More than a decade ago, Lena Dunham rose to fame as the comedic force behind the HBO hit

series Girls. In her new memoir, FamSick, out today, Dunham candidly, hilariously, and

sometimes painfully, explores how she balanced her sudden celebrity with chronic illness, addiction,

and trauma. I spoke with Dunham for the latest episode of our PBS News podcast, Settle in.

Here's a clip of our conversation.

I think that there were moments, and I feel extremely grateful for my job,

and I'm certainly not throwing a pity party for myself about what happened. But at the same time,

I was looking around at my friend's lives who were still maybe having the chance to figure

things out in a more private way, to have more spontaneous experiences to travel, to sort of live a more quintessentially 20-something life. And I was

recreating a 20-something life on screen, but I was basically never not at work. You're also not

getting to live your 20s and make the mistakes of your 20s that all of us make in the privacy

of your own life, right? It's a very public experience and a highly scrutinized experience.

And all of this, we should remind people, it's all unfolding at a time when blogging is taking

off and social media is taking off and everyone on the internet has a hot take

and an opinion that they really want to share in that moment.

And you bore the brunt of a lot of that, right?

A lot of it was focused at you in a really intensely,

a lot of sometimes unkind personal way.

I wonder how you dealt with that at the time,

how you navigated that on top of managing the

responsibility of a successful show and running a team and trying to be creative in the moment.

Well, I think, firstly, I'm going to hook on to two things you said.

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