Lena Dunham on blurring fact and fiction in her new romcom

Lena Dunham has found great success by mining her own experiences for comedy – but not everyone is happy about it.

‘My mother would like me to stop,’ the Girls creator admitted last night. ‘She would be really grateful if I would make, like, a movie about important women in history….’

Instead, she has made the upcoming Netflix romantic comedy Too Much, loosely based – again – on her own life. This time about how she moved from New York to London where she met and subsequently married musician Luis Felber. The pair went on to create this series together.

Speaking of how she draws on her life, Dunham said: ‘There's always a grain of something you connect to and that feels close to you. You do it in your comedy and then you expand upon it. There was that grain of me coming here [to the UK], being like "no one knows what I'm talking about… help me Lord!" and then obviously meeting Lu and that dynamic was inspiring.’

Megan Stalter stars in the ten-part series as Jessica, the character based on Dunham, with The White Lotus star Will Sharpe as her love interest Felix (both below with Dunham).

But speaking at a preview screening of the show hosted by Katherine Ryan, Dunham admitted that even she gets confused where fiction starts and her true life ends: ‘I feel I know we didn't meet in a bathroom [like the characters in the show],’ she said. ‘But this is making me feel like we did meet in a bathroom and it's really disorienting.’

Dunham’s mum also struggled to make the distinction. ‘I kept sending pictures of Meg off the monitor, and my Mum would be like, "That's a gorgeous photo of you." And I was like, "Literally, you have no idea what I look like". We don't look alike at all.’

Speaking more about the show’s inspiration,  Dunham said: ‘When I first came to UK, I was single, I was in my 30s Most of my friends were having children, they were in relationships. Those were two things that I could not seem to do either biologically or emotionally.

‘I was comparing myself constantly to other people’s milestones and I think in the process of making this show,  in the process of meeting Lu, in the process of coming to a new place where I was defining myself in a new way, I realised that there's a lot of different ways to be an adult so even though the show is about romance it's really about the fact that you can have a family with your friends, you can have a family with your dog, you can have a family with a singer… and all of it is okay.

‘Like for me I like to stay in bed all day and then leave to go make TV shows and movies and then get back in bed with like nine animals and that's all right. I don't have to go to Pilates and have a boyfriend named Josh…’

Too Much is made by Working Title, the production company that was also behind Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill… although Dunham was keen not to follow some of the tropes of transatlantic romance those films so successfully deployed. 

‘We talked a lot amongst us about what it is we love about romantic comedies… and also what we didn’t. For example, we didn’t want Felix to be like the charming, daffy guy who's biggest problem is that his shirt is a little large or something, like that. We wanted him to feel like he had [issues]

‘That's something I love about Bridget Jones. Like Daniel Cleaver's a bad boy. He's a really bad boy… and we thought a lot about "how do we do this again?"’

She also explained that the eight-year gap between Girls ending and Too Much hitting screens was not exactly her plan. ‘I feel very touched that people think I was like "I'm gonna take an eight-year

break" - but it's really just really hard to get TV shows made, honestly,’ she said.

‘But I was so excited that Netflix felt enthusiastic about it and that I could do it with these two… So I'm really happy it turned out that way.’

The two stars also spoke about the dynamic they had on set defined by Stalter spreading ridiculous lies for her own amusement. 

Of their first meeting, she said: ‘I was a little bit nervous because I was hoping that you would like that I'm weird and do little jokes where I'm telling everyone that you're mean and stuff. And I didn't

know at first. Then as soon as I tried out the first joke, I knew you'd like it, because you were laughing.

Sharpe recalls: ‘I feel like the first time we met, maybe you're a bit jet-lagged. We were running scenes. It was all very cosy. It was nice, very easy’ – until she started making jokes.

‘I feel like the jokes came in hair and make-up.  I do remember you saying you your ambition was to become the sexual centre of Hacks [in which she plays clueless Hollywood assistant Kayla]

Stalter said: ‘I did that to make you all laugh, but I was jet lagged, so I don't think it landed.’ Though Dunham assured her it did. 

Turning to Stalter, Sharpe explained that ‘one of the dynamics was that you'd pretend I'd done mean things –  which was funny except for when it was in front of extras, who’d never met us So I'd

be like, "they don't know that that's not true!"

Stalter said: ‘They would be uncomfortable because I'd be like, "Will was so mean to me today,

screaming at me, telling me that I should go blonde, it would be better for my career.

You should get filler…."

She also told fellow actors that Will put her food on the ground and eat it like an animal, saying: "This must be how you usually do it, pig."’

Sharpe  did admit he couldn’t always ‘keep up’ with the women’s energy, telling them:’  You guys are both so full of life and I just have this energy like "okay dudes…"

Stalter insisted: ‘You're full of life too, Will, come on.

To which he replied: ‘Yeah but in a much beige-er way, I would say.

‘You're so not beige, you just like the guys at Working Title, you keep your

freakiness a little closer to the vest,’ Dunham added.

Too Much – which also stars Emily Ratajkowski, Richard E. Grant, Adwoa Aboah, Leo Reich. Rhea Perlman, Stephen Fry and  Andrew Scott – lands on Netflix on July 10.

Published: 25 Jun 2025