'Girls' Shocker: Lena Dunham Sets Revival at HBO
With Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke Returning
----------------------------------------------------------
A voice of a generation has returned.

HBO has greenlit a revival of "Girls," Lena Dunham's beloved
and controversial dramedy. The 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, the original series followed a group of
friends through the misery and 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 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..."

Dunham has expressed openness 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.

While it was a frequent topic of debate during its time on the
air, "Girls" is often named one of the greatest television
shows of all time, including by Variety in 2023: "The pilot
positioned a quartet of downwardly mobile, alliteratively named
New York millennials as a counterpoint to 'Sex and the City,'
trading aspiration for closely observed cringe. That Dunham,
just 26 when the show premiered, was so consistently conflated
with her character is at once a product of misogyny and a
testament to her performance." The series, which earned 19 Emmy
nominations and two wins during its run, has received
significant renewed appreciation over the last few years.

Two names from the original "Girls" team were noticeably absent
from HBO's press release 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.

Konner was a close friend and mentor to Dunham in the early days
of "Girls," but their relationship soured as time passed. For
example, Dunham wrote about feeling pressured by Konner to
negotiate equal salaries, despite that Dunham created the series
and appeared onscreen. 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.

The original "Girls" cast also included Christopher Abbott,
Alex Karpovsky, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Jake Lacy and more.

"We're thrilled to have Lena turn her gaze from the tumult of
one's twenties to the milestone of turning 40," reads a
statement from Amy Gravitt, executive vice president and head of
HBO & HBO Max comedy programming. "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."



<https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/girls-revival-lena-dunham-allison-williams-zosia-mamet-hbo-1236909362/>






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