Daily Front Row

2012 April 5

Girls, Girls, Girls

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Zosia Mamet, Lena Dunham
NICK HUNT / PatrickMcMullan.com View Gallery

(NEW YORK) How much did your Daily want to love Girls, as in the show as well as the quartet of leading girls, before last night's New York premiere of the show hosted by HBO avec The Cinema Society? Oh, so much. Luckily, the first three episodes of the witty, wry, and perfectly imperfect half-hour HBO show, aired at the SVA Theater in Chelsea, more than delivered on the hype.

As for the Sex and The City comparisons, the comparisons haven't (yet) hit the levels of irritability one might expect. "Not at all! I'm such a big fan," said the show's co-exec producer, Judd Apatow. "Sarah Jessica Parker asked me to direct one of the first episodes [of SATC], but I wasn't able to do it because I was working on Freaks and Geeks at the time. It's daunting to do a show about young women in New York, because Sex and The City was the best show that ever did it. You want to find a way to be fresh." 

One source (among many) of lavish pre-premiere praise was last week's New York cover story, to which Dunham's initial reaction was far more mortified than giddy. "Someone tweeted me a picture of the cover before I saw it on newsstands and I thought I was going to fall over. When I went to buy it, the guy asked if it was me on the cover; I just threw down ten dollars and ran out." But the "surreal" experience of being a cover girl and all the work and praise preceding that doesn't seem to have starlet-ized Dunham very much, if at all. If it weren't for, oh, the premiere of her own HBO show before the age of 25 in the very city where said show is set, Dunham's Wednesday evening would likely consist of "eating gluten-free cookie dough while watching an old movie." Parfait. 

Which got your Daily wondering about the things the world doesn't (yet) know about Dunham. "I don't think there is anything; Lena shares it all," exclaimed Jemima Kirke, who co-starred with the dynamo multi-hyphenate wunderkind. If you want to know what Lena's tits look like, you can know. Everyone can know!" As for the duo's shared wealth of tattoos? "I just like pretty things on my body. I did two of Lena's, actually," laughed Kirke. "One is on her tush. Not with a gun; with needle and ink. Unfortunately, no, that's not the first time [tattooing a friend]. There are some people running around out there with scribbles done by me." 

Allison Williams, donning a lovely black and white Donna Karen bow-cinched column dress, rolled deep for the occasion. Just how many of her girls? "A ton! There are, 11 or 12 or 13, and it's the nicest thing ever. Some came from D.C., and I haven't seen some in a while," said Williams. In terms of any spoilers or precautions for her nearest and dearest pre-screening, Williams was frank about the disarming realism on the small screen. "I keep telling them it's so relatable, it's almost too real, and there are parts of the show where my friends will be like, 'oh my God, did someone sneak into my head?'"

Well, someone definitely did not sneak into the actress' father's head (that would be Brian Williams), who endured a revealing couple of scenes featuring his daughter before hitting the after party at The Top of The Standard in the company of a couple other key NBC faces. (Hi, Katie Couric and a slew of castmates from SNL to 30 Rock to The Office.) Also on the premises for a party of buzzy, packed proportions, apres screening? Calvin Klein, Nicole Miller, Zac Posen, Stuart Weitzman's Karen Duffy, Teen Vogue's Amy Astley, Jay McInerney, Michelle Trachtenberg, Katie Lee, Kevin Bacon et Kyra Sedgwick, Claire Danes, Steve Buscemi, Sandra Bernhard, et al. For anyone that missed the buffet memo (or the seemingly endless stream of Baked by Melissa twee cupcakes, on passed platters, dappling tables, and even organized into an enormous display outlining the show's title), there were morsels to be had among the intriguing medley of swag upon exit. A post-party nosh to ward off today's bleariness? Girls will be girls, after all. 
ALEXANDRA ILYASHOV