Lena Dunham builds her bedroom in The Wilbur Theatre to promote new memoir, ‘Famesick’
- Kate Yanulis
- May 12
- 4 min read
In the third stop on the “Famesick Tour: An Evening of Stories and Togetherness,” multihyphenate star Lena Dunham graced The Wilbur Theatre April 16 with writer and friend Emily Sundberg. Dunham, best known as producer, writer, director and lead of sardonic hit television series “Girls,” chronicled her famed life behind the screen in her second memoir “Famesick,”diving deeper into the sickness‐ridden reality of her twenties and her new life thrust into the spotlight.
Mirroring Dunham’s brand of bold realism, the Wilbur’s stage was set up like her bedroom, cultivating the same kind of intimacy she fostered both on and off screen. At center stage was Dunham's throne, a queen‐sized bed with a pink, flowery comforter and layers of pillows. To the left was an equally comfortable chair, a foldable room divider and stacks upon stacks of books.
Cushioning the reaction to the show to come, Dunham made sure a copy of “Famesick” came with the purchase of a ticket, allowing her more freedom to candidly discuss her impressions of Boston and engage with audience members within the two-hour timeframe.
“She [interviewed] someone; they [asked] questions back and forth, and she involved the audience a lot. It was lighthearted. I don't think anyone was interested in the salacious details,” said Christa Fiore, a sales manager in Arlington.
Ahead of the talk, a QR code was projected onto a screen above the stage for people to scan and submit voice memo questions for Dunham to answer during the Q&A portion of the talk.
“She's the voice of a generation. She's kind of a millennial icon and wrote, in my opinion, one of the most influential shows of our generation,” said Lily Baron, an attorney from Jamaica Plain. “I'm hoping to learn more about her life, especially around when she wrote ‘Girls.’”
As the theater continued to fill up ahead of the 7:30 p.m. start time, a slideshow set to MGMT’s “Time to Pretend” displayed pivotal moments throughout Dunham’s life, including behind-the-scenes shots of “Girls,” Dunham cuddling with her pet pigs and dogs, Dunham with music producer and ex‐partner Jack Antonoff and, notably, Dunham in the hospital.
“I think there's no one like her because of her frankness and her bravery [of] being real about her fear. I burst into tears whenever I read a Lena Dunham quote — I’ll probably cry today,” said Hannah Finnie, a writer from Providence.
When the slideshow concluded, Dunham walked out onto the stage in a matching teal blazer and skirt, sat in the chair and picked up “Famesick” from the top of a pile of books. After the applause subsided, she chuckled and started reading a short excerpt on her battle with chronic illness, opening up about undergoing a hysterectomy for severe endometriosis, a condition in which tissue similar to the uterine lining grows outside of the uterus, and her Hypermobile Ehlers‐Danlos Syndrome and fibromyalgia diagnoses — conditions which mean a lack of collagen in connective tissue and chronic bodily pain, respectively.
Upon finishing her first and last reading, Dunham kicked off her shoes, crawled into bed and tucked herself in. Faced by a crowd of successful Bostonian millennials, their interns and probably their mothers, Dunham began her set, “Some of you have leaned into the pajama theme, and some of you haven’t … Thank you. I did my favorite thing, which is to make a rule for everyone else and then make myself the exception.”
Despite being a book tour, most of her talk centered around introducing her fanbase to her “favorite new young friend,” Emily Sundberg, the writer of “Feed Me,” a newsletter on Substack about New York restaurants. Sundberg joined Dunham in her bed and they began a back-and-forth reminiscent of the discussions scripted for “Girls.”
After the catch-up with Sundberg, Dunham pulled two locals out of the audience to play “F**k, Marry, Kill” and “Would You Rather?,” where she, along with the crowd, bluntly disagreed with half of their responses.
The third section featured the voice memo Q&A where, after deferring one question about finding writing inspiration to Sundberg, Dunham was asked about everyday life with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and fibromyalgia.
“There's something about getting through a really hard experience and knowing that you can do it. It causes you to look back on all of the stuff and noise that bubbled through your days before you were going through something hard, [and makes] you miss it. So when you return to it, there's this new kind of appreciation,” Dunham said on stage.
Dunham ended her talk with a humorous guided meditation. “Focus on [breathing], in and out, [the] steady pumping of oxygen to your heart,” Dunham said on stage. “What percentage of this air is oxygen and what percentage is ‘Marc’ by Marc Jacobs perfume and the sweat of people hoping to be perceived?”
By making the event a conversation with the audience rather than a traditional book talk revolving solely around “Famesick,” Dunham used the tour to play herself on a stage once again, this time aged up to the present and over her past. This left fans who expected to hear more about the book confused, but with a stronger sense of kinship toward Dunham nonetheless.
“So much of the book was probably about ‘Girls’ that I think people were probably hoping [to hear] more ‘Girls’ lore,” said Kaitlyn Chase, an enablement revenue manager in Somerville. At the same time, “So much of her 20s [were] based on being performative and placating to what everyone else wanted and now I feel like she's come into her own … I think for us as people who are not much younger than her, who came up with ‘Girls,’ it's really nice to see the parallels.”
Read the piece here on the Huntington News Website:
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