This text comprises some spoilers for Netflix’s “Too Much.”
Sliding into somebody’s DMs — even with the purest intentions — is usually a daunting transfer. Will they see it? Is it bizarre? Will they reply? Lena Dunham, the creator of HBO’s “Girls,” noticed it as a shot for her newest inventive collaboration.
It started with a shout-out. It was 2022 and Dunham was fangirling over pictures of Megan Stalter, who was attending her first Emmys as a part of the solid of “Hacks,” in a sheer pink lace slip costume. Dunham posted one to her Instagram tales, calling Stalter one of many best-dressed girls in Hollywood.
Stalter responded and earlier than lengthy, the trade led to a message from Dunham a couple of challenge she wished to debate together with her. Stalter didn’t see the message instantly. Not that Dunham was maintaining tabs herself — she enlists somebody to deal with her social media footprint as a result of, as she says, “I don’t shop in that aisle.”
“I kept saying to my friend, who runs my social media, ‘Anything from Meg? Any word from Meg?’” Dunham says whereas seated subsequent to Stalter just lately. “It’s the first time I really shot my shot that way. But I thought, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t make.”
Now, they’re becoming a member of forces in “Too Much,” Dunham’s large return to tv since her semi-autobiographical creation “Girls” drew each reward and criticism greater than a decade in the past with its intimate glimpse on the messy friendships, ambitions and sexual misadventures of 4 20-something white girls in New York.
However “Too Much” isn’t a narrative about friendship or intercourse. It’s about love — Dunham’s model. It’s loosely impressed by her transfer to London and eventual marriage to musician Luis Felber, who co-created the sequence with Dunham.
In Netflix’s “Too Much,” Megan Stalter performs Jessica, a New Yorker who decides to maneuver to London, scraggly canine in tow, after a nasty breakup. (Ana Blumenkron/Netflix)
Within the sequence, which premiered Thursday, Stalter stars as Jessica, an eccentric and complacent however succesful producer at a business company who strikes to London from New York — her pint-size scraggly canine in tow — after her seven-year relationship blows up. Her over-romanticized imaginative and prescient of life throughout the pond, fueled by love tales like “Sense and Sensibility” set in pastoral England, begins out extra bedraggled than charmed.
However on her first evening there, she meets Felix (Will Sharpe), a wayward punk musician who takes an curiosity in her fish-out-of-water vibe. After a toilet meet-cute with complicated outcomes — he walks her residence, she makes the primary transfer on her sofa, he reveals he’s seeing somebody and leaves, then she by chance units herself on fireplace whereas making a TikTok video — they rapidly type an attachment that turns right into a swift and tender, albeit sophisticated, romance of two folks attempting to not let their private baggage get in the way in which.
It brings Stalter — whose profile has risen precipitously since her run of constructing viral character sketches on Twitter and TikTok led to her activate “Hacks” as Kayla, the seemingly hapless assistant-turned-Hollywood supervisor who is definitely good on the job regardless of her daffy persona — sharply into focus as a unusual and relatable main girl. Dunham noticed that potential.
“I watched the show where she was hosting people making snacks,” says Dunham, referring to Netflix’s “Snack vs. Chef,” a snack-making competitors.
“My nephew watched it by himself,” Stalter interjects with amusing that turns wistful.
“He watched it by himself?”
“Yes, my sister said recently she found out he watched it by himself. He’s 7. He’s just an amazing angel.”
“I watched it and thought: ‘She’s a genius,’” Dunham continues. “I just felt that she had amazing range that was — I’m not even going to say she wasn’t tapping into it because it was there, even in her comedy. The biggest thing with centering someone in a show is, you have to want to watch them. You have to sort of be addicted to watching them. And that’s how I feel about her. I just knew that she would inspire me as a writer and as a director.”
Lena Dunham, proper, says she wished Megan Stalter to be the face of “Too Much”: “The biggest thing with centering someone in a show is, you have to want to watch them. You have to sort of be addicted to watching them. And that’s how I feel about her.”
(The Tyler Twins/For The Instances)
Stalter and Dunham, each in stylish go well with apparel, are nestled on a sofa at Netflix’s workplace in New York Metropolis like two pals about to settle in for an evening of “Love Island” after work — besides they’re simply video conferencing into this interview. Their bond and banter reveals itself early. Stalter says she isn’t somebody who worships celebrities — “I don’t even know actors’ names sometimes” — however stresses that she is a “mega, mega, mega Lena/’Girls’ fan” and remains to be processing their collaboration.
“It was always going to be Meg, it was written for Meg,” Dunham says.
Stalter imbues Jess with equal measures of absurdity and attraction, making the character as straightforward to rally behind as Bridget Jones or Sally Albright — whether or not she is waddling to the lavatory post-coitus or by chance posting a sequence of TikTok movies, meant to remain in drafts, that take intention at her ex’s new girlfriend. However the present illuminates how she is at her most alluring when vulnerability is in reserve.
