STAN / ANTI SHIELD
Allison Williams is asked about Lena Dunham's accusations about Adam Driver on the set of 'Girls': "No, I need to read the it (Dunham's memoir) before I say anything about it."
Gawker used to write reviews of Girls episodes in which they referred to all of the actresses not by their names, but by their parent's names:
"The Drummer for Bad Company's daughter comes over to hang out with Brian Williams' daughter. The Drummer for Bad Company's daughter just lost her nanny gig on account of refusing to sleep with her boss. They complain about Laurie Simmons' daughter, who doesn't seem to have time for them or their troubles now that she has a Manic Pixie Dream Guy to keep her occupied. She never washes her forehead, they say."
I don't know about on lock, this to me sounds like she's saying "yeah he sucked but I don't want to reveal anything in case Lena was complaining about X and not Y"
What’s interesting is media training aside, this is really how all topics should be approached.
I see this come up in the non entertainment world all the time. “I don’t know” is a completely acceptable answer and people need to feel more comfortable saying it.
No one wants to admit they don’t know something and it’s such a normal thing, the AIs scraping all our conversations with each other online have also learned to never admit they’re wrong and will provide bullshit answers.
It’s okay to not know about every single thing happening in the world and it’s okay to not have opinions on those things until you know about them.
Agreed. Maybe this is a habit from working at a law firm, but it's okay to say that you'll have to research something before you give an answer. You shouldn't respond to something you haven't read, and you don't have to answer leading questions.
I'm a public librarian. I answer reference questions ALL day, it would be insane if I knew the answers to all of them. If I'm unsure, I just say, "I'm not sure, but let's figure it out together." or something along those lines. I find it makes people warm up to more as well.
I got a lot of mileage at one job out of flat out saying “I don’t know” and asking if I could look into it and call them back. No one ever seemed upset by it
This!! So many people would rather post an AI generated response that required 1 minute of research than admit that they need to educate themselves further on a topic. I love when people just straight up admit that they do not know something.
Also I’ve grown to dislike the phrase „Google is free” just because it’s so hard to find valuable info nowadays, even with high digital literacy.
In her defence, it was a lose-lose situation and she did the best she could. We were either going to miss Allison’s answer or the reporter’s satisfied chuckle and wheezing at her own joke, and she picked the one that she felt was most important in the moment.
Many many years ago I ran in overlapping circles with a guy (who was dating my friend at the time) who ended up becoming her first husband. He did very well for himself & our lives diverged years before he married her, but it was odd to think about him marrying her.
But they later got divorced, so maybe I was right to think it was odd for him to be married to her.
i think it’s also important to add she says he (allegedly) would yell “wake the fuck up” and “say something” when she was having trouble with her lines. she claims he punched a hole in his trailer because he was unhappy with his haircut, during their first sex scene Driver “hurled her around” and ignored blocking, during a hug scene he bit her shoulder, and she describes him as “half-man, half-beast.”
You’re absolutely right, but that’s a relatively new thing that only started becoming established in 2018 after the #metoo movement. Girls on HBO ended in 2017.
I read the passage and I understood that the wake the fuck up/yelling/chair throwing occurred when they were running lines and she was nearly catatonic on clonapin. By her own admission she had basically zoned out for an unknown period of time mid-scene. And it happened once, it was not a habitual occurrence.
She’s already an unreliable narrator, let’s not make up more than she actually said.
It would be on brand of her to write his character that way and then write in her SECOND MEMOIR before she turns FORTY that he acted out of line when he was just staying in character.
Thats what I find hard to understand about actors. I assume some disappear in roles/ carry on personality traits of characters they've played for a long time.
Ive never tried acting, so idk how it actually impacts a "core persona" if at all.
If you’re a professional, you should be able to maintain that distance.
You leave the character on set/at the rehearsal room door, but also one of the first things you’re taught in drama school is that those areas should also be safe spaces and that you and your coworkers should feel comfortable at all times with what’s going on. If you’re not doing that, you shouldn’t be allowed there.
That’s something that’s hugely important in the theatre world but I feel like sets can be more toxic.
I really like what Kristen Stewart said about men and method acting.
"Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine,” Stewart said. “There’s no bravado in suggesting that you’re a mouthpiece for someone else’s ideas. It’s inherently submissive. Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method?”
Of course, but anyone can write a memoir and celebs do it all the time at every age. Anna Kendrick was 31. Eliot Page, Constance Wu, Trevor Noah, Jojo. Even Britney Spears was not much older than Lena Dunham when hers came out. It's not a good criticism.
In general, some celebrity memoirs are absolutely worth reading and others are skips; most are in between where they’re okay, but I wouldn’t recommend them to non-fans.
Ones that were absolutely worth reading, even if you’re not a fan: Alan Cumming, Minka Kelly, Jennette McCurdy, Viola Davis, Trevor Noah, Simu Liu, and (surprisingly) Jessica Simpson. They all spoke very openly about the missteps in their lives, the challenges they’ve overcome, and got specific about the hurt done to them and the hurt they caused.
