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" When Lena Dunham slowly opens the door of her Brooklyn apartment one recent evening, the 27-year-old is in full-on cocoon mode. This means sweatpants, a rumpled T-shirt, and no makeup. She grins, acknowledges that she has a cold, and says, &amp;amp;#8220;Sorry, I just woke up from a nap!&amp;amp;#8221; Her dog, Lamby, is bouncing around, barking. The place is in slight, happy disarray: Her new roommate, boyfriend of two years Jack Antonoff (of the band Fun and the solo project Bleachers), has recording gear set up in a corner of the living room, and there are boxes all over the place, ready for a move to another apartment the two recently bought together. Welcoming me in, Dunham quickly finishes some harried texting with one of her best friends, actress Jemima Kirke (that&amp;amp;#8217;d be Jessa on Girls), before apologizing profusely and settling in to talk. Dunham&amp;amp;#8217;s ascent as one of the most heralded and polarizing young artists in America has been swift. Only a few years ago, she was debuting her much-celebrated independent movie Tiny Furniture. Now, of course, millions love her genre-defining HBO show Girls, which she writes, directs, stars in, and uses to inspire debate about class, feminism, and sex. Dunham is a social-media dynamo, communicating regularly with her 1.4 million Twitter followers (and another 700,000-plus on Instagram). No doubt they&amp;amp;#8217;re excited about her book of personal essays, Not That Kind of Girl, which will be published in October. Also exciting: I spot a stack of comics, and she tells me they&amp;amp;#8217;re research for an issue of the Archie comic books she&amp;amp;#8217;s writing. We order in some pasta and salad from her favorite neighborhood restaurant (she never cooks), and she curls up on the couch under a blanket to start a conversation that&amp;amp;#8217;s interrupted every few minutes by either coughing or her cries of &amp;amp;#8220;Lamby! Be good!&amp;amp;#8221; We speak until nearly midnight, when Lamby finally wins and we all head out for a stroll. But here&amp;amp;#8217;s what happened before that. (Read an excerpt of her April 2014 Glamour cover interview below. To read the complete story, plus see all the photos from her cover shoot, pick up the April issue of Glamour on newsstands March 18, or subscribe now for instant access to the digital edition.) Glamour: You&amp;amp;#8217;ve kind of grown up the past few years. You&amp;amp;#8217;ve written that your hero, the writer and filmmaker Nora Ephron, told you, &amp;amp;#8220;You can&amp;amp;#8217;t meet someone until you&amp;amp;#8217;ve become who you&amp;amp;#8217;re becoming.&amp;amp;#8221; Lena Dunham: Yeah! [Before Jack] I was all tortured about whether I should get back together with this guy I&amp;amp;#8217;d been seeing for five months. We&amp;amp;#8217;d broken up, and it felt like my only chance at romance for the rest of my life. But Nora was like, &amp;amp;#8220;No, no, no.&amp;amp;#8221; So I broke up with him in January, Girls debuted at the beginning of April, and then I met Jack at the end of April. The dialogue around the show already existed, so it was sort of clear to him what the baggage of dating me was going to be. I remember talking with him on our first date and him being like, &amp;amp;#8220;God, all the articles about your nudity on the show are such bullsh-t.&amp;amp;#8221; It&amp;amp;#8217;s funny, &amp;amp;#8217;cause in some ways that&amp;amp;#8217;s the conversation we still have when I&amp;amp;#8217;m upset [about stuff I read]. Glamour: What does a supportive relationship look like to you? LD: It&amp;amp;#8217;s somebody who gives you the space and time you need to do your work. Somebody who says, &amp;amp;#8220;You couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t do anything that would embarrass me. Just be yourself in a way that has integrity, and I&amp;amp;#8217;ll be proud of you.&amp;amp;#8221; I think women are conditioned to stand by their man and watch them make it to the top, but most men never believe the person they get into a relationship with is going to rise any higher than she was when they met. It takes a very special, evolved person to be able to deal with change within a relationship. Glamour: Some people think, Well, Lena Dunham is writing about her life; I could write about my life. LD: That&amp;amp;#8217;s something I&amp;amp;#8217;ve come up against&amp;amp;#8212;people [thinking], If HBO had just asked me, I would have made a TV show that was just as good but included more people or was smarter or funnier. Like, Hey, just give me half an hour and a million dollars, and I&amp;amp;#8217;ll do this. Glamour: I guess you make it look easy. What are some of the artistic choices you&amp;amp;#8217;ve made that may be invisible to people? LD: I want you to feel like you are getting lost with these characters. So I write long scenes. TV feels the least like life when it&amp;amp;#8217;s like two seconds here, then &amp;amp;#8220;meanwhile at this person&amp;amp;#8217;s house.&amp;amp;#8221; I wanted to make a show that wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t as bright as other shows. Glamour: What do you mean? Like lighting? LD: I&amp;amp;#8217;ve always been incredibly attracted to pictures of my parents [the artists Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham] in the 1970s. That aged photograph palette seems to give an importance to their twenties. So I was like, I&amp;amp;#8217;d like to make something that shows my twenties through that beautiful soft-focus lens. Also, I get very fetishistic when I&amp;amp;#8217;m shooting the girls&amp;amp;#8212;especially Jemima. Glamour: Because you love her. LD: Yeah. We&amp;amp;#8217;ve been friends since we were 11, so she already kind of looks like a memory to me. Also, it was important that [the characters] not look like people on TV. I wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t like, &amp;amp;#8220;I want us all to be chubby with acne!&amp;amp;#8221; I wanted us to be beautiful&amp;amp;#8212;but the way you have friends who are beautiful and you go, &amp;amp;#8220;My friend Meredith just has the most amazing face.&amp;amp;#8221; You&amp;amp;#8217;re not marveling at her like a movie star, but you&amp;amp;#8217;ve fallen in love with her face. Glamour: Everyone&amp;amp;#8217;s family and friends are kind of iconic to them. LD: Yeah&amp;amp;#8212;like in casting Adam [Driver, who plays Hannah&amp;amp;#8217;s boyfriend], I just looked at him and went, &amp;amp;#8220;I would have fallen in love with him in college.&amp;amp;#8221; When you first see Adam, you have this sense of he&amp;amp;#8217;s your own private secret, and I felt that would be a big part of Hannah&amp;amp;#8217;s attraction to him. Like, No one else is going to want this person but me&amp;amp;#133;. And of course that&amp;amp;#8217;s not true. Adam is like the sexiest man alive, and everybody wants to f--k him all day long. [Laughs.] But&amp;amp;#133; Glamour: But probably everybody watching the show has that feeling of, I can see Adam&amp;amp;#8217;s beauty more than anyone else. LD: Totally. But I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t write it that way. I wrote it like, &amp;amp;#8220;Oh, he&amp;amp;#8217;ll be like Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights, and I&amp;amp;#8217;ll just give myself the hottest boyfriend on TV.&amp;amp;#8221; And I did. But in a different way than I thought. To read the complete story, plus see all the photos from her cover shoot, pick up the April issue of Glamour on newsstands March 18, or subscribe now for instant access to the digital edition. Watch a clip from behind the scenes with Dunham below: "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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