On Tuesday night, Lena Dunham curled up with Andrew Rannells, her former “Girls” co-star, in a queen size bed bedecked with a floral comforter and a dozen decorative pillows.
The scene had slumber party vibes, right down to the confessional, conspiratorial conversation and a musical ballerina jewelry box on a night stand nearby. But, instead of pajamas, Dunham wore a custom skirt suit festooned with ruffled lace, and Rannells sported a pinstripe blazer. He had shoes on under the covers; she’d tossed her silver heeled white pumps aside before climbing in. The bed was center stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Howard Gilman Opera House.
“It is such a pleasure to be here with you in my bedroom, in the borough where so much happened,” Dunham said, after a crowd of around 2,000 — mostly women spanning Gen X to Gen Z — cheered her arrival for a full minute.
“My book came out today,” Dunham continued. “I’m done writing things that generate headlines or create noise. I just want to tell stories that comfort people, that you can share with your grandmother.” She paused, leaning into her microphone. “If your grandmother’s ever had sex in the I.C.U.”
The book is “Famesick,” Dunham’s second memoir, in which she explores, in witty and harrowing detail, the toll of early fame, chronic illness and the strange conundrum of being both unapologetically outspoken and an inveterate people pleaser. Dunham worked on it for almost a decade, starting after a stint in rehab for Klonopin addiction — where, she admitted onstage, “I made friends that will last a lifetime that I’ve never spoken to again.”
When Dunham’s first book, “Not That Kind of Girl,” came out in 2014, she embarked on an extensive, continent-spanning tour, “a traveling circus of sorts” that a New York Times article compared to Burning Man.
“I went everywhere. I went all around Europe,” Dunham said in an interview on Zoom, conducted from her real-life bed in New York City. “In every country, the publisher would go, ‘We’ve got a really fun idea,’ and what would follow would be a not fun idea. I was 28, and I thought I had to be game for it all. I had not a boundary in my possession. By the end of it I was just shattered.”
Dunham, who has endometriosis and a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, among other health challenges, resolved to take a different approach this time. Given the heavy content of this book, it was important to her that events be “joyful and playful.” She didn’t want to devolve into a “Lena-shaped husk,” as she wrote in her “Lil’ Bitty Book Tour” announcement on Substack.
The “Famesick” tour includes one virtual celebration and a handful of stops on the East and West Coasts and in London, where she spends most of her time. All of the interviews will be conducted from bed.
“There’s this part in the book where I talk about going from bed to bed to bed,” Dunham said. “I was in bed at my parents’ house. I was in bed at my apartment. I was in bed at the hospital. In bed at rehab. So I just said, I feel like the stage should be an approximation of my bedroom.”
The mattresses and frames will differ from place to place, although Brooklyn and Philadelphia shared the same set. Dunham is traveling with her own pillows, blankets and other favorite items.
At a traditional book talk, an author and an interlocutor perch on tall chairs with two glasses of water between them (and maybe a vase of tulips if the organizer has had time to run to the grocery store).
“For a long time, I didn’t feel comfortable questioning any of these conventions,” Dunham said on Zoom. “I didn’t feel comfortable saying, ‘Hey, a director’s chair, which is but a thin strap of canvas supporting your butt, is not built for me. It’s for a small bony man in a baseball cap.’”
Now on the brink of 40, Dunham is, as she put it, “way past projecting seriousness” or being embarrassed about her own “specificities.”
She added, “I’m not past caring because past caring would sound like you don’t want other people to be happy or comfortable. But there’s a freedom that is so delightful.”
She recorded her audiobook from a prone position on her couch. She designed book stamps to spare herself the discomfort of signing thousands of books. (“Repetitive motion is a big thing for people with EDS.”) She invited her conversation partners — who will also include Michael Lewis and Emily Ratajkowski — to wear pajamas.
So far nobody has taken her up on the offer, nor has anyone declined to get in bed with Dunham.
“They’ve all seemed thrilled,” she said. “I think everyone’s sick of the stiff chairs.”
The BAM event, which started at $60 a ticket, including a copy of the book, turned out to be less circus/Burning Man and more comedy/variety show, with notes of poignancy.
“I was so upset about the way people talked about you,” Rannells said onstage, referring to the relentless public scrutiny of Dunham beginning in her 20s — of her weight, her teeth, her opinions, her clothing, even the way she walked in heels.
“I was so nervous about doing this because I was there for all of it and I feel like I didn’t ask you the right questions, ever,” Rannells said.
“You did the best thing that anyone could do,” Dunham responded. “Every time I was with you I was happy.”
A white cotton nightgown hung over a rattan room divider and there were piles of books around the stage, spines mostly hidden from view. They included “The White Album,” by Joan Didion, “They Can Kill You … But They Can’t Eat You,” by the late Hollywood producer Dawn Steel, and vintage photography books, Dunham revealed beforehand. A green bedside lamp vaguely resembled one that was beside her on Zoom.
In addition to the chat with Rannells, the two-hour evening featured a reading from “Famesick”; two slide shows; games with audience members; a guided meditation in which Dunham encouraged the crowd to let their legs sink into the floor and “consider that every part of your body will one day be food for the worms”; and answers to prerecorded questions from readers.
“I find myself choosing their approval over my happiness,” a woman named Lizzie said. “It’s so easy to say ‘Tune it out, choose yourself,’ but how do you actually do that?”
Dunham, one-time wunderkind, took on the air of a sage aunt.
“The most important thing I’ve done is take time to think about what my actual values are,” she said. “Not what my value is to other people, but what are the things that matter that make me want to get up every morning.”
The next question came from Jessie, seated in the back of the orchestra, who said she’d watched “Girls” in every phase of her life, from high school to college to adulthood.
“I’m also another chronic illness girlie,” she said. “I have POTS and endometriosis. I was wondering what you do on the really hard days to push through?”
After speculating that Jessie was probably “feeling a pain that would cause any man to pour gasoline over his body and light himself on fire,” Dunham advised transparency with friends.
“It’s hard because you’re young,” she said. “They have not yet encountered what it feels like to be in a body that feels like it’s failing you. That’s really lonely, and you’re not alone.”
After the meditation and before the slide show featuring her pets, Dunham received a standing ovation and another round of applause, this one longer and louder than the first.
Then she held up her shoes. “Is anybody a size 40?” Dunham asked. “I’m not kidding. Who wants them?”
She handed her vintage Valentinos to an ecstatic fan and padded offstage with Rannells.
Pamela Marcus, 62, attended the show with her daughter, Katie Marcus, 20, an aspiring writer and actor. “Being able to come and watch Lena in the flesh was more than I could ask for,” Katie said.
“It was honest and raw and great,” her mother added.
Ellen Houlihan, 42, a film director who spent the day listening to the “Famesick” audiobook, compared the event to “a modern episode of ‘Girls.’ We’re a little bit older, we see things differently now, we have compassion for our younger selves.”
Dunham felt the same way.
“Now I trust myself to step out on a stage and behave in a way that is self protective, yet emotionally open,” she said. “And that is a much more powerful place to be.”
Elisabeth Egan is a writer and editor at the Times Book Review. She has worked in the world of publishing for 30 years.
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