Lena Dunham Tells All Like Never Before: Chronic Illness, Addiction, Exes and Her Revealing New Book (Exclusive)

Alex RossMon, April 13, 2026 at 3:25 PM UTC

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Lena Dunham shot at home for PEOPLE on April 1, 2026Credit: Winnie Au -

In her new memoir Famesick, Lena Dunham candidly details her experience with stardom, chronic illness, addiction, success, sex and more

“This has definitely been the most public period of my life since the almost 10 years that Girls went off the air,” Dunham tells PEOPLE

Famesick will be available for purchase April 14

Lena Dunham lights up when asked about her pet pigs, Victor and Cherry.

She adopted Victor in 2024 — followed by Cherry — during what she calls a “breather” from contemplating the obstacles to parenthood.

“I was really asking myself, ‘Okay, since you are not a person who’s going to get magically pregnant one night, you need to really look at what life would look like if you decided that you weren’t going to be a parent in the traditional way,’ ” Dunham, 39, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview to celebrate the release of her new memoir Famesick.

Dunham had a hysterectomy in 2017 after endometriosis — a condition in which tissue similar to the uterine lining grows in places it doesn’t belong — left her in constant pain from damage “worse than anyone had imagined.” In her new memoir Famesick (out April 14 from Random House), she opens up about her health saga, an addiction to Klonopin, making the generation-defining Girls, dating and coming of age when all the world's a stage.

Lena Dunham shot at home in Connecticut for PEOPLE on April 1, 2026Credit: Winnie Au

“This has definitely been the most public period of my life since the almost 10 years that Girls went off the air,” she says. “And it’s cool to see how different it is for me this time around. It's as if I sort of built a boat, and now I'm pushing it out and seeing if it actually sails. And every day, it sails."

Famesick has been a work in progress in Dunham's life for the last eight years. Though she’s nervous for a book filled with such raw honesty to be out in the world, she says her family — her parents Laurie and Carroll, brother Cyrus, 34, and husband Luis Felber, 39, a British musician she married in 2021 after a mutual friend set them up — all have her back.

"He's an effervescently kind person," says Dunham of her husband. "And so all that other stuff, like him being funny and cute and cool and creative, is like the cherry on top. I remember Nora Ephron, who was one of my friends and mentors who I write about in the book, had this quote which was like, 'Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from.' And I don't plan to get divorced, but I understand what she was saying. Lou is able to really hold people's complexity and still do everything in a way that's very anchored in love."

Lena Dunham and Luis Felbert in 2022Credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty

In Famesick, Dunham also takes former relationships gently to task. She writes candidly about her relationship with musician Jack Antonoff, whom she dated from 2012 to 2017, and how it unraveled alongside her physical health. She, too, chronicles the intensity of working alongside Girls costar Adam Driver and the complex bond between herself and Girls co-showrunner Jenni Konner, with whom she no longer speaks.

Still, there is nobody Dunham holds more accountable in the memoir than herself.

“You realize there’s a common denominator issue here. Besides the fact that everyone’s name seemed to start with ‘J,’ I was the common denominator in my relationships,” she tells PEOPLE. “No one I wrote about who was part of my work life is a villain. It’s just that I had not yet established the tools. I couldn’t always be honest because I didn’t always know what I needed.”

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'Famesick' by Lena Dunham

In 2012, Dunham skyrocketed to fame with the creation of Girls, her show about four young millennials messily navigating life in Brooklyn. She was only 23 when HBO called to offer her the pilot deal that changed her life. The whirlwind of attention overwhelmed her, but she says writing her new book has helped her find peace.

“I will confess, I’ve never rewatched Girls since it was on. Not because I don’t think I wouldn’t like it,” she says. “It’s just when I have time, I want to watch other people’s work.” Still, she considers it “a great gift” that Girls is resonating with a new generation. “I think when I first got out of [Girls], a lot of it was about proving I have more in me, this isn’t my whole story,” she says. “And now there’s just a deep appreciation that this young person felt bold enough to put a TV show together. That that cast was so down for the ride. It’s amazing that it happened.”

More than a decade later, as Dunham dips her toe back into the spotlight with Famesick, she splits the rest of her time time between her house in Connecticut and a London home she shares with Felber, whom she says "really supports me doing my thing."

"There's just nothing about me, from body to brain to creativity, that he asks to be smaller," she says.

Together, the couple hopes to build a pig sanctuary in Connecticut where people can connect with animals, “whether they’re getting sober or their children have disabilities or they’re elderly,” Dunham says. She’s also gearing up to turn 40 in May, exploring plans with her husband to expand their family and finally feeling at home in her own skin.

“Occasionally, I’ll run into something in which somebody makes a comment about my weight or my appearance, and it does not affect me the same way that it used to because I am so aware of what my body is doing for me," she says.

Lena Dunham at home with Victor and Cherry, shot for PEOPLE on April 1, 2026Credit: Winnie Au

And while her health is “always a work in progress,” she adds that “right now there’s an ability to care for myself and be cared for that I didn’t have for a long time. If you told me when I was 22 that I’d be like, ‘I feel excited and grateful to wake up in this world,’ I would’ve laughed at you. But I do."

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Lena Dunham's new memoir Famesick will hit shelves on April 14 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”