The voice of a generation has returned.
HBO has given the green light to the revival of “Girls,” Lena Dunham’s beloved and controversial comedy-drama. The series will return for a five-episode limited series that will begin production in 2027 – a decade after the season 6 finale.
“Girls” aired on HBO from 2012 to 2017. With Dunham as creator, showrunner and star, the original series followed a group of friends through the misery and dysfunction of their 20s in New York. All four main cast members are returning for the revival: Dunham as Hannah Horvath, Allison Williams as Marnie Michaels, Jemima Kirke as Jessa Johansson, and Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna Shapiro. Additionally, Andrew Rannells reprises the role of Elijah Krantz.
Judd Apatow returns as executive producer on behalf of Apatow Productions alongside Dunham, Ilene S. Landress and Michael P. Cohen from Dunham’s Good Thing Going banner. Williams, Kirke, Mamet and Rannells serve as co-executive producers.
“We always said we would only return to ‘Girls’ if there was a specific story we were dying to tell,” Dunham said in a statement. “I missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t imagine them in this day and age. Then, around my fortieth birthday, they started talking to me in the shower. And, as you may remember, once that group of five starts talking, it’s pretty hard to get them to stop… It’s rare that you get the chance to come back to something that changed your life with hindsight and a whole new level of gratitude and understanding. I love these girls (and this boy), our friends from HBO and all the others who continued to discover the parade and remind us again why we do this, namely the joy of being together… and the chance to wear yellow knit…”.
Dunham has expressed openness to the idea of reviving “Girls” several times over the years. Talk to Variety in 2025, she said: “If we had something really specific to say and it was a time in their lives where we wanted to revisit it – like millennial women becoming mothers or entering menopause or going to live in a nursing home – I would always want to work with those people again.
Reflecting on each character’s fate, Dunham continued: “Shoshanna was married to the mayor of New York, then divorced, and she runs a zero-waste sports and leisure startup. Marnie, this is her third marriage. She still sings, but I think Marnie really needs to get her on Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. Jessa is unvaccinated and lives on a boat in Croatia. Adam is a cult theater actor, and he probably lives in Berlin, and Ray is still on the city council, running his coffee shop and being more successful than anyone. Elijah is the fourth lead on a sitcom, making a lot of money and always looking for love in all the wrong places, Dunham added: “She teaches Bard and loves raising her son. She probably has a girlfriend who’s, like, a chef. And she’s less obsessed with fame. That’s where I think she would land.” Read her full essay on rebirth here.
Although it was a frequent topic of debate during its run, “Girls” is often referred to as one of the greatest television shows of all time, notably by Variety in 2023: “The pilot positioned a quartet of downwardly mobile, alliteratively named New York millennials as a counterpoint to ‘Sex and the City,’ trading their aspirations for closely observed grimaces. That Dunham, just 26 when the series premiered, was so consistently mistaken for her character is both a product of misogyny and a testament to her performance.” garnering 19 Emmy nominations and two wins during its run, has received renewed appreciation in recent years.
Two names from the original “Girls” cast were noticeably absent from HBO’s press release about the revival: Adam Driver, who played Adam, Hannah’s on-and-off love interest, and co-showrunner and executive producer Jenni Konner. Dunham wrote about her negative experiences with both of them in her memoir “Famesick,” published in April of this year.
She alleged that Driver was “verbally aggressive, condescending and physically imposing,” including a story in which he threw a chair at a wall next to her because he was angry that she had forgotten her lines. Driver also took liberties on set that made Dunham feel uncomfortable and out of control: When they filmed their first sex scene, “cautious blocking went out the window and it threw me from side to side,” she said. The driver also allegedly left the room when Dunham first showed him the completed “Girls” pilot and ignored his calls for three weeks.
Konner was a close friend and mentor to Dunham in the early days of “Girls,” but their relationship deteriorated over time. For example, Dunham wrote about Konner’s pressure to negotiate equal salaries, despite the fact that Dunham created the series and appeared on screen. When Dunham began to struggle with various health issues and procedures that affected her work schedule, Konner became cold and distant, according to the book. Dunham also wrote that she had no recollection of his involvement in the joint statement she and Konner released in 2017 in which they defended “Girls” writer Murray Miller against Aurora Perrineau’s sexual assault allegations. The statement was written and released the day after Dunham returned from the hospital after undergoing a hysterectomy, she noted, and she issued an apology shortly after.
The original cast of “Girls” also included Christopher Abbott, Alex Karpovsky, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Jake Lacy and many others.
“We are thrilled that Lena is turning her gaze from the hustle and bustle of her 20s to turning 40,” read a statement from Amy Gravitt, executive vice president and head of comedy programming for HBO and HBO Max. “To say the world has changed since we last saw Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, Jessa and Elijah is an understatement, but we know fans – old and new – will be happy to see how much they’ve grown and relieved to see that they’re still the ‘girls’ we knew long ago.”
Watch a teaser video featuring Dunham and co below.
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