‘Girls’: Adam Driver Explains Why Hannah Horvath and Adam Sackler Could Never Work
Before joining the historic cast of Star Wars, Adam Driver played Hannah Horvath’s love interest, Adam Sackler, in Lena Dunham‘s Girls. Their will-they-won’t-they relationship kept many fans intrigued in the HBO series for six seasons.
Regardless of how badly some fans wanted Hannah to be with Adam, it was never going to work between them. As an actor, Driver has a good explanation for why their relationship couldn’t work.
Adam and Hannah are an imperfect couple in ‘Girls’
When we first met Hannah and Adam, she was vying for his attention. “I just want someone who wants to hang out all the time, and thinks I’m the best person in the world, and wants to have sex with only me,” she tells Adam in season 1.
By the end of season 2, Adam was running to Hannah’s side to rescue her from the clutches of her OCD. Though they rarely saw eye to eye, something about Hannah and Adam’s relationship made sense to many fans. Despite how many other relationships Hannah and Adam explored, they somehow always made their way back to each other.
In the final season of Girls, Dunham shared the heartbreaking conclusion of Adam and Hannah’s relationship in “What Will We Do This Time About Adam.” After reveling in the best moments of his relationship with Hannah while filming a movie about their relationship, Adam finds her in a bodega and offers to help her raise her unborn child. In the end, though, they both realize their relationship isn’t going to last.
Hannah Horvath ‘lives too much in her brain,’ while Adam Sackler lives ‘too much in his body’
Initially, Hannah takes to the idea of having Adam around to help with the baby. Only when she sits with her thoughts does she realize that’s not what she wants.
Driver has spoken openly about how much he admires the specificity in Dunham’s writing. “I love [working with Lena]” Driver told the late Larry King. “She’s very specific in her writing and she’s very open with creating a space for everyone to try anything they want to.”
Part of that specificity is in the differences between Hannah and Adam. “One thing that’s always an undercurrent between them is that he feels she lives too much in her brain sometimes, and she thinks he lives too much in his body,” Driver explained to The Daily Beast.
The House of Gucci star believes a connection between the brain and the body is what makes a relationship work. As he pointed out, Adam Sackler has this desire for a “carnal-blood relationship.” Hannah, on the other hand, doesn’t live in the moment or even care to.
Adam can commit and Hannah can’t
Regardless of how many times they gave their relationship a shot, Hannah and Adam were never going to work out for one reason — they’re different people. Per Driver: “Adam really respects people who commit to something — whether it be right or wrong — and follow through.” Hannah was never going to be that person.
Adam may have changed his course several times throughout the show (he was a makeshift carpenter at one point, then an actor — he even briefly considered fatherhood) but when he considered doing anything, he was “running full-force and exhausting it.”
“I think he just doesn’t want to fake it,” Driver continued to the Daily Beast. “When Adam makes a commitment to something or someone, he means it.”
Conversely, Hannah often said things that seemed “non-committal, distracted, or not present.” And that’s why her relationship with Adam Sackler was never going to work, no matter how many times they tried.
