On a recent sun-dappled afternoon, I met the thirty-eight-year-old writer, director, and actress Lena Dunham at a brasserie called Soutine, in London, not far from her home in North London. “This place is like my out-of-house office,” Dunham said, as she settled into a brown leather banquette at a corner table. The restaurant was nearly empty, save for a few customers lingering over tea, but you could sense that it was the kind of place that did a bustling brunch service. “I think I like it here because of its inherent Tribeca-ness,” Dunham said. “I was, like, O.K., this place makes sense to me.” Dunham grew up in Tribeca, as the daughter of two artists, the painter Carroll Dunham and the photographer and filmmaker Laurie Simmons. She has a tattoo of the Odeon’s neon sign. (“On my butt, or I would show it to you,” she said.) She is, in many ways, the consummate city kid, not least because she created one of the great New York TV shows of all time, the HBO comedy series “Girls.” But, since 2021, Dunham has been spending most of her time in London with her husband, the British Peruvian musician Luis Felber, enjoying a relatively low-key expat existence.
Read Full Article »