Halfway by way of “Too Much,” a flashback episode unravels Jessica’s ache: It tracks the rise and fall of her earlier relationship with Zev (Michael Zegen), from the candy early days, to the rising pains after which brutal emotional withdrawal. Jess’ try to debate their troubles — after studying she’s pregnant — results in a devastating trade and the top of their relationship. The epilogue to their union is a brokenhearted Jess having an abortion.
“It was important to me that we feel that they [Jess and Felix] have a past and that’s the thing they’re wrestling with — they’re not wrestling with whether they like the other one or understand the other one or are attracted to the other; it’s not external forces that are keeping them apart,” Dunham says. “It’s what we’re all up against, which is our own pain and our own trauma and our own inability to move past it because it’s hard.”
Will Sharpe, left, performs Felix, who turns into Jessica’s love curiosity.
(Netflix)
The episode was additionally a possibility to point out a practical and nuanced portrayal of abortion, Dunham says, the place Jess wrestles with the choice however not as a result of she feels responsible or believes she’s doing the fallacious factor: “She’s just sad because oftentimes when a person has to terminate a pregnancy, there’s a lot of factors around them that are challenging — just because something is an emotional decision doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
Dunham says she thought-about the Jess-Zev breakup the central thriller of the present.
“It’s funny because I acted like what happened between Jess and Zev was like me keeping a plot point from ‘Lost’ secret,” she says. “And it’s just that they broke up. It’s a totally normal breakup, but to her, it’s like her rosebud, it’s her ‘Citizen Kane.’”
Stalter discovered it refreshing that Dunham wished to point out somebody of their mid-30s nonetheless grappling with the pains of a previous relationship whereas falling in love — and studying that love isn’t at all times the magical remedy.
“I actually think that being in love is bringing up everything that’s ever happened to you because you’re finally with someone that’s safe,” Stalter says. “You’re like, ‘Wait, what if you knew this about me? Would you still make me feel safe? OK — what if you knew this about me? We still safe?”
While “Too Much” is another narrative inspired by her life, Dunham knew from its inception that she was not interested in being the face of the series. Even before “Girls” premiered in 2012, the attention on Dunham, whose prior work was the 2010 indie film “Tiny Furniture,” was intense. Over its six-season run, the buzz around “Girls” — a series she wrote, sometimes directed and played the central character in — also opened it up to criticisms and commentary about representation, the privileged and self-absorbed behavior of its millennial characters and Dunham’s prolific nudity.
She largely retreated from tv when “Girls” ended — she co-created HBO’s short-lived comedy “Camping” and directed the community’s pilot of “Industry.” Dunham says the expertise of “Girls” — and the time away — gave her a clearer sense of who she is and her limitations as she approached this new sequence in her late 30s.
“I actually think that being in love is bringing up everything that’s ever happened to you because you’re finally with someone that’s safe,” Megan Stalter says.
“There was a moment where it seemed like her [Meg’s] schedule might not work and I remember saying, ‘I don’t know if I want to make this show if that’s the case.’ I wasn’t like, ‘I don’t want to put myself through this, therefore it’s Meg.’ But separately, I don’t really want to put myself through it.”
To start with, with “Girls,” Dunham says she was in a position to brush off the criticism. However the commentary was relentless, even in her day-to-day life.
“I was in a recovery room at a hospital and a nurse said, ‘Why do you get naked on television all the time?’” she remembers. “We live in a strange time where people act like they don’t have power over what they’re viewing. They act like you held their eyeballs open with a weird eyeball machine and force them to watch your show and they are living a trauma as a result.
“It created a lot of anger in me and I don’t like to be angry. I think because I don’t like to be angry, I really suppressed that. And suppressed anger has to come out somewhere,” she provides. “And because I deal with chronic illness, it made it harder to bear that. I was swallowing down so much rage.”
There isn’t as a lot intercourse and nudity in “Too Much.” However there’s some. As somebody whose success started on-line, the place trolls are in excessive provide, Stalter has realized to navigate unsolicited suggestions about her look.
“I haven’t been on TV that long, but I have been a comedian that posts online for a long time,” she says. “I love the way I look and I love my brain and my heart so much that someone calling me fat online, I’m like, ‘Honey, there’s a lot of Reddit threads about that. Who cares?’ If you’re not attracted to me, good thing we’re not dating, I guess. I’m almost 35 — I’m so happy that I feel this way about myself.”
Whereas Stalter is the beating coronary heart of the present, Dunham is among the many memorable supporting gamers as Jessica’s sister Nora. The character, who has moved in together with her grandmother (Rhea Perlman) and mom (Rita Wilson), is confronting her personal crossroads after her husband, performed by former “Girls” co-star Andrew Rannells, decides he desires freedom to discover his sexuality. The cut up leaves her bedbound, hardly attentive to the teenage son they share.
Whereas Megan Stalter leads the present, Lena Dunham, backside, is among the many memorable supporting solid, enjoying Jessica’s sister Nora.
(Netflix)
“Nora is proud of her sister, but she’s also jealous — she is trapped in the very space Jessica deemed tragic and pathetic, at home with their family,” Dunham says. “Even her son seems to find it fairly pathetic, and his father gets to be the hero, despite having left. I’m not a mother, but I can relate to feeling stuck because of obligation and also to wondering when it’s going to be your turn to make the decision that’s right for you. She doesn’t get her ‘next act’ and has to live with the one she’s got. If we get to make a second season, I have a lot to mine here.”
