In a scene from the first season of HBO’s acclaimed series Girls, Hannah Horvath, played by the show’s creator and writer Lena Dunham, meets up with an old college boyfriend at a bar to catch up and pique his interest in the possibility of reigniting their relationship. Instead of accepting her proposal, her ex announces that he’s now gay, and a horrified Hannah blames him for giving her a sexually transmitted disease.
At the New Yorker Festival 2012 last weekend, Dunham joined the magazine’s TV critic Emily Nussbaum to explain how she incorporates real people and situations from her life into her HBO show, and the surprising reactions she receives from people in her past. “You would not believe how many guys think that my characters are based on them,” she says.
Inspiration for Dunham’s ‘Girls’: Real-Life Bad Dates from The New Yorker on FORA.tv
