Girls

Cast

• Lena Dunham as Hannah Horvath: an aspiring writer in her early twenties living in Brooklyn whose parents have just cut her off just as she quits her unpaid internship.

• Allison Williams as Marnie Michaels: Hannah’s roommate and best friend. Responsible and serious art gallery assistant, she is unsure of her relationship with her long-term boyfriend.

• Jemima Kirke as Jessa Johansson: Shoshanna’s British cousin and roommate. Bohemian and an unpredictable world-traveler and newly back to New York City.

• Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna Shapiro: Jessa’s bubbly and innocent American cousin.

• Adam Driver as Adam Sackler: Hannah’s aloof lover and part-time carpenter and actor.

Production

Development

Girls Lena Dunham’s 2010 debut feature, Tiny Furniture — which she wrote, directed and starred in — received positive reviews at festivals as well as awards attention, including Best Narrative Feature at South by Southwest and Best First Screenplay at the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards. The independent film’s success earned her the opportunity to collaborate with Judd Apatow for an HBO pilot. Apatow said he was drawn to Dunham’s imagination and added that Girls would provide men with an insight into “realistic females”. Some of the struggles facing Dunham’s character Hannah — including being cut off financially from her parents, becoming a writer and making bad decisions — are inspired by Dunham’s real-life experiences.

Dunham said Girls reflects a part of the population not portrayed in the 1998 HBO series Sex and the City. “Gossip Girl was teens duking it out on the Upper East Side and Sex and the City was women who figured out work and friends and now want to nail family life. There was this whole in between space that hadn’t really been addressed,” she said. The pilot intentionally references Sex and the City as producers wanted to make it clear that the driving force behind Girls is that the characters were inspired by the former HBO series and moved to New York to pursue their dreams. Dunham herself says she “revere[s] that show just as much as any girl of my generation.”

Dunham wrote, directed and co-executive produced the pilot, with Apatow and Jenni Konner serving as executive producers. On January 7, 2011, HBO picked up the series for 10 episodes with Dunham being promoted to executive producer. Dunham co-wrote all ten episodes of the first season and directed five.

Casting

Many of Dunham’s co-stars are daughters of famous names in the entertainment and media industry. Jemima Kirke, a high school friend of Dunham who also appeared in Tiny Furniture, is the daughter of Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke. Zosia Mamet is the daughter of playwright David Mamet; while Allison Williams is the daughter of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams.

References:
More about Girls on Wikipedia
More about Girls on HBO