Goodbye Girls: Why Lena Dunham decided to pull the plug

AFTER five years of envelope-pushing nudity, and realistic sex scenes, the final season of Girls is about to begin. Lena Dunham explains why she pulled the plug.

AFTER five years of envelope-pushing nudity, hyper-realistic sex scenes, and razor-sharp wit, the final season of Girls begins this month.

News.com.au visited the Brooklyn set where Lena Dunham, Allison Williams and Zosia Mamet weighed in on the legacy of the award-winning, groundbreaking series.

Despite the show’s popularity and consistent ratings overall, it was boss Dunham who decided to pull the plug.

“American TV has a tendency to beat a dead horse and so it felt exciting, the idea that we could make the choice about when to end and be really thoughtful about where and how we left our characters,” she told news.com.au.

Prepare to say goodbye to these girls.

Creator, writer and star, Dunham insisted from the get-go that Girls’ sexuality be portrayed in the harsh (and often unflattering) light of truth.

“There’s a tendency to whitewash and create this perfect picture of sex, whereas women, especially young women maybe, have a more complicated, awkward and skewed experience of sex as it really happens versus the sex that they see in the movies,” she notes.

“So much of the sex we see on film is orchestrated by men, so then we come of age and go, ‘Wait. That wasn’t what I thought it was going to be at all!’”

Arguably, Dunham’s warts-and-all dialogue and depictions have assisted in bridging the gender gap. “If I could feel that I had given men and women a deeper understanding of each other, I would feel like I was allowed to retire,” she jokes, self-deprecatingly.

“That being said, I do love when I hear from people saying, ‘Oh, this show made me feel like I understood the experience of my daughter or my sister or my girlfriend,’ or when I hear from a guy who’s not at all in the demographic of the characters that he connects to them and understands them.”

Lena Dunham and Jenny Slate on set for the final season of Girls. Picture: Splash News

Allison Williams, who plays Marnie, perhaps the most polarising character of the cast, says, “I think that if a boy watched all of the Girls episodes, then he would be pretty well-informed about some of the darker and more anxious parts of us. And also the very courageous and intelligent and strong parts of us. But I don’t know that it has improved my understanding of men,” she laughs. “Marnie doesn’t seem to pick them very well.”

In person, the girls joke easily with each other and enjoy a genuine camaraderie. Zosia Mamet, who plays the fast-talking, highly strung Soshanna Shapiro, says, “I have heard a lot from parents that it helps them to understand their kids, especially fathers to daughters. I think the writing on the show has shed a light on relationships.”

But it hasn’t only been audiences who were impacted by the material.

Williams says, “I started Girls straight after college so it’s been like a graduate program for me. I feel like I have added woman to my girl resume but honestly, I hope that I never lose the girl side of my personality, ever.”

Mamet nods, adding, “I’m a little scared when next spring comes around when we would have gone back into production. I think I’ll have a phantom limb experience.”

Fame came quickly to much of the formerly unknown cast when Girls began in April 2012. “Almost nobody knew who I was. I barely knew who I was,” says Dunham.

Williams says she can still travel by subway and takes her level of recognition in stride. “When someone wants a selfie, I take their phone and do it myself. I also do that because often their hands are shaky, and I always say, ‘Don’t shake. I am not Paul McCartney. Save your nerves for someone truly world-changingly famous,’” she laughs.

“So I have fun with it and in that way I can diffuse things a little.”

As for what’s up next for Dunham, she says, “My audience has a really high bulls**t meter. They don’t want me to make anything that isn’t organic and doesn’t have the tone and the politics that I’ve come to be known for. So I would rather take my time and be thoughtful.”

Leaving the set for the day, another day closer to wrapping the show, she says of her current state of mind, “It’s like the sadness of those last days of high school. It’s bittersweet.”

Fans can expect the unpredictable from season six of the series which Premiers on Foxtel on Wednesday February 15th.