Lena Dunham Finally Weighed In On Jack Antonoff & Lorde Affair Rumors
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Lena Dunham is finally responding to an internet theory that has circled her and ex-boyfriend Jack Antonoff for years: his alleged affair with Lorde.
In her memoir, Famesick, the 39-year-old Girls creator alluded to the longstanding rumor that Antonoff cheated on her with Lorde during the making of her sophomore album, Melodrama, which Antonoff co-wrote and produced.
Dunham recalls that as her almost six-year romance with Antonoff was unraveling in late 2017, amid her battle with endometriosis, Antonoff’s “closeness” with an unnamed “teen pop star” whose album he was producing began “striking an odd note.” Lorde and Antonoff began working together on the 2017 album in 2015, when the New Zealand-born singer was 19.
“I wasn’t paying attention, but the internet sure was,” Dunham wrote of the speculation about Lorde and Antonoff.
Dunham writes that after a particularly brutal argument in which Antonoff “spoke to me in ways I have never been spoken to,” she felt the desire “to be wanted” and eventually reached out to a former middle school flame, Nick.
“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,” Dunham recalls in Famesick, adding that her hysterectomy “changed the game” as far as romance was concerned after years of chronic pain.
She recalls texting her ex-boyfriend “with impunity, saying l’d just had major surgery and I needed to be cheered up. ‘Meet me by the bridge? Bring me a stuffed animal?’ I got an answer back in less than a minute: ‘I’m already running.'”
Dunham writes that she had a several-day-long affair with Nick before returning to Jack. “I tried to calm my sheer terror by telling myself I was finally home from a bad dream,” she writes. “I had fixed myself, proved I could be the freaky sexy lively young woman he fell in love with. I had exorcised the demon. In a way, I had f—ed Nick for both our sakes, to make our house a home again. It would all be better now. I fell asleep to the rhythm of Jack’s breathing, like I had been doing for almost six years.”
However, the following day, Dunham broached the subject of them “not making each other happy” and ultimately decided to end their relationship. “As he hugged me goodbye in the doorway, he was more careful and tender than he’d been with me in a long time. It made me want to start from the beginning. That night he texted: ‘What do you feel like?'” she writes. “It was confusing to explain. On the one hand, my heart was so heavy, I thought it might sink down and replace my uterus. I couldn’t think too far ahead or too far behind without breaking down into hysterical tears. On the other hand, Nick was in my makeshift bedroom, likely with his head between my legs while I sent the message: ‘pretty strange.'”
Dunham and Antonoff announced their breakup a month later, in January 2018, which led to a wave of rumors about Lorde and the Bleachers frontman, including a viral PowerPoint with so-called evidence.
Both Antonoff and Lorde have denied affair allegations.
“Normally I would never address rumors, but I resent having the most important friendships and working relationships in my life reduced to dumb hetero normative gossip,” Antonoff wrote on X (then-Twitter) in January 2018. “Those relationships are deeply important and sacred. With that said, I’m not seeing anyone. lol.”
In a February 2018 Instagram Live, Lorde also shot down the rumors. “Guys… Jack and I are not dating, for the last time,” she said. “I love him, he’s awesome. But we’re not dating! Please!”