It’s unclear how a lot of “Too Much” there shall be. The season closes in romantic-comedy trend, with its primary couple, regardless of the street bumps, selecting one another and getting married. However Dunham has extra to say.
“We don’t always have control of how much we get to make,” Dunham says. “I thought about this with the first season of ‘Girls’ — if this show never comes back, then I want to end with Hannah eating cake on the beach after her boyfriend got hit by a truck. That’s what needs to happen. And we know how we wanted this to end. But as in life, a happy ending is just the beginning of a different life with someone. And so — “
“Twenty more seasons!” Stalter cheerily interjects.
“It’s going to run for seasons upon seasons,” Dunham continues. “But I do think about marriage comedies. I’m really obsessed with ‘Mr. Mom,’ with Michael Keaton. And I love ‘Mad About You.’ I love a comedy that lets us see what’s behind keeping a marriage going. I would love the chance to see them being parents.”
“Having triplets,” Stalter provides.
“I’d love to film Meg getting a C-section for the triplets,” Dunham says.
Stalter quips: “A whole episode is the whole C-section.”
Whereas “Too Much” places Dunham totally in her romantic comedy period, it wasn’t initially supposed to be a present about love. Earlier than she met Felber, Dunham was mulling tapping into her expertise of spending prolonged intervals in England for work and the tradition conflict of a brassy American coming to the U.Okay. Then she met Felber, and “it was the first time I ever felt like I was living in a romantic comedy,” she says. “I always felt like I was living in a sad, gritty romantic drama where they don’t end up together in the end, and someone falls asleep in a puddle.”
Lena Dunham co-created the Netflix sequence “Too Much” together with her husband, musician Luis Felber. “It was the first time I ever felt like I was living in a romantic comedy,” she says of assembly him.
(The Tyler Twins/For The Instances)
“Too Much” options episode titles that pay homage to romance movies like “Notting Hill,” “Pretty Woman” and “Love Actually.” Dunham says the rom-com style was the primary she ever beloved, however developed internalized snobbery round it as she obtained older.
“I felt like I was having this innocent romantic forced out of me,” she says. “By the time I was in my 20s, I felt embarrassed to be that romantic person. I felt as though to even feel that way was sort of naive and silly. I didn’t feel like I was allowed to want the things that I wanted or ask for the things that I really needed.”
As she obtained older and began courting once more after a interval of being single in her early 30s, that started to vary.
“When I met my husband, I was kind of back in that place in my 20s, where I thought, ‘This is not something that’s going to happen for me,’” she says. “And as a result, I was very honest and I was very blunt, and I think it ended up having a really interesting effect, which is that it actually made it possible for us to get to know each other, and in turn, created something that was more romantic than anything I’d experienced before.”
Sufficient to method him with a proposal a couple of month into their relationship: Will you make this present with me?
He stated sure. Within the time since, they’ve collaborated on different initiatives — she labored on two of Felber’s music movies and he helped rating her 2022 movie “Sharp Stick.” Engaged on a TV present, although, was a giant dedication early into their relationship. However it seems it wasn’t an excessive amount of.
“I remember thinking we could make something really cool if all the universe and all the Tetris pieces of life fall into place,” he says in a separate video name. “When you’re at the beginning of a relationship and you feel like someone’s taste matches yours, improves yours — that was Lena. I didn’t understand what it meant — ‘Hey, do you want to make a TV show with me?’ I was like, ‘What does that entail? Do I walk up and down the room just cracking jokes and you write them down?’ She’s like, ‘Basically.’ I was like, ‘I could do that.’”
It’s not their story instantly, however the present was a manner for them to place their experiences collectively.
“Our love was the germ of this, or the nucleus of it; we always wanted to make something joyful. But when you’re going on set every day with your partner, you learn a lot about them quickly,” he says. “Most couples get home from work and are like, ‘How was your day, my love?’ We had that down. I think it was a catalyst to our relationship, in a way. To be able to see Lena direct, act and write was like, ‘Wow.’ It was so inspiring to be around someone like that.”
“Our love was the germ of this, or the nucleus of it; we always wanted to make something joyful,” says Luis Felber about “Too Much.”
(Netflix)
Dunham’s mark on the rom-com style remains to be in progress. She’s at the moment in manufacturing on the upcoming movie “Good Sex,” additionally for Netflix, a couple of 40-something {couples} therapist who reenters the courting scene: “The film is very much an examination of what it is to exit your 30s and wonder if your exploration decades have come to a close,” Dunham says. “It’s a question we are always asking ourselves because the 30s were the new 20s, but what are the 40s, especially if you haven’t chosen to, or been able to be, a parent?”
The movie boasts Natalie Portman, Rashida Jones, Mark Ruffalo and ‘90s rom-com queen Meg Ryan. There isn’t an Instagram backstory concerned with the casting of that Meg. Dunham says she approached Ryan whereas at Taylor Swift‘s Eras tour cease in London.
