Lena Dunham is finally ready to talk about the biggest rumor that surrounded her breakup with Jack Antonoff. The relationship, which lasted from 2012 to the end of 2017, features prominently in Dunham’s new memoir Famesick. In it, Dunham reveals that Antonoff’s “closeness” with an unnamed “teen pop star” started to affect her towards the end of the relationship.
Though Dunham doesn’t identify the singer, it’s widely believed to be Lorde, whom Antonoff had worked closely with throughout 2016 and 2017 as a writer and producer on her album Melodrama. At that time, there was a prominent internet theory that Antonoff and Lorde were more than just collaborators, although that has never been confirmed.
In Famesick, Dunham recalled FaceTiming Antonoff when she was still dating him, and noticing that “he was ensconced with a teen pop star I was too oblivious to be jealous of.” After that, she started noticing their interactions more, writing he he was often “locked in a room with a teen pop star whose needs seemed as massive and complex as my own, and who called me ‘Aunt Lena’ when I hobbled into the kitchen with my walker to grab another bottle of green tea.”
Dunham also walked in on the singer “sprawled across our sectional couch, weeping into Jack’s lap as he told her that ‘your teens are for experimenting’ in a tone so comforting, it almost brought tears to my eyes.” The author noted: “It had been so long since he’d spoken to me with that kind of expansive generosity.”
After these instances, Dunham wrote that she brought up her concerns to Antonoff, telling him she felt “like a ghost” and offered: “Perhaps their closeness was striking an odd note, that she wanted something from him that he couldn’t give.”
However, Antonoff deduced that Dunham was “just mad because she doesn’t want to be your friend.” And now, Dunham can admit that was an issue: “He was right.”
It wasn’t until a now-infamous PowerPoint presentation hit the internet in early 2018, after Dunham and Antonoff’s breakup, that she began second-guessing the nature of her ex’s relationship with the pop star.
“I wasn’t paying attention, but the Internet sure was, and they made some pretty amazing PowerPoints on the issue,” Dunham wrote. “So convincing they had me rethinking events that I myself had been present for.”
Dunham admitted she DMed “the PowerPoint maker” at one point, but the exchange wasn’t fruitful.
