Lena Dunham has broken her silence on her past relationship with Jack Antonoff in a vulnerable memoir titled Famesick.
The 39-year-old admitted to cheating on Antonoff, while the Modern Girl singer developed a "closeness" with an unnamed "teen pop star", whose album he was producing, which struck an "odd note" with her.
Dunham and Antonoff dated for five years, from 2012 to 2018, and while the pop star was not named, netizens are suspecting the Too Much creator is hinting at Lorde, whose 2017 album Melodrama was co-written and co-produced by the Bleachers frontman.
The relationship between the music producer and the singer did not sit well with Dunham, who was struggling with medical issues at the time, leading her to spark an affair with a former middle school flame named Nick.
In her book, she noted that Antonoff spent his time "locked in a room with a teen pop star whose needs seemed as massive and complex as my own, and who called me 'Aunt Lena' when I hobbled into the kitchen with my walker to grab another bottle of green tea".
Prior to admitting her own affair, Dunham hinted at viral and unfounded online speculation about Lorde and Antonoff.
"I had never stopped flirting—I mean, I wasn't dead yet — but I had observed careful boundaries, never taking it far enough that I could be declared out of bounds. If I'd wanted to look, perhaps I may have seen that Jack was not observing them as closely as I was," she explained, writing that a hysterectomy in late 2017 "changed the game".
She was fighting chronic illness related to her endometriosis diagnosis at the time, and she underwent a hysterectomy after multiple surgical procedures for the condition in 2017.
Dunham wrote about returning home from a bone density test one day to find the pop star "sprawled across our sectional couch, weeping into Jack's lap as he told her that 'your teens are for experimenting' in a tone so comforting, it almost brought tears to my eyes," adding, "It had been so long since he'd spoken to me with that kind of expansive generosity."
The Sharp Stick director admitted it made her feel like "some kind of half wife", and she reached out to Nick to "cheer" her up after a major surgery.
"I got an answer back in less than a minute: 'I'm already running,'" she penned.
Their relationship quickly turned physical and lasted several days. She recalled telling Nick that she'd "been through something awful," and she needed him to "f--- her."
Notably, Lena Dunham went on to tie the knot with musician Luis Felber in 2021, while Jack Antonoff married actress Margaret Qualley in 2023.
