LOS ANGELES — “Girls,” the show that was the voice of its generation — or at least a voice of a generation — is coming back. HBO announced Tuesday that creator and star Lena Dunham and nearly all of the core cast will return for a limited five-episode run a decade after its finale. Dunham, now 40, will again play her aspiring writer and sort-of alter-ego Hannah, along with Allison Williams as Marnie, Jemima Kirke as Jessa, Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna and Andrew Rannells as Elijah. Judd Apatow will return as executive producer. The announcement makes no mention of Adam Driver returning. The show will begin production in 2027, 10 years after the finale of the series that ran for six seasons from 2012-2017 and was nominated for 19 Emmys, winning two. “We always said we would only return to GIRLS if there was a specific story we were burning to tell,” Dunham said in a statement. “I’ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t quite picture them in the present day. Then, right around my fortieth birthday, they started talking to me in the shower. And, as you may remember, once this fivesome starts talking it’s pretty hard to get them to stop.” The revival is among the first production announcements made by HBO since its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery was taken over by Skydance-owned Paramount. The show was both a touchstone and a lightning rod for its depiction of a group of millennial young women in New York, with its vocal haters often louder than its many devotees. Affection for it has seen a major surge in the decade since, especially among younger viewers, who see it as aspirational as well as endlessly quotable and meme-able. In one of its most repeated lines, Hannah, while asking her parents to keep supporting her, tells them “I think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice of a generation.” Dunham has kept making film and television, directing the 2022 movie “Catherine Called Birdy” and co-creating the TV series “Camping” and “Too Much,” but none of it has had nearly the cultural impact of “Girls.” Her screen appearances have been mostly limited to small guest roles. Williams has had several memorable movie roles especially in horror films including “Get Out” and two “M3GAN” movies. But while the show was all about the lives of young women, the biggest star it spawned was Driver, who went on to star in a “Star Wars” trilogy and has been nominated for two Oscars. Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press
