Zosia Mamet (left), Jemima Kirke, Lena Dunham and Allison Williams in season three of 'Girls.' Mark Schafer/HBO Logo text A decade after ending a run as one of the most discussed shows of the 2010s, Girls is returning to HBO.
The Skydance outlet has picked up a five-episode, limited-run revival of the series, with creator and star Lena Dunham and castmates Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet and Andrew Rannells all set to return. Not mentioned in the returning cast is Adam Driver, who played Hannah’s (Dunham) on-and-off boyfriend in the series. (In her memoir Famesick, published earlier this year, Dunham detailed incidents of Driver’s temper on set, including throwing a chair at a wall near her.)
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“We always said we would only return to Girls if there was a specific story we were burning to tell,” said Dunham in a statement. “I’ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t quite picture them in the present day. Then, right around my 40th birthday, they started talking to me in the shower. And, as you may remember, once this fivesome starts talking it’s pretty hard to get them to stop. It’s rare that you get the chance to return to something that changed your life with the gift of hindsight and a whole new level of gratitude and understanding. I love these girls (and boy), our friends at HBO, and all the people who have continued to discover the show and remind us afresh why we do this, which is the joy of being together … and the chance to wear yellow mesh.”
Story details are being kept quiet for now. Dunham will executive produce the five-episode revival with Judd Apatow (also an EP on the original series) and Ilene S. Landress and Michael P. Cohen of Good Thing Going also executive produce. Williams, Kirke, Mamet and Rannells are co-EPs.
Jenni Konner, who was co-showrunner with Dunham during Girls‘ 2012-17 run, is not involved in the revival. Dunham and Konner announced in 2018 that they were splitting as producing partners.
“We’re thrilled to have Lena turn her gaze from the tumult of one’s twenties to the milestone of turning 40,” said Amy Gravitt, executive vp and head of HBO and HBO Max comedy programming. “To say the world has changed since we last saw Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, Jessa, and Elijah is a massive understatement, but we know fans — old and new — will be happy to see how they’ve grown and relieved to see that they’re still the Girls we knew way back when.”
While it was never a giant hit for HBO, Girls arguably drove as much discourse as any TV show of its era as critics, viewers and assorted pundits deemed it a fundamental text for decoding the millennial generation — even though, as aspiring writer Hannah puts it in the series premiere, she’s probably only “a voice of a generation.”
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