Yesterday was Lena Dunham’s day: her first Vogue cover was unveiled – an Annie Leibovitz portrait and shoot featuring Adam Driver – to rapturous, overwhelmingly positive internet response and she arrived in London to show a pack of clearly delighted media the first two episodes of the third series of Girls. 

Wearing a pre-fall Erdem dress (Erdem Moralioğlu was in the audience as was series three guest star Felicity Jones), she posed on the red carpet alongside her co-stars Allison Williams (a glossy vision in Alexander McQueen) and Zosia Mamet (pretty in a dusty pink Elisabetta Franchi ensemble) before taking part in a Q&A with Richard E Grant. Articulate and composed, she and her co-stars and Jenni Konner (the show’s producer and co-creator) talked movie versions, sex scenes and *that* Victoria Beckham rumour. 

 

Lena Dunham on jet lag: I have really bad jet lag you guys so I could say anything. I feel like I’m just cramming every word from my SATs into every sentence…

On mining her life for material: I guess the work that has always interested me has been confessional in nature or ridden that line between truth-telling memoir and fiction. I remember that we read Of Human Bondage in high school and somebody said that W. Somerset Maugham had substituted his gayness with a limp and I was obsessed with reading everything that I could …’Was he gay?’ … ‘Did he have a limp?’… ‘What was really happening here?’ I’m really interested in that sort of stemline between reality and fiction. The art that intrigues me most usually has that. 

On Richard E. Grant comparing her to Barbra Streisand: The Barbra Streisand comparison is unbelievable. What a joy. I got in so much trouble in fifth grade for hiding the Barbra Streisand autobiography inside of my math textbook. 

On working with women: We don’t have the kind of set where a woman is going to feel guilty for expressing herself. 

On Howard Stern: He said I looked like Jonah Hill… 

On critics: Something that’s funny is a lot of people feel the need to say ‘When I first saw the show I hated it and I hated you and now I’ve watched more and I really love it’ and it’s like why don’t you just leave out the first part…   

On sex scenes: We've never made a sex scene that was like 'Guys look like you're really enjoying yourself.'

On that Victoria Beckham rumour: Lena – I did not mention that. I mean I’m not saying that she’s not... Jenni Konner – We were thrilled but that is something that came from journalists. Lena – We would be very be excited to welcome Victoria Beckham onto our set but this is an arranged marriage made by like the Daily Mail. 

On possible cameos: Lena – Oprah has approached me … that’s a joke. Jenni – Allison wants Jamie Dornan. Lena – There are so many amazing actors and we try to write parts with people in mind. We are obsessed with Lupita Nyong’o. 

What else we learned. 

Allison Williams was called to audition for the part of Marnie (who was originally written as a Jewish Daria type) after Judd Apatow saw a Mad Men-themed video she put on YouTube. 

And there could be a Girls movie some day as Jenni Konner admitted, 'You know we're really, really happy with the platform we have know but never say never.' Here's hoping...

Girls series three starts on Sky Atlantic on January 20.