Voice of the Girls generation Lena Dunham has launched a podcast. Her purpose? “To celebrate the women who blow my mind.” She will get to life, death, work and all that in future episodes of Women of the Hour with Lena Dunham, but first there’s friendship. It’s a theme that lends itself to a whole load of overthinking and oversharing.
As is her trademark, Dunham lays herself bare as she and Ashley Ford, who she met on Twitter “in the midst of yet another feminist firestorm”, recite love letters to each other. If you like the idea of listening to a verbose examination of what friendship means to Dunham, step right up. She talks about being vulnerable, being present and reaching out. “I mean, just to be totally honest, and I feel like I can be with you, I didn’t want you to feel like I was reaching out to you, demanding some kind of education, to be like, ‘Hey, you wrote books about intersectionality, so can you really quickly explain to me how to be an intersectional feminist so the internet won’t be mad at me any more’,” she says to Ford, without pausing for breath.
It’s warm, if a little unedited and over the top. “My biggest vice is procrastination, with a side of napping, and my phobia is stairs,” reveals Dunham, in a sentence that will appeal to existing fans but have no-nonsense types clicking the stop button.
Guests such as Amy Sedaris and Todd Oldham bring a welcome burst of irreverent humour. Sedaris claims her friendship with the designer is based on the fact that he brings her gifts. “I’d lay on the couch and he would do something for me,” she says. True friendship.
Celebrity contributors Emma Stone and June Squibb (“a woman in her 80s who ain’t taking no bull”) become agony aunts, glossing over people’s problems, from dealing with the friend who keeps cancelling to how to tell someone they are to blame for their failed relationships.
A bonus episode with Dunham’s Girls co-star Jemima Kirke is more spiky as they leave behind cosy territory to discuss their experiences of selfishness, fights and that moment when your best mate gets her own TV show. It’s Girls in podcast form, and one for the fans.
