Lena Dunham’s New Netflix Present Is Not ‘Girls’ — However It Is Drawn From Her Actual Life – The Boston Courier

13 years after “Girls” put her on the Hollywood map, Lena Dunham is again with a brand new tv collection, “Too Much,” that’s as soon as once more impressed by her real-life experiences. This time, the eight-time Emmy nominee teamed up with British musician Luis Felber, her husband of practically 4 years, to create what she describes as a traditional “wherever you go, there you are” love story.

The ten-episode collection, which premieres on Netflix Thursday, follows Jessica Salmon (performed by “Hacks” actor and comic Megan Stalter), a New Yorker who strikes to London after a painful breakup together with her boyfriend of seven years, Zev (Michael Zegen).

Not lengthy after her arrival within the British capital, Jessica begins a relationship with a neighborhood punk musician, Felix (Will Sharpe of “The White Lotus” fame). By all accounts, Felix is dreamy, attentive and charming. Nonetheless, Jessica finds herself pushed to the brink of self-sabotage by the Instagram posts of Zev’s new fiancée, Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski), who occurs to be a social media influencer.

Although Dunham labored carefully with Ratajkowski to make sure Wendy can be a totally fleshed-out character, she was adamant the principal antagonist for many of the present’s first season can be Jessica’s thought of Wendy as considered via the filters of social media moderately than Wendy herself.

“So many of us have done the classic compare-and-despair. It was always something we did, but social media has made it so much easier,” Dunham instructed HuffPost in an interview. “Women in our culture … we want to support each other, but then there’s also all of this comparison that causes you to villainize someone or think their reality is somehow easier than yours.”

“Jessica’s dismissive of Wendy’s career as an influencer,” she added. “She’s dismissive of Wendy’s beauty because of stereotypes about what a conventionally attractive woman might be experiencing in her inner life. But at the end of the day, she finds that Wendy is someone she can relate to much more deeply than she could have imagined.”

A lot of the early buzz on “Too Much” has emphasised Dunham’s determination to not forged herself because the lead character; she does, nonetheless, have a supporting position as Jessica’s older sister, Nora. However earlier than belong, Stalter got here to view Jessica as “a version of me and Lena together, with her own thing going on.”

“I clicked with [Lena] immediately, and I just was obsessed with wanting to be around her,” she quipped. “When you spend a lot of time hanging out with someone, you start to say stuff the way they say it and have little catchphrases, so I feel like the character is [both of] us together. It’s such a beautiful, funny, serious and realistic love story.”

Sharpe echoed these sentiments, noting that “Too Much” gave him a uncommon alternative to showcase his musical chops on-screen.

“We had a few days of rehearsal, which was when we first met in London and read the scenes, but we didn’t kind of overcook it before we started filming,” he recalled. “That meant that as the characters are sort of getting to know each other in the series, we were also doing the same thing.”

He went on to notice: “All of these characters are so brilliantly drawn. They all have layers to unpack, and one of the most enjoyable and rewarding things about being a part of this series, I think, was going on that journey.”

It’s straightforward to search out parallels to Dunham’s off-screen life in “Too Much.” She relocated to London ― the place she and Felber nonetheless reside ― in 2019, and was shortly taken by the concept of writing a romantic comedy with an expat character at its middle.

Felber, she stated, introduced his skills as a musician to the collection’ soundtrack and helped be sure that the present’s British-isms have been correct. He additionally helped flesh out Felix and different male characters on the present.

“I’d always been writing male characters sort of in this bubble, and while I was really trying to tackle them, I think there are aspects of masculinity ― a concept we’re talking about a lot culturally right now ― that having [Luis’] perspective was really valuable on,” Dunham defined. “He helped turn the character of Felix from someone who could have just been sort of a knight in shining armor coming to rescue a female character into someone who had his own traumas and challenges.”

Watch the trailer for “Too Much” under.