Adam Driver’s ‘Good Soup’ Line: Lena Dunham Shares a Little Known Secret About the ‘Girls’ Quote
Adam Driver is no stranger to TikTok users because of his “good soup” line from Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls. Thanks to the video-sharing app, Driver’s line has become a viral sensation. Recently, Dunham took to social media to share a surprising truth about the Girls quote.
‘Girls’ quote ‘good soup’ goes viral on TikTok
Driver played Dunham’s on-screen boyfriend in the HBO series Girls, which aired six seasons from 2012 until 2017. The “good soup” audio TikTok users have pulled and used in their videos is from Girls Season 6, Episode 8, “What Will We Do This Time About Adam?”
In Girls, Hannah (Dunham) has an on-again-off-again relationship with Adam (Driver). By season 6, the two aren’t together, but when Hannah gets pregnant by another man who wants nothing to do with the baby, Adam comes back into her life.
In the episode, Hannah and Adam spend a day dreaming and half-heartedly planning to raise the baby together, from finding artist housing to Adam’s plans to build a crib — his season 1 passion for woodworking proves helpful here. When it seems like Hannah and Adam will finally work, the mood shifts.
Slowly, Hannah’s eyes fill with tears as she realizes life with Adam will never work. Adam deflects, avoiding Hannah’s emotions entirely. “What’s the rest of your night look like?” he asks.
“I’m gonna go to my house and write and then probably go to sleep, you?” Hannah replies. “I guess I’m gonna grocery shop,” Adam adds, his voice cracking. After a brief pause, he delivers the iconic line: “Good soup.”
Adam Driver improvised his ‘good soup’ line in HBO’s ‘Girls’
After the Girls quote went viral on TikTok, Dunham felt it necessary to give credit where credit was due. She took to her Instagram Stories to reveal the truth about the quote.
“For the record, Adam Driver ad-libbed this fully,” she wrote over a TikTok of the clip from the season 6 episode. “[Judd Apatow] and I can take zero credit. And also … the soup was … not good.”
“I just knew Adam Driver added the ‘good soup’ line on his own,” said a fan who shared Dunham’s post to Twitter. “Also, I know this man had absolutely no recollection of saying it when people first mentioned the meme to him.”
Adam Driver has improvising skills
Driver is no stranger to improvising. In a conversation with Daily Motion, Driver’s What If co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan spoke of his “amazing improvisational skills” used in the 2014 romantic comedy.
Driver also tapped into his improvising ability in the 2021 Ridley Scott film House of Gucci. He played Maurizio Gucci, former head of the famed fashion house who was shot to death in a murder-for-hire plot by his ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga).
In an early scene in House of Gucci, Patrizia and Maurizio have sex on top of a desk. “We blocked it out as we would any fight or any scene, then we just kind of ran it maybe once or twice, and that was it!,” Driver told Entertainment Weekly. “We were feeling it, so to speak. Everything I say sounds like a double entendre, but, we winged it!”
Driver and Gaga were working together for a month at that point in filming. “We felt very comfortable to go where we needed to go,” he concluded.
