Adam Driver has cheeky response when asked for comment on Lena Dunham’s bombshell book

Key Points

• Adam Driver speaks out after Girls creator Lena Dunham claimed in her book that she witnessed violent behavior from him during their time on the HBO series.

• Driver starred as Dunham’s on-screen on-and-off love interest during the show’s run from 2012-2017.

• He was asked about the book for the first time at Cannes over the weekend.

Adam Driver has something to say about Lena Dunham’s recent revelations about their complicated relationship — kind of.

The actor was the subject of many a bombshell in Dunham’s new memoir, Famesick, in which the controversial author examines her life during her time as creator and star of the Emmy-winning dramedy Girls. In the book, Dunham claims she witnessed several instances of violent behavior from Driver, and detailed a turbulent dynamic between her and the Star Wars franchise alum. Dunham even claims that she and Driver nearly crossed an intimate boundary right before Driver got engaged to his now-wife, Joanne Tucker.

When asked about the revelations at a Paper Tiger press conference at Cannes on Sunday, he replied, per Variety: “I have no comment on any of that. I’m saving it all for my book.” The outlet reports that his seemingly sarcastic comments got a lot of laughs in the room.

Adam Driver attends ‘Ferrari’ premiere on Dec. 12, 2023
Credit: JC Olivera/FilmMagic

Dunham leveled a number of accusations at Driver, who played her on-again, off-again love interest Adam Sackler throughout Girls‘ six-season run on HBO. Adam, a brooding recovering alcoholic, was often unpredictable in his behavior and often unleashed his frustration on Hannah (Dunham), while she poured her insecurities into their relationship.

When the show wrapped up in 2017, Driver had only good things to say about his time on the show. “I love it,” he told Larry King that year of working alongside Dunham. “She’s very specific in her writing and she’s very open with creating a space for everyone to try anything they want to and there’s no pressure of time or pressure to get it right. It really is the best kind of working environment.”

Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.

However, according to the Too Much creator, the toxicity between the characters was reflected in the actors’ real-life relationship. Dunham claimed she experienced Driver scream in her face, hurl a chair at the wall next to her while they were rehearsing a scene, and also saw him punch a hole through the wall of his trailer.

Lena Dunham and Adam Driver on ‘Girls’
Credit: Craig Blankenhorn/HBO

Dunham noted that during rehearsals, they were prone to arguments, usually about the content of a scene. “I reasoned that the intensity of his anger at me, anger that could make him spit and throw things, was proportionate to the intensity of our creative connection,” she wrote. “I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering if Adam liked me. He could be short-tempered and verbally aggressive, condescending and physically imposing. He could also be protective, loving even.”

The filmmaker recalled Driver being caring when she would recount being mistreated by other men, but noted, “The entire feeling was very ‘nobody talks sh– about my mother but me.’ But did he see me as a mother? A boss? A girl? F—able? Unf—able? Irritating? Brilliant? He showed flashes of all of these.”

Elsewhere in the book, Dunham claimed that “chair incident aside,” she and Driver “felt like partners” during their time working together.

“I ran decisions by him that weren’t his to make. We rehearsed on weekends in his spare white living room, even when the scene was easy and didn’t require it. He hugged me tight in the morning and again at the end of the day,” she wrote. She went on to describe a memory in which the two were standing in his kitchen and she “looked up to see him smiling at me with something so tender, it felt like it could only have been love.”

She recalled being so “disarmed” that she dropped her glass of water.

Lena Dunham and Adam Driver on ‘Girls’
Credit: Jessica Miglio / HBO / Courtesy: Everett Collection

But after Girls wrapped in 2017, Dunham claimed that she and Driver never spoke again.

Dunham recalled the night that she and the Girls cast wrapped the HBO series and the silent ride home she shared with Driver, not realizing that they wouldn’t speak again after that. She wrote that when they parted ways, she hoped that this “reckoning” would mean a “different kind of future ahead of us,” considering their complicated relationship during the show’s run.

“Who knows—maybe I’d write him new parts,” she shared. “We would tell new stories. We would laugh at the way things had been, and smile at the way they were now.”

And yet, she wrote, “I never heard from him again.”

Famesick is now available in bookstores.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly