Dunham and Konner were writers and coshowrunners on the Emmy-winning series, and also ran the Lenny Letter newsletter together.

Lena Dunham opens up about falling out with *Girls *collaborator Jenni Konner: ‘Business relationships are conditional’

Dunham and Konner were writers and coshowrunners on the Emmy-winning series, and also ran the Lenny Letter newsletter together.

By Marina Watts

Marina Watts

Marina Watts is a news writer for with seven years experience covering entertainment, pop culture and celebrity news. Her previous work appears in PEOPLE, Bustle and Newsweek.

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April 13, 2026 11:57 a.m. ET

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Lena Dunham; Jenni Konner. Credit:

Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty; Kevin Winter/Getty

- Lena Dunham opened up about why she and longtime *Girls *collaborator Jenni Konner had a falling out.

- "I was extremely naïve about the fact that when you work with people and your creative, financial futures are intertwined, there are going to be moments where that is in tension with friendship," Dunham said.

- *Famesick: A Memoir *hits bookstores on April 14. It is available for preorder wherever books are sold.

Lena Dunham is reflecting on how fame changed her relationships.

Ahead of the release of her upcoming memoir, *Famesick*, the* *writer-director-actor told *The New York Times** *about her friendship with former collaborator Jenni Konner and their eventual fallout. Dunham and Konner worked together on the Emmy-winning series *Girls *as coshowrunners and writers. They also ran a newsletter together, Lenny Letter, from 2015 to 2018.

"I was extremely naïve about the fact that when you work with people and your creative, financial futures are intertwined, there are going to be moments where that is in tension with friendship," Dunham said.

"I was desperately looking for safety and a sense of security and something that felt unconditional. Business relationships are conditional. They have to be," Dunham explained.

The *Too Much *creator noted that she was "not an adult" and still living with her parents when she and Konner began working together.

"I remember my father being like, 'Not everybody says I love you to everyone they work with and sleeps over at their house.' As a 40-year-old, I can now recognize that I was looking for a different kind of relationship than the one that work can provide."

Jenni Konner and Lena Dunham at the 2017 Met Gala.

John Shearer/Getty

When asked if there was a way she and Konner could've continued working together, Dunham said she made a "necessary break with everything."

"There was a moment where I broke up with my business partner, I broke up with my partner, I had a hysterectomy, I stepped back from work," she said. "I went from full-on to sitting in a back room in my parents' apartment in silence, collaging letters together."

Dunham underwent a hysterectomy in 2017 to treat the severe, chronic pain she suffered from endometriosis. Months later, she went to rehab in April 2018 to address her misuse of the anti-anxiety medication Klonopin. She has been sober since.

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That same year, Konner and Dunham released a joint statement about their professional breakup. "We have had one of the most significant relationships together in our adult lives and we respect each other's choices," the pair said in July 2018, per *The Hollywood Reporter*.

"While our interests are pulling us in different directions right now, we are excited about our current work and are firmly committed to the projects we have together. HBO has been our home for quite some time and we look forward to continuing there as we both move forward."

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Elsewhere in the interview, Dunham shared what inspired her to write *Famesick*.

"One of the reasons I took so long to write the book is that it was important to me that I not put it out from a place of saying, *Here’s a referendum on how I feel that I have been perceived*. Because every two years there’s a new article about a woman that’s like 'Blank is finally telling all,' 'Beep is finally herself,' 'ABC in her own words,' and in a lot of ways, it’s about keeping a career arc alive."

Dunham said she wanted to know "what my own aims were" before publishing *Famesick*. "I don’t like revenge writing. I don’t like writing that’s like, *Here I am, kiss my ass*," she said. "I'm at peace with the fact that there are people who will never understand, and they don't need to."

*Famesick: A Memoir** *hits bookstores on April 14. It is available for preorder wherever books are sold.

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