‘Girls’ Surprise: HBO Brings Back Lena Dunham Series With Majority Of Original Cast

HBO has ordered a limited run of five episodes of Lena Dunham’s hit comedy with the majority of the original cast confirmed to return.

Dunham will reprise her role as Hannah, Allison Williams returns as Marnie, Jemima Kirke is back as Jessa, Zosia Mamet comes back to play Shoshanna, and Andrew Rannells, who recurred as Elijah in the first three seasons before joining the cast as a regular in season four, is also back.

There is, however, no sign of Adam Driver, who played Hannah’s boyfriend Adam. Dunham wrote in her recent memoir Famesick that Driver was “verbally aggressive” during filming of the show.

Production will begin next year, which is 15 years after its premiere and ten years after the Season 6 finale.

Dunham, who also created Netflix’s Too Much, which premiered last year, has long talked about wanting to return to the Girls universe.

Last year, she told Variety that if she had something “really specific” such as millennial women becoming mothers or stepping into menopause, she would “always want to work with those people again”.

In that interview, she also suggested Mamet’s Shoshanna was divorced from the New York Mayor, Williams’ Marnie is on her third marriage, Jessa is unvaccinated and lives on a boat in Croatia, and Driver’s Adam is a cult theater actor living in Berlin, while Dunham’s own Hannah teaches at Bard and has a son and a chef girlfriend.

Dunham created, wrote and directed the series and will exec produce the return alongside Judd Apatow, and Ilene S. Landress and Michael P. Cohen for Good Thing Going. Williams, Kirke, Mamet and Rannells serve as co-executive producers.

Jenni Konner, who served as co-showrunner and a close creative partner to Dunham during Girls, is also not returning. In Famesick, Dunham wrote that she hasn’t spoken to Konner since 2018.

Dunham said, “We always said we would only return to Girls if there was a specific story we were burning to tell. I’ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t quite picture them in the present day. Then, right around my fortieth 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…”

Amy Gravitt, EVO, Head of HBO & HBO Max Comedy Programming, added, “We’re thrilled to have Lena turn her gaze from the tumult of one’s twenties to the milestone of turning forty. 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.”