Lena Dunham’s “Girls” didn’t go quietly into the night in its six and final season. Dunham and producing partner Jenni Konner continued to push the creative boundaries of the half-hour “comedy” format. One of their most impressive endeavors was “American Bitch” which was written by Dunham and directed by series veteran Richard Shepard (“The Matador,” “Dom Hemingway”).
The season’s third episode finds Hannah (Dunham) agreeing to meet a noted author