Lena Dunham has been busy plugging her forthcoming Netflix series Too Much, arriving on the streamer July 10.
While chatting up the show this week, she addressed the ‘merciless’ body shamers in Hollywood.
The 39-year-old writer/actress told Variety, ‘I have been in Hollywood at every size. I have been a sample size, I have had my body change because of life, illness, aging, menopause. And it is merciless wherever you are.’
A sample size in the US is a size two.
In regards to her Too Much cast — who appear in sex scenes in the show — the New York City native said she feels protective over how they might be scrutinized after the show premieres.
She declared, ‘If anybody has anything to say about any of my actors — I keep my mouth shut on most things these days but try a b****. I’m not playing around here. It’s the only time that I’m going to be taking my hoops out, ready to fight.’
Lena Dunham addressed the ‘merciless’ body shamers in Hollywood in a new interview with Variety
While chatting up her new show Too Much this week, she addressed the ‘merciless’ criticism of her figure
Megan Stalter and Will Sharpe are the main characters in the romance-themed program.
Models-turned-actresses Adwoa Aboah and Emily Ratajkowski also have roles in the project.
After enduring body shaming while her HBO show Girls aired, Dunham said, ‘I probably wasn’t protective enough of myself.’
When asked if she thinks the success of the show made different body types more acceptable, she answered, ‘I wish I could say yes, but I really don’t. I think we had this moment: Body positivity was here, and then it was gone.’
She clarified, ‘I obviously am not critical of anybody’s choice, whether it’s to use Ozempic — people should be allowed to have whatever body they feel comfortable in.
‘But we cannot pretend that the bodies people want aren’t influenced, and we can’t claim it’s always for health reasons and not for aesthetic reasons.’
And she pointed out that judgement is ‘pretty inevitable.’
‘But just because I’ve become used to it for myself doesn’t mean that I feel comfortable about it for anyone else,’ the entertainer pointed out.
‘I have been in Hollywood at every size. I have been a sample size, I have had my body change because of life, illness, aging, menopause. And it is merciless wherever you are,’ she lamented
Dunham posed wearing a ‘Too Much’ necklace in a nod to her latest show
Dunham pictured at a Too Much screening in the United Kingdom in June
The director created and starred in Girls from 2012 to 2017, frequently baring all in character as Hannah Horvath.
Her straightforward depictions of sex gave way to controversy, with discourse framed around Lena and her body shape.
Speaking to The Sunday Times STYLE in June, Lena said: ‘I expected that people would have a response to the kind of sex the show was depicting or the level of nudity, but the idea that my body, the shape of my body, would become such a hotbed for discussion? It was insane.
‘I can’t say I was never rocked, but I’m lucky enough that my thing has never been looking at a picture of myself and picking myself apart or feeling tortured about how I looked — it’s just not my area. I have my own stuff I’m tortured about, but it wasn’t that.’
Last year, Lena revealed that her desire to not have her ‘body dissected again’ was the reason she cast Megan to play the lead role in the semi-autobiographical series Too Much.
She told the New Yorker, ‘I was not willing to have another experience like what I’d experienced around [Girls] at this point in my life. Physically, I was just not up for having my body dissected again.’
