Lena Dunham and HBO are all set to revive the iconic Girls franchise. The beloved as well as controversial dramedy series will return for a limited, five-episode run with production beginning in 2027 — a decade after the Season 6 finale.
Girls ran on HBO from 2012 to 2017. With Dunham as creator, showrunner and star, with the series following a group of friends through the trials of decision-making the travails of dysfunction of their 20s in New York City. All four core cast members are returning for the revival: Dunham as Hannah Horvath, Allison Williams as Marnie Michaels, Jemima Kirke as Jessa Johansson and Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna Shapiro. Additionally, Andrew Rannells reprises the role of Elijah Krantz.
Judd Apatow returns as executive producer on behalf of Apatow Productions alongside Dunham, Ilene S. Landress and Michael P. Cohen of Dunham’s Good Thing Going banner. Williams, Kirke, Mamet and Rannells serve as co-executive producers.
“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. “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…”
Dunham had expressed her willingness to the idea of reviving Girls multiple times over the years. Speaking to Variety in 2025, she said, “If we had something to say that was really specific and it was a moment in their lives where we felt like revisiting it — like millennial women becoming mothers or stepping into menopause or going to live at old-age homes — I would always want to work with those people again.”
Musing on each character’s fate, Dunham continued, “Shoshanna was married to, then divorced from, the mayor of New York City, and she runs an athleisure startup that’s zero-waste. Marnie — it’s third marriage. She still sings, but I think Marnie really needs to take it to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. Jessa is unvaccinated and lives on a boat in Croatia. Adam is a cult theater actor, and he’s probably living in Berlin, and Ray is still on city council and running his coffee shop and doing better than anyone. Elijah is the fourth lead on a sitcom, making a good amount of money and still looking for love in all the wrong places.” About her own character, Dunham added, “She teaches at Bard and loves raising her son. She probably has a girlfriend who’s, like, a chef. And she’s less obsessed with being famous. That is where I feel that she would land.” Read her full essay about the revival here.
The series, which earned 19 Emmy nominations and two wins during its run, has received significant appreciation over the last few years.
Two names from the original Girls team were noticeably absent from HBO’s announcement about the revival: Adam Driver, who starred as Hannah’s on-and-off love interest Adam, and co-showrunner and executive producer Jenni Konner. Dunham wrote about negative experiences with both of them in her memoir Famesick, released in April of this year.
She alleged that Driver was “verbally aggressive, condescending and physically imposing,” most notably recounting a story in which he threw a chair at a wall next to her because he was angry that she’d forgotten her lines. Driver also took liberties on set that made Dunham feel discomfort and a loss of control: When they filmed their first sex scene, “careful blocking went out the window and he hurled me this way and that,” she said. Driver also allegedly walked out the room when Dunham showed him the completed Girls pilot for the first time and ignored her calls for three weeks.
Dunham wrote about feeling pressured by Konner to negotiate equal salaries. When Dunham began to struggle with various health issues and procedures that affected her work schedule, Konner became cold and distant, according to the book. Dunham also wrote that she has no memory of her involvement in the joint statement she and Konner released in 2017 in which they defended Girls writer Murray Miller against Aurora Perrineau’s sexual assault allegations. The statement was drafted and published the day after Dunham returned from the hospital after having a hysterectomy, she noted, and she issued an apology shortly after.
