Lena Dunham has accused Adam Driver of punching a hole in his trailer wall and throwing a chair while they were practising lines during the filming of HBO’s Girls.
The 39-year-old’s comedy-drama series, which aired between 2012 and 2017, followed the lives of four young women in their 20s navigating life in New York.
Driver, who played emotionally fraught actor Adam, starred opposite Dunham in all six seasons, who as well as being the creator and showrunner on set starred as the main character Hannah.
Writing in her new memoir named Famesick, Dunham has described Driver during this period of time as ‘something feral’, calling him a ‘half-man, half-beast’.
She also said that the Star Wars and House of Gucci actor was occasionally violent and difficult to work with.
In one part of the book, Dunham claimed that Driver, 42, threw a chair at the wall next to her while they were running lines.
She said that she was unable to get her words out due to something she puts down to her dissociating due to her then-undiagnosed endometriosis.
She wrote: ‘When I opened my mouth, all that came out was a stammer – until finally, Adam screamed, “F**G SAY SOMETHING” and hurled a chair at the wall next to me.
‘”WAKE THE F UP,” he told me. “I’M SICK OF WATCHING YOU JUST STARE.”‘
Dunham said that she did ‘not tell anyone’ about the incident at the time because her experience with the real-life man who had inspired the character of Adam had left her used to violence.
Elsewhere in the book, Dunham also claimed that Driver punched a hole in his trailer wall because he hated his haircut and on another occasion he screamed in her face.
Describing the filming of sex scenes on the show, she also said that her ‘careful blocking went out of the window’ despite her want to cultivate a ‘safe’ environment on set.
She said: ‘Part of me was afraid that when I turned around, I would find I was suddenly in a full-penetration 1970s porno. But after a few mimed thrusts, I called cut.’
According to Dunham, Driver told her: ‘I hope you know I’ll always love you,’ when he wrapped his final scene for Girls in 2016.
She said, however, that she ‘never heard from him again’ after that.
Speaking to The Guardian in a new interview, Dunham – who released the Netflix series Too Much last year – was asked about Driver’s ‘completely unacceptable’ behaviour towards her on set.
She said: ‘At the time, I didn’t have the skill to… it never entered my mind to say, “I am your boss, you can’t speak to me this way”.
‘And, at that point in my twenties, I still thought that’s what great male geniuses do: eviscerate you. Which is weird, because I was raised by a male genius who would never do that.’
Metro has contacted Adam Driver’s representative for comment.
Famesick by Lena Dunham is out on 14 April.
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