Lena Dun­ham: ​‘It was like we were all get­ting PhDs in Medieval history’

Lena Dun­ham made her direc­to­r­i­al debut in 2010 with Tiny Fur­ni­ture before going on to helm one of the defin­ing TV shows of the last decade. Five years after Girls con­clud­ed its six-sea­son run, Dun­ham is back with two com­ing-of-age fea­tures (the oth­er being Sharp Stick). Here, she talks about adapt­ing Karen Cushman’s children’s nov­el she first got the rights to in 2013.

LWLies: What has it been like jug­gling Sharp Stick and Cather­ine, Called Birdy simultaneously?

Dun­ham: They’re both com­ing-of-age sto­ries about liv­ing in a body that’s assigned female at birth, what that feels like, what that is, and how it’s informed by the time you live in. My hus­band did the score for Sharp Stick and the sound­track for Birdy. We thought about what we were doing with both and how they talked to each oth­er. Because I was work­ing on both at the same time there’s a lot that they share.

Can you tell me your his­to­ry with the book?

It came out when I was 10 [and] I read it that year. It was one of those cult books; if you meet a girl who’s read Cather­ine, Called Birdy, she remem­bers it. Karen Cush­man so beau­ti­ful­ly shows the way his­to­ry changes, but it stays the same. I also love she’s not writ­ing adven­ture sto­ries. Birdy isn’t a swash­buck­ling teen who slays a drag­on. She’s a nor­mal girl expe­ri­enc­ing the mun­dane domes­tic expe­ri­ence of her time. We inject­ed some sort of plot that didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly exist in the book because the book is much more just like an account­ing of this year in her life — where a lot changes, but a lot stays the same. The film need­ed a slight­ly more cin­e­mat­ic shape, but the bones of it, the char­ac­ters, the voice, that’s all Karen.

Is this the first time you’ve adapt­ed something?

This was my first suc­cess­ful film adap­ta­tion – or that felt suc­cess­ful to me – and the one that was clos­est to my heart. It was ten years pitch­ing it to peo­ple, hav­ing them go, ​‘that doesn’t sound like what we’re after.’ The folks at Work­ing Title are so adept at the artistry of a peri­od piece and the artistry of a roman­tic com­e­dy. Tim Bevan, my pro­duc­er, was able to see how both of those things took root in the same sto­ry and didn’t try to make it some­thing that it wasn’t. He also taught me a lot about what movies can be, so I feel grate­ful to him. It was like like going to film school.

It had so many feel­ings I’d for­got­ten I’d ever had.

That makes me so hap­py because the hope is that if you’re a teenag­er watch­ing, you’re like, ​‘Yes! That is what I feel like every day.’ If you’re an adult watch­ing, you remem­ber that emo­tion­al des­per­a­tion that comes with like those changes in hor­mones. The thing I love about Birdy is she’s melo­dra­mat­ic; she’s hyper­bol­ic, and she’s too intense. But at the same time, who wouldn’t react that way to being mar­ried off when you are 14? I react­ed that way if I got a meal I didn’t like when I was 14. She’s a lot, but all her emo­tions are justified.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen get­ting your peri­od in this much detail in a Medieval story.

You need to see the blood because that first moment you get your peri­od and see what’s come out of you, it’s fucked up. You’re like, ​‘This is crazy! This is Cro­nen­berg body hor­ror what I’m expe­ri­enc­ing right now.’ I need­ed to feel that. There were no tam­pons, no pads, and you couldn’t go to the gro­cery store – the logis­tics of hav­ing your peri­od, the logis­tics of hid­ing your peri­od. We had an amaz­ing his­tor­i­cal con­sul­tant Helen Cas­tor who explained to us. Bel­la did this improv where she first sees the under­wear that she’s sup­posed to wear, and she goes, ​‘Those are mine? They look like my father’s.’ That first moment you see a tam­pon, you’re like, ​‘What? That’s sup­posed to go inside me?’ I want­ed you to know it has always been thus, even if this was almost 1000 years ago.

You also looked at mater­nal and new­born mor­tal­i­ty, and that sto­ry is so utter­ly heartbreaking.

Those are the hard­est scenes to film, espe­cial­ly as some­one who’s dealt with fer­til­i­ty issues and chal­lenges with my body. Bil­lie [Piper] is an amaz­ing actor, and she’d clear­ly done her research, and she’s a mom of three. I would go, ​‘Do you need any­thing? She’s like, ​‘No, I think I have this cov­ered.’ She would go from being this calm pres­ence on set to scream­ing her head off.

Cast­ing direc­tor Nina Gold has worked with Bel­la Ram­sey before [on Game of Thrones]. Can you talk to me about cast­ing Bella?

