The thing that's different about 'Girls' and 'Sex and the City' isn't just that we live in Brooklyn; it's that these girls aren't trying to find their major career paths or life partners. They're just literally trying to get through the week and pay the rent. It's a really different time of life.
Jennifer Konner
I don't like to listen to the unthoughtful criticism. When we have thoughtful criticism, I love it.
The first time I saw Lena Dunham was in 'Tiny Furniture.'
I just went insane. I just, like, couldn't get off of Twitter. It was like, 'I guess this is where I live now - talking about Emily Gould on Twitter'.
Some writing programs are very much like, you come in, and you have a niche that becomes yours, and, you know, you're the dude from the streets. Or you're the woman who was in prison.
You know what my job is? I'm Mrs. Garrett from 'Facts of Life.'
What I always think about when I think about 'Girls' is Lena being in a scene where she's very vulnerable, possibly directing, acting, and she's probably written the dialogue. It's 2 in the morning. Everyone's tired. Everyone's grumpy. And she has a smile on her face and kindness for everyone who interacts with her.
I always think there's this thing, when you live in New York, like, this unspoken agreement between everyone who lives there, like, 'We're sticking this out. It's the hardest place to live, but it's the best city in the world, so we are all going to do this together.'
You have trouble breastfeeding, and for some reason, it's supposed to be so organic that you feel like you're doing something incorrect.
When we worked on 'Girls,' we've had some really meaningful dialogue with our fans and with critics and really learned a lot of things. Like, on the question of diversity, we heard people, and we responded, which is very different from, like, 'Hey fatty, what are you doing on TV?' And that's what we're trying to avoid.
There were no surprises, because when you sell a pilot based on a pitch, no matter how great the script is, it's going to look different and feel different from what someone imagines in their head. There will always be varying degrees of disappointment or confusion.
That's like - my thing is I'm always like, 'Oh, white men are ruining everything,' and Max's dad is like... don't say that in front of your son.
I worked with Michael Bay on 'Transformers,' and I got to work with the writer of 'Transformers,' who's this really great guy whom I loved.
We want to talk to celebrities about the things celebrities don't normally talk about. Like, we'd love to get Kim Kardashian to talk to us about finance. She is a businesswoman, after all.
It's very hard to get together with your friends. You rarely see friends as a whole group.
It's when people come at you on Twitter and say really crazy things. That's the kind of stuff that I insulate myself from. All of that is not very interesting or helpful, but we have critics who sometimes really love us or sometimes don't, and it's really interesting for me to see what they don't like about it.
I think a great negotiator is an aggressive negotiator, and we're aggressive negotiators, We're not worried about someone coming at us.
One of the reasons 'Boogie Nights' is one of my favorite movies is because it's about people in this gross industry, but they actually treat each other kind of like family. And at the end of the day, they're really kind to each other, and I feel like that is what we have.
We've never had twin infants on set in all kinds of different roles.
We just want to be sure that what we're creating is pushing the ball forward for women and diversity in media.
Our interests are pretty boundless, as is our appetite for new creative experiences.
The key is that when we disagree, we really hear the other one out and agree that there is a more elegant solution than one of us 'winning.'
I just saw 'Tiny Furniture' and became so obsessed with it that Judd Apatow jokes that I'm the distributor of it. I was making copies and giving them out.
I think it's weird that they're trying to make us be negative about 'Sex and the City'... Not HBO, but the press. Really, they're dying for us to say something negative about 'Sex and the City.'
I'm in charge of a lot of young women. They occasionally come to me for advice, and I have to wrangle them.
All of my peers were becoming bajillionaires. There was no one from college left in the temp force.
When the insane people start the chatter, there's no way to win that fight. It's literally like arguing with someone who is speaking another language, so there's no engaging with that kind of stuff.
It is very hard work, but I am a big believer in not micromanaging; I hire really, really talented people and trust them to do their jobs.
I'd quit my job at a production company and was like, 'I'm going to be a writer...' I became a temp, and it was the mid-nineties, when there was the Internet boom, and the normal group of graduates ready to fill in didn't exist.
I was like, 'I don't get out of bed for less than $21 an hour!'... I temped at Chanel and the New York Stock Exchange, and then I'd come home and write.
To be unkind to anyone. There's no room for that. Not on my watch.
Lena Dunham texts me every morning the minute she wakes up to make sure I'm alive.
To be a little divisive is kind of hot.
I've worked on sets that were unhappy.
I'm always shocked by what people react to.
The truth is that, to me, a likeable character is a character that is really flawed, so I don't know what people mean when they say 'likable.'
We work the full year round to make 10 or 12 episodes, and 'The Good Wife' makes, like, 26 in that time or something, which I can't believe. I don't know how they do it.
When we're in production, it's 14 hours a day, and we couldn't be less involved in the world. My friends all hate me during that time because I can't see anyone. We say goodbye to everything.
I've worked with Judd since 'Undeclared,' and once you work with Judd you never stop working with Judd.
People will fight hard for something they want or something they don't want, that they don't believe a character would do.
The origin of 'Lenny Letter,' it started because Lena went on her book tour, and she had these audiences, young women, really diverse and looking for guidance.
Judd Apatow, together with me and Lena, we're all the showrunners of 'Girls.'
