t stop talking about how I was going to go to Applause. And we were going to perform “Joseph And The Technicolor Dreamcoat” (ph) and whatever. And, like, the kids were, like, little musical theater sharks, which is…
MARTIN: (Laughter).
DUNHAM: …Like, that very classic depiction of musical theater kids who would truly throw one another in front of a moving bus if it meant sort of getting out – making it out…
MARTIN: Yeah.
DUNHAM: …From understudy, or whatever. And I got home, and I was like, Mom, I really don’t like Applause, but I can’t be a quitter.
MARTIN: Yeah.
DUNHAM: And my mom went, why can’t you be a quitter? What’s wrong with quitting things? Quitting – I think she actually said, quitting is fun. I love quitting.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
DUNHAM: And my mom is someone who is extremely ambitious…
MARTIN: Yeah.
DUNHAM: …And dogged. But also, if she’s not feeling it…
MARTIN: Yeah.
DUNHAM: …She’s not feeling it.
MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah.
DUNHAM: And I think that there’s this sort of idea that following through despite everything is a value. It’s a value in relationships. It’s a value in work. And there’s plenty – the thing I think she was really trying to say is there’s so much in life you can’t quit. You know what I mean?
MARTIN: Yeah.
DUNHAM: Like, you can’t quit your family. You can’t quit your body.
MARTIN: Right.
DUNHAM: You can’t quit your brain. And so if there’s something, like…
MARTIN: You have agency…
DUNHAM: She’s always…
MARTIN: …Over it. Yeah.
DUNHAM: If you have agency over – have agency over it.
MARTIN: Yeah.
DUNHAM: And in my adulthood, it has often come back into my brain. Quitting is fun. And last week, my brother texted me about quitting something, and he went, I love quitting, just like mom. And I was like, yeah.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
DUNHAM: So do I. And there’s lots of stuff that I will never quit, but I did quit Applause. And then I stayed home for, like, two weeks and read, and it was fantastic.
MARTIN: I remember when someone told me I could stop reading a book, and it was so liberating.
DUNHAM: Oh…
MARTIN: You know, when you’re, like, in a book. And you’re like, I don’t – I’m not into this book, but I got to…
DUNHAM: I didn’t know that…
MARTIN: …Keep reading this book.
DUNHAM: …Until I was, like, 20. I didn’t know that you could stop reading a book.
MARTIN: Right.
DUNHAM: And now, I stop reading books all the time.
MARTIN: All the time. It’s so liberating.
DUNHAM: Or I pick them up and read 15 pages of them, and I go, I got what I needed from that.
MARTIN: That’s right. And now we’re done.
DUNHAM: And if I feel compelled to finish it, I will.
DETROW: You can watch the full conversation with Lena Dunham on YouTube at NPR Wild Card. Her new memoir “Famesick” is out now.
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