Thirteen years after “Girls” put her on the Hollywood map, Lena Dunham is back with a new television series, “Too Much,” that’s once again inspired by her real-life experiences. This time, the eight-time Emmy nominee teamed up with British musician Luis Felber, her husband of nearly four years, to create what she describes as a classic “wherever you go, there you are” love story.
The 10-episode series, which premieres on Netflix Thursday, follows Jessica Salmon (played by “Hacks” actor and comedian Megan Stalter), a New Yorker who moves to London after a painful breakup with her boyfriend of seven years, Zev (Michael Zegen).
Not long after her arrival in the British capital, Jessica begins a relationship with a local punk musician, Felix (Will Sharpe of “The White Lotus” fame). By all accounts, Felix is dreamy, attentive and charming. Still, Jessica finds herself driven to the brink of self-sabotage by the Instagram posts of Zev’s new fiancée, Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski), who happens to be a social media influencer.
Though Dunham worked closely with Ratajkowski to ensure Wendy would be a fully fleshed-out character, she was adamant the principal antagonist for most of the show’s first season would be Jessica’s idea of Wendy as viewed through the filters of social media rather than Wendy herself.
“So many of us have done the classic compare-and-despair. It was always something we did, but social media has made it so much easier,” Dunham told HuffPost in an interview. “Women in our culture … we want to support each other, but then there’s also all of this comparison that causes you to villainize someone or think their reality is somehow easier than yours.”
“Jessica’s dismissive of Wendy’s career as an influencer,” she added. “She’s dismissive of Wendy’s beauty because of stereotypes about what a conventionally attractive woman might be experiencing in her inner life. But at the end of the day, she finds that Wendy is someone she can relate to much more deeply than she could have imagined.”
Much of the early buzz on “Too Much” has emphasized Dunham’s decision to not cast herself as the lead character; she does, however, have a supporting role as Jessica’s older sister, Nora. But before belong, Stalter came to view Jessica as “a version of me and Lena together, with her own thing going on.”
“I clicked with [Lena] immediately, and I just was obsessed with wanting to be around her,” she quipped. “When you spend a lot of time hanging out with someone, you start to say stuff the way they say it and have little catchphrases, so I feel like the character is [both of] us together. It’s such a beautiful, funny, serious and realistic love story.”
Sharpe echoed those sentiments, noting that “Too Much” gave him a rare opportunity to showcase his musical chops on-screen.
“We had a few days of rehearsal, which was when we first met in London and read the scenes, but we didn’t kind of overcook it before we started filming,” he recalled. “That meant that as the characters are sort of getting to know each other in the series, we were also doing the same thing.”
He went on to note: “All of these characters are so brilliantly drawn. They all have layers to unpack, and one of the most enjoyable and rewarding things about being a part of this series, I think, was going on that journey.”
It’s easy to find parallels to Dunham’s off-screen life in “Too Much.” She relocated to London ― where she and Felber still reside ― in 2019, and was quickly taken by the idea of writing a romantic comedy with an expat character at its center.
Felber, she said, brought his talents as a musician to the series’ soundtrack and helped ensure that the show’s British-isms were accurate. He also helped flesh out Felix and other male characters on the show.
“I’d always been writing male characters sort of in this bubble, and while I was really trying to tackle them, I think there are aspects of masculinity ― a concept we’re talking about a lot culturally right now ― that having [Luis’] perspective was really valuable on,” Dunham explained. “He helped turn the character of Felix from someone who could have just been sort of a knight in shining armor coming to rescue a female character into someone who had his own traumas and challenges.”
Watch the trailer for “Too Much” below.
