American actor Adam Driver batted away accusations about aggressive behaviour on the set of the television series Girls at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday. The actor was asked about filmmaker Lena Dunham’s comments in her recent memoir, in which she detailed Adam’s alleged aggressive behaviour on set.
Adam Driver dismisses Lena Dunham accusations
At the Cannes Film Festival, Adam Driver is promoting James Gray’s new crime thriller Paper Tiger, which also stars Scarlett Johansson. On Sunday, during a press interaction, as he was asked about Lena Dunham’s accusations against him, the actor said, “I have no comment on any of that. I’m saving it all for my book.”
Lena Dunham accused the Star Wars star of being rough with her during their first sex scene. He “hurled me this way and that”, she wrote in her new memoir Famesick. She added that while “it wasn’t that I felt violated,” she felt she had “lost directorial authority”. At another point in the memoir, Dunham wrote that Adam “hurled a chair at the wall next to me” when he grew angry at her for forgetting her lines during a rehearsal, and swore repeatedly at her.
The incidents allegedly took place on the sets of their hit show, Girls, which ran for six seasons until 2017. The show was about a self-obsessed writer and her boyfriend, named Adam, played by Adam Driver, and their on-off, toxic relationship. The show seemed to mirror Dunham’s own life. She wrote, directed and acted in the series.
Adam Driver’s new film
Adam Driver is currently starring in Paper Tiger. The drama about an ordinary family that falls under the sway of the Russian mafia in New York is in the running for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize.
James Gray, the film’s director, said his film was an indictment of the often “transactional” nature of the United States. “Like the current American president, who is a symptom of what I’m talking about. Totally transactional. You know, how can I make the most money? This ethos becomes everything, and what does that do to our souls? If you tell young people it doesn’t matter whether you’re a good person or not… it leaves them adrift,” he said.