Lena Dunham’s Girls to return for limited HBO run
HBO’s award-winning show Girls will return to screens for a limited run ten years after the series finale aired.
Lena Dunham – the show’s creator, writer, and one of its stars – shared the announcement in a mock zoom call with members of the original cast Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet and Andrew Rannells.
All five actors, whose careers launched off the back of Girls, will be part of the five-episode revival with production set to begin in 2027. Judd Apatow, who helped get the show green lit with HBO, will also return as executive producer.
“We always said we would only return to ‘Girls’ if there was a specific story we were burning to tell,” Dunham said in a statement.
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“I’ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t quite picture them in the present day,” she said.
“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,” she said.
Girls, which ran for six seasons from 2012 to 2017, was nominated for 19 Emmys and won two, including best casting.
It follows the lives of four friends – Hannah, played by Dunham, Marnie, played by Williams, Jessa, played by Kirke and Shoshanna, played by Mamet – living in New York City during their 20s.
The show, created by Dunham when she was 23-years-old, attracted both praise and controversy during its airing. The BBC ranked it as number 30 on its 100 Greatest TV Shows of the 21st Century.
“We’re thrilled to have Lena turn her gaze from the tumult of one’s twenties to the milestone of turning forty,” Amy Gravitt, executive vice-president of HBO programming, said.
“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.”
The title of the limited run has yet to be announced, but Dunham did ask her fellow cast on the mock zoom call, “can we still call it Girls?”, before joking “because we’re old as”.
Other cast and production members, most notably actor Adam Driver, were absent from HBO’s official statement. Driver, in his breakout role, played Dunham’s on-and-off again love interest in the show.
In her 2026 bestselling memoir Famesick, Dunham alleged Driver’s on-set behaviour at times turned verbally aggressive and physically imposing. Driver has not publicly commented on the allegations.
In Famesick, Dunham also wrote about the breakdown of her working relationship and friendship with co-showrunner and executive producer Jenni Konner. Konner is not included in HBO’s statement about the show’s revival.
Dunham wrote on her Substack that “it’s rare in life that you get the chance to return to something you love with new knowledge and a … ton of gratitude.
“I love these girls (and boy) and I love all the people who have reminded us afresh why we do this, which is the joy of being together and the chance to wear yellow mesh…” she wrote.
Since Girls ended, Dunham has gone on to create the Netflix series Too Much in 2025 and indie film Sharp Stick.
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