Lena Dunham admitted to cheating on her longtime ex-boyfriend, Jack Antonoff, with a childhood flame during a particularly difficult time in their relationship.
Writing candidly in his new memoir, Evil of famepublished this Tuesday, Girls The designer revealed that she reached out to her college boyfriend, Nick, while she was recovering from a hysterectomy in 2017.
Dunham, 39, explained that she struggled with a growing addiction to medication and a feeling of disconnection from Antonoff at the time, which led her to seek solace elsewhere while the music producer was on tour.
The actress described a specific night she met Nick after he asked him to cheer her up after her surgery.
In a remarkably direct passage in the book, Dunham recalls telling him in a taxi that she had experienced something “terrible” and that she didn’t want to discuss it, but that she needed him to sleep with her and “do all the work.”
She wrote that the encounter gave her a sense of euphoria that she had previously only found through intravenous medication, noting that the act made her feel “alive” even as she struggled with the guilt of being an “adulterer.”
Despite the infidelity, Dunham recalls a heartbreaking and tender end to her five-year relationship with the Bleachers leader.
She describes a morning at breakfast where she sobbed as she told Antonoff that they both knew they no longer made each other happy.
According to the memoir, they pressed their foreheads together and cried, recognizing each other as their first great love.
When a “delirious” Dunham asked her if they could still go on dates, Antonoff allegedly told her they could do whatever she wanted, both feeling a sense of relief and “euphoric with adoration” as they decided to go their separate ways.
At the time of their split in early 2018, reps described the split as “amicable,” although these new revelations suggest a much more complex and painful story behind the scenes.
Since their time together, both have moved on and married other people; Dunham married musician Luis Felber in 2021, while Antonoff married actress Margaret Qualley in 2023.
