Lena Dunham swapped โI dosโ with husband Luis Felber in 2021, and Jack Antonoff took a trip down the aisle alongside Margaret Qualley in 2023. But long before either of those nuptials, the โGirlsโ creator and the music bigshot were inseparable.
In fact, in the early 2010s, they werenโt just a couple; they were the โitโ couple.
Now, their relationship is in the spotlight thanks to “Too Much,” Dunham’s new show. Dunham has said the show is inspired by her real life โ specifically, how she met Felber.
In the series, Jess (Meg Stalter), a 30-something American workaholic, moves to the U.K. after a devastating breakup. She processes her relationship to Zev (Michael Zegler), who gets engaged to a model soon after their breakup, as she falls for Felix (Will Sharpe), a British musician.
Dunham has not said that Zev is based specifically on Antonoff, although the character inspired speculation. Instead, Dunham told Vanity Fair that Zev is a mix of bad boyfriends she’s encountered.
โThat ex-boyfriend is very much an amalgamation of every ex that Iโve had, or that a friendโs had,โ she said. โItโs this quotidian acceptance of unkindness that eats away at a person over a long period of time and degrades their sense of self. If someone were to say, โWho inspired that character?โ Iโd be like, โDo you have time for me to give you 42 examples?โโ
Dunham and Antonoff met while both of their careers were hitting their first peaks. Antonoffโs band at the time, Fun, had just broken big with the single โWe Are Young,โ while Dunhamโs HBO hit about a group of young women living in New York City was an instant and relatable hit. Together, the rising stars were millennial romance goals.
And for those who followed their relationship throughout its over five-year run, it was pure enjoyment. Because unlike so many privacy-loving stars of today, these two had a tell-all approach to love.
See what they had to say about each other back then in this relationship retrospective.
Their romance began in 2012
Antonoff first met Dunham on โa blind date, by modern standards.โ
The two met in 2012, when comedian Mike Birbiglia, a friend of Antonoff, set them up. But as the Bleachers frontman explained to Vulture in 2014, he didnโt really go into the date blind.
โI mean, I used the internet,โ he said.
Nothing the internet told him prepared him for how quickly he and Dunham would hit it off, as he added, โI told Lena everything about my whole life, because when you really like someone, you want them to know everything about you.โ
Dunham was โlike 40 minutes lateโ to that first meeting, but the delay clearly didnโt harsh their vibe, she shared with The New York Times in 2014.
โWhen I met Jack, I said to my mom, โI met this guy, and heโs obsessed with dying, too,โโ she told the New York Times. โAnd he lives in his parentsโ house!โ
For Dunham, who has been vocal about her own mortality anxiety and who lived with her parents at the time, those details made for a kismet connection.
Revealing their relationship
When asked about having a boyfriend during a chat with Interview in 2013, Dunham was thrilled to share the happy news.
โIโm totally fine to state his name: itโs Jack Antonoff,โ she said. โI know thereโs some rule that youโre not supposed to talk about your boyfriend publicly because it seems like all starlets under the age of 33 have decided not to do that, but if youโre in love with someone great, then I donโt understand why you wouldnโt tell everybody.โ
She added, โYou donโt have to post naked pictures of them on the internet or tweet pictures of your Christmas celebration, but I feel like, in a way, heโs my best advertisement, so Iโm like, โWhy would I not tell people who ask?โโ
They went from long-distance to live-in
Despite falling for one another from the very start, their careers came between them physically.
โWe met, and then the day after we met, we were apart for three months,โ Dunham once mentioned on The Howard Stern Show. โSo, our relationship was sort of formed long-distance.โ
But it didnโt stay that way for long. Once they were able to be face-to-face again, they decided to cohabitate โ even though it wasnโt an easy arrangement. Soon enough, Antonoff was back on tour, and Dunham was left to decorate their tchotchke-filled abode with help from her mom.
โAnd he hated it,โ she later told Domino. โHe didnโt want to hate it. He tried not to hate it. But he didnโt like living among the insides of my mind. I thought I was giving him a gift, like the time I came home from summer camp and my mother had painted my walls four different chalky colors and installed a poster, a candle shaped like a slice of honeydew melon and an inflatable chair … I wanted to give him the magic that sheโd always given me by dreaming her maddening dreams. But he wanted a Restoration Hardware couch and a giant watch to hang on the wall.โ
Taylor Swift penned a song about them
Antonoff, an 11-time Grammy winner, is a frequent producer and cowriter with Taylor Swift. In 2014, he spoke to the singer about the origin story behind her love song, โYou Are in Love,โ for MTV.
Swift then told him that he and her close friend, Dunham, were the inspiration for the lyrics.
โI was sitting in bed when I realized that these lyrics that I was writing were channeling everything Lenaโs told me about the two of you,โ she said of the song from her โ1989โ album. โI was really emotional writing this song, because I was so happy for you guys. You guys are the benchmark of actual, true, real love, like it talks about in that song.โ
Without knowing it was about the couple, Swift said that Dunham later told her that would be their โwedding song.โ
Why they never married each other
Dunham and Antonoff often teased the topic of marriage during their time together. In one of many since-deleted Instagram posts from the former couple, Dunham even waved her ring finger at the camera and joked, โIโm waiting! Hello!โ
Antonoff addressed that clip in his interview with Vulture, noting, โI think all people in relationships that last longer than a year start talking about that stuff. Itโs hard to imagine when the right time is because things are so crazy at the moment.โ
For her part, Dunham wasnโt really in any rush anyway.
โWeโre not against marriage,โ she told Howard Stern in 2014. โBut I want to wait… My sister (Grace) is gay, and it just doesnโt feel good to me to do something she canโt do.โ
Same-sex marriage was legally recognized nationwide in the U.S. the following year.
The end
After five-plus years of loved-up quotes and cute photo ops, in December 2017, Dunham and Antonoff broke up.
โWe sat in our shared kitchen of nearly four years and quietly faced each other, acknowledging what nobody wanted to say,โ Dunham recalled in an essay she wrote for Vogue just five months after the split.
Dunham does not name Antonoff in the Vogue essay, but the timeline described aligns with their relationship.
โThat obsessive connection had turned to blind devotion, and the blinders were coming off to reveal that we had evolved separately (the least shocking reason of all and perhaps the most common). That anger wasnโt sexy or sustainable. That our hearts were still broken from trying so hard to fix it but no longer uncertain about whether or not we could. The finality nearly killed me, and I remember muttering, โBut what if we still went on dates?โ He laughed sadly. โWhatever you want.โโ
Instead, from that point, she said they only shared โthe kind of loving but overly careful check-ins that define a separation after longtime togetherness.โ
