‘Girls’: Adam Driver’s Strong Opinions About TV Almost Prevented Him From Doing the Show
Adam Driver is an award-winning actor who many people recognize from Star Wars. But before he became a mega-movie star, Driver was acting on Broadway and starring in the HBO series Girls.
Driver’s role in Girls is familiar to many fans. After all, there’s an entire Twitter account dedicated to Adam Sackler’s chest. It’s funny to think he almost didn’t try out for the HBO series.
Adam Driver played Lena Dunham’s love interest in ‘Girls’
Lena Dunham cast Driver in Girls because he had a “powerfully odd” audition. Driver played Hannah Horvath’s (Dunham) intense and quirky boyfriend Adam Sackler for six seasons. Their will-they-won’t-they relationship was one of the show’s main story arcs that allowed Driver to showcase his range as an actor.
Before Girls was well-received by viewers, Driver’s role wasn’t supposed to be a recurring part. But by the end of the series, Adam Sackler was one of the characters who evolved the most.
Adam Driver ‘didn’t want to’ audition for Lena Dunham’s show because he thought ‘TV was evil’
During an interview with Jenelle Riley at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Driver talked about getting the call to do the HBO series. “I didn’t want to do it because I was doing theater and I thought TV was evil,” Driver admitted.
After graduating from Juilliard, Driver acted in several plays on and off-Broadway. When Girls auditions were held, Driver tried out for the show but “didn’t want to.”
“We shot the pilot on my birthday, then we waited a year, and I kind of forgot — not forgot about it, but [Girls] took forever to come out,” he explained. Girls debuted on HBO in April 2012. And the rest, as they say, is history. Since appearing in Girls, Driver has gone on to do blockbuster movies like Star Wars, BlackKklansman, and Marriage Story.
Adam Driver thought the HBO series was ‘f*cking terrible’ the first time he saw it
As an actor who doesn’t enjoy watching his work, Driver was very much against the idea of seeing his performance in Girls. “I saw the pilot of Girls with Lena on her laptop,” he told Esquire in 2015. “I was like, ‘This is f*cking terrible.’ Not the show, but the experience.”
Driver has wrestled with the idea of watching his performances back to “learn from [his] mistakes.” But he’s also content with himself after a project is finalized and out there for the world to see. “The things I respond to in art are unperfect and unpolished,” the actor added.
The ‘Girls’ star felt ‘strange’ when the show concluded
By the time the HBO series ended in 2017, Driver felt differently about television altogether. “I don’t think it really hit me until the next summer,” Driver said of the end of Girls. For six years, the HBO series filmed in New York City. When the show ended, Driver felt “strange.”
“Everyone says the same sh*t about a recurring series, that it feels familial and things like that, but it’s totally true,” Driver admitted during the SAG-AGTRA talkback. Fortunately for Driver, he has been able to keep busy after Girls.