We had a meet­ing with Nina, and she said, ​‘I think I know who this is.’ She showed us a pic­ture of Bel­la, and I was entranced by her face. I knew from the minute I saw Bel­la that it was Bel­la; it could be nobody but Bel­la. She was the nexus of it, and we cast around her. The next two peo­ple I cast were Joe Alwyn and Andrew Scott, both of whom I obses­sive­ly want­ed to work with. Joe has been a friend for a num­ber of years, and I felt he had both the dreami­ness to play Uncle George but also the real deep sense he could show that pathos, sad­ness and resigned pain that that char­ac­ter has.

Andrew, I’ve been a fan of for years and years – obvi­ous­ly his work on Fleabag, his work in the the­atre. He brought so much to the char­ac­ter that I didn’t even know was there, and he took the char­ac­ter from this kind of brutish, almost car­i­ca­ture of a not under­stand­ing father to some­one who had infi­nite com­plex­i­ty. Anoth­er stand­out, Sophie Okone­do: I’ve loved her for­ev­er, whether she’s appear­ing for two sec­onds in a TV show or own­ing a movie. I mean, she’s every­thing and the eccen­tric­i­ty and play she brought to Ethel­frithal. She’s the lib­er­at­ed woman of the moment that you get to see, and Sophie embod­ied all that, and she’s so fuck­ing funny.

Andrew reminds me a lit­tle of Peter Sco­lari as your dad in Girls. He has that play­ful­ness but can go for the gut punch.

He played the char­ac­ter as vain and a lit­tle bit campy, but also clear­ly in love with his wife and kids – torn about what he needs and an alco­holic – brought all this mod­ern psy­chol­o­gy to the char­ac­ter. He makes your stom­ach twist with how present he can be. Billie’s the same, and I nev­er knew on any giv­en take give what they were going to cook up.

Can you talk about your con­ver­sa­tions with Julian Day about cos­tume design?

So much of the time, when you see Medieval, it’s drab brown because that’s how those images have aged to us. They had a very play­ful rela­tion­ship to colour, fab­rics were being import­ed, and it was an incred­i­ble era for fash­ion. We want­ed it to feel stylised with­out being a car­i­ca­ture, and I love that he was able to cap­ture cer­tain things. In mod­ern times, Aelis (Isis Hainsworth) would be wear­ing the cute coor­di­nat­ed top and skirt and Birdy would be wear­ing Con­verse, car­go pants or whatever.

He man­ages to cap­ture that but find it in the Medieval lan­guage. Andrew Scott’s char­ac­ter is in the equiv­a­lent of Guc­ci on Guc­ci on Guc­ci, and his wife is doing her own chic Louis Vuit­ton thing because they’re the equiv­a­lent of an upper-mid­dle-class fam­i­ly in a sub­urb des­per­ate to show off their wealth. He hit all those notes but trans­posed them to anoth­er peri­od. He’s a genius.

I love that you’re focused on the artistry because every­body immersed them­selves like they were get­ting PhDs in Medieval his­to­ry. These were some of the most fun pro­duc­tion meet­ings I’ve ever been in because we were both edu­cat­ing our­selves like we were in grad­u­ate school and try­ing to make some­thing visu­al­ly sumptuous.

Where did you shoot on location?

Before I wrote the script, we did a huge Medieval loca­tion scout – 17 Medieval loca­tions in six days. When we went to Stoke­say Cas­tle, I knew it was the spot. It need­ed to not be a cas­tle; it need­ed to be some­thing that was a step-down that com­mu­ni­cat­ed they were upper mid­dle class, but that there was some­thing more they were aspir­ing to. In the larg­er court­yard, we built Stone­bridge and walk­ing through that town we built was one of the most beau­ti­ful spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences of my life. We also shot at Glouces­ter Cathe­dral. We did some days at the house where they shot Atone­ment, but we had to shoot pieces of it and ignore the pieces that were not his­tor­i­cal­ly appro­pri­ate to what we were doing.

You men­tioned you’d done all this pre-pro­duc­tion in 2020; then the world locked down. What was it like to step on set after all that time?

When we were back on set, it was this mas­sive relief. Every day there was the ques­tion of will there be a Covid shut­down. It all felt so ten­ta­tive – it was pre-vac­cine. We were all masked up, and every­one was so amaz­ing­ly respect­ful and focused on get­ting us where we need­ed to go. I feel so lucky. The impe­tus for writ­ing Sharp Stick was my des­per­a­tion to be on a set and the fact that I couldn’t be, so it was incredible.

There are over­lap­ping themes, and I think what you do well is big argu­ments between female friends even in this period.

I want­ed it to feel like female friend­ship has been the same through all of this. They’re even­tu­al­ly real­is­ing their friend­ship mat­ters more than a guy – that’s the shit that gets me going.