Adam Driver responds to Lena Dunham’s memoir allegations

Adam Driver has responded to claims made by Lena Dunham about his on-set behaviour during his time on her show Girls in her recent memoir Famesick.

In her book the 40-year-old Girls creator, writer and star alleges that Driver had behaved like “something feral … half-man, half-beast” on set, and at one point threw a chair at Dunham while the pair were practising lines in her trailer ahead of season one.

At a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday (French time) to promote his new film Paper Tiger, Driver, 42, was asked about the claims.

“I have no comment on any of that,” he said before pausing briefly and adding: “I’m saving it all for my book.” The comment prompted widespread laughter in the room.

Directed by James Gray and co-starring Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller, Paper Tiger is set in 1986 and follows two brothers who find themselves in strife with the Russian mob. It premiered on Saturday night (French time) to a seven-minute standing ovation, Variety reported.

In Famesick, released earlier this year, Dunham described auditioning Driver for the role of her boyfriend in the hit show back in 2011. At the time, Driver was yet to break into the industry and was performing small roles in theatre.

“Given my demand for a Tim Riggins lookalike, when Adam Driver walked into the room – all ears and nose, gangly and pigeon-toed, lurching toward the audition chair like a reanimated corpse in a silent film – I was … confused. I tried to shake his hand, and he only grunted,” she claimed in her book.

She also claimed that when she surprised him with a birthday cake and candles as a surprise, he “exited through a back door”, and when Dunham showed him the Girls pilot episode, he got up and left, “slamming the door behind him”, and didn’t answer her calls for the next three weeks.

She alleged that once he punched a hole in his trailer wall because he hated his new haircut and that he was unpredictable in sex scenes.

Girls, which was produced from 2012 to 2017, depicts four young women living in New York City and is largely based on Dunham’s life. It was shot before the widespread use of intimacy co-ordinators on set.

Dunham alleged that during sex scenes her “careful blocking went out of the window” as Driver “hurled me this way and that”.

“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,” she wrote.

Driver received Emmy nominations for his work on Girls and has been twice nominated for Academy Awards and three times for Golden Globes for his film work.

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