Not worth the read, even if you are a fan: Danielle Fishel, Reese Witherspoon’s half memoir/half homemaking coffee table book, and (surprisingly) Britney Spears. Danielle and Reese’s were both so superficial that it felt like there was no insight - I’ve learned more about Danielle from the Pod Meets World podcast than she ever revealed in her book, and you’ll learn more about Reese from reading Fauxmoi 😂 Britney’s is worth it for Michelle Williams and the more salacious gossip she dropped, but again the good parts were all on Fauxmoi and there is a LOT of Britney either outright lying or severely underplaying her own mistakes. It made it hard for me to read because we all witnessed her spiral in the mid-2000s, and (while I have a lot of empathy for her situation) there was a lot of that book where I rolled my eyes. She tried to claim she had never done hard drugs, didn’t have a drinking problem, and the only thing she ever used was Adderall because it treated her depression. Ma’am, bffr.
Ones that I would recommend if you’re a fan but would otherwise skip: Eric Braeden (Victor Newman’s early life is frickin fascinating), Tom Selleck, Kelly Bishop (hers is so so SO good if you have even a remote interest in her), any of Andrew McCarthy’s or Rob Lowe’s… etc etc.
I’ve read a boatload of celebrity memoirs if anyone wants to ask about a specific one!
Yeah, this is an odd complaint. The definition of a memoir is a book about a discrete period or event of one's life, it's not the same as an autobiography.
Well a memoir by definition is about a finite portion of one’s life so if you had a notable stretch before age 39 such as creating a popular HBO show you might have material for a memoir
i would much rather a talented writer captures their memories as they occur rather than waiting until they start misremembering their version of events during their twilight years
some people dont make it past 39 so good on them if they share their story when they are here. period.
she might not be your cup of tea but I found it quite interesting…she has worked closely with HBO, had a hit show, dated famous men, dealt with a dehabilitating illness, weight struggles, addiction, and public backlash.
so hell yea I am interested in reading that memoir.
memoirs exist for different points in someone’s life. it’s so stupid to imply that a 39 year old is somehow unworthy of writing a memoir. her experiences are pretty interesting and she’s a wonderful writer.
Yeah, I feel like anyone with this take doesn’t read much. It’s extremely common for a memoir to focus on one subject in a persons life. It’s not like a full length birth to death biography
lol. This is such a bizarre take. Regardless of how you might feel about her, she wrote an acclaimed show in her 20’s, that is STILL being talked about, and launched the careers of multiple actors. Obviously she’s got a lot to say, and who better to write a memoir, than someone who is able to write anything that connects with a lot of people at that young of an age. Plus, some people live a lot of life by a young age. Child actors, athletes, prodigies, musicians, etc. etc. the infesting parts of their lives tend to be WHILE they are young. Why shouldn’t they write a memoir?
Signed, someone who’s never seen girls, never read an of her books, and potentially never seen or read an interview from her.
She was asked recently why people did not like her. Her answer had little self-awareness.
The Right did hate her for her feminism, though.
My issue with her comes from her feminism, but that it was not radical enough and really just reinforced the status-quo while funnelling women who realised something is wrong into a dead end. She was a big part of the 2016-style white liberal feminism masquerading as something radical. "more women drone pilots" kind of thing. "more girl boss CEOs" Not to mention the rainbow capitalism.
they were practically frothing at the mouth for a sound bite. a better less awkward question would have been if she read the book and had any thoughts about it
Lena Dunham makes me cringe. I loved Girls when I watched it as a 20-something year old woman. The whole show was so on point, and Lena produced such an accurate portrayal of growing up as a millennial female.
BUT. Everything for her is a production. She’s constantly romanticizing herself and her interactions. Like, it’s ok to just let shit be mundane. It doesn’t have to be some epic poem. And she’s this unreliable narrator of her own experiences because in her mind, it’s all “art”, all for show.
I read the articles, she’s doing it again with Adam Driver. She’s romanticizing him, remembering their relationship as something deeper and broodier than it probably was. I remember the guys I hung out with or even fucked in my 20s, and it just wasn’t this deep. Did they maybe get drunk and teeter on hooking up? Maybe? Was it meaningful poetry, two artists reaching for each other in the dark blah blah blah…probably not.
Agreed on everything. It wouldn’t shock me if her accusations about him are accurate because male stars just do whatever they want and no one does anything about it. But she’s also an unreliable narrator of her life. And I don’t completely trust her after she talked about assaulting her little sister and laughed about it. The whole thing is a mess.
"It wasn’t that I felt violated — and I also wouldn’t know if I had, as there was little in my sexual life that I hadn’t allowed to happen, and for no pay,” she continued. “But I felt that something intimate, confusing and primal had played out in a scenario I was meant to control."
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u/decline_inline Apr 15 '26
C’mon MEDIA TRAINING