Girls star Jake Lacy has confirmed that the set of Lena Dunham’s hit HBO show could be a tense place.
Seasons 4 and 5 star Jake Lacy, who played Dunham’s character Hannah’s love interest, Fran, on the series, told Obsessed: The Podcast that he thought his co-star, Adam Driver, “might hit” him at one point.
Lacy, who was Emmy-nominated for his role on Season 1 of The White Lotus, revealed one scene during which Driver got really deep into character.
“We’re newly dating, and she takes me to an art show to sort of make Adam jealous, or at least to see what happens when she shows up with another guy and he’s dating her friend,” Lacy said, describing Season 4, Episode 7, “Ask Me My Name.”
Driver played Hannah’s on-again-off-again boyfriend Adam Sackler for all six seasons of the Emmy-winning show.
“We shot that scene. I think maybe we blocked it, but not really rehearsed it fully,” Lacy continued. “And I was just standing next to Adam and was like, ‘This guy might hit me in this scene.’ Like, I think this man might… I don’t really know what’s gonna happen right now.”
Dunham had a similar, albeit more damning, description of working with Driver on the show.
In her memoir Famesick, the Girls creator, writer, and star alleged that the actor threw a chair and punched a wall near her head during their seven seasons working together on the series, and that Driver’s temper could be set off by her “stammering” during rehearsal or a haircut he didn’t like. She also claimed that the actor crossed boundaries during intimate scenes, despite the actors’ “carefully blocking” them beforehand.
Dunham wrote that in one such scene, she was “afraid that when I turned around, I would find I was suddenly in a full-penetration 1970s porno… But after a few mimed thrusts, I called cut.” Dunham said that she “didn’t tell anyone” about the alleged incidents.
Lacy, for his part, enjoyed working with the star, telling Obsessed that Driver’s intensity helped his own performance.
“That was so exhilarating,” he said, “to really be doing a thing with a person—to not be like, I’ll pretend to be nervous, and you’ll pretend to be jealous and whatever that is.”
Driver’s seriousness about the role was just that intense, he explained.
“To act, to undeniably be there with a person, was so cool,” Lacy said, adding that he’s been “chasing that for 10 years.”
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