Lena Dunham is owning up to the role white privilege played in launching her career.
In a Twitter thread on Sunday, Dunham responded to numerous tweets from filmmakers and actors of color calling her out over a 2017 tweet from the Hollywood Reporter that read, “@LenaDunham was 23 when she sold #Girls to HBO with a page-and-a-half-long pitch, without a character nor a plot.”
The Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood actor responded, “Whenever I find out I’m trending, I have to immediately check if I’m alive! Then, I try and see if there’s a constructive dialogue to have on Twitter. Often there isn’t, but today there really WAS. It actually wasn’t a dialogue - it was just me agreeing that the Hollywood system is rigged in favor of white people and that my career took off at a young age with relative ease, ease I wasn’t able to recognize because I also didn’t know what privilege was.
“The past ten years have been a series of lessons,” she continued. “The lesson now? Sit down. Shut up, unless it’s to advocate for change for Black people. Listen. Make art in private for a while- no one needs your book right now lady. Give reparations widely. Defund the police. Rinse & repeat.”
One of the tweets that kicked off this viral reckoning came from Ahmed Best, a Black film professor and the voice of Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequels, who wrote, “I have a masters degree in film and teach film at a top tier university, An over twenty five year professional career and I walk into pitches with a fully realized bible pilot and seven season arc, and often times told it’s not enough. But Lena Dunham, cool.”
Dunham also replied to the original Hollywood Reporter tweet, writing, “The fact is plenty of people had the talent, drive and focus I had. My whiteness opened doors and made my vision palatable for the mainstream. It took me a long time to understand and digest that as Black critics and thinkers patiently explained. It’s blindingly clear to me now things I love to write about- bad behavior etc- are allowed & welcomed because of my race and privilege and het cisness. the goal now is to use my platform to support emerging Black artists, BIPOC artists, LGBTQ artists.”
In addition to benefiting from general white privilege, Dunham is also the daughter of well-known, and well-connected, New York artists Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons.
UPDATE: This article has been edited to more accurately reflect Dunham’s family history.
— Author Uzodinma Iweala on White Signs at Black Protests
— “George Floyd Was Killed in My Neighborhood”
— 15 Years After Katrina, a Second Storm—Coronavirus—Hits New Orleans
— How Meghan Markle Decided to Finally Speak Out About George Floyd
— Nikkita Oliver on Seattle’s Extraordinary Protests and What Comes Next
— Where J.K. Rowling’s Transphobia Comes From
— From the Archive: The Origin of “Strange Fruit,” Billie Holiday’s Ballad Against Racism
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily newsletter and never miss a story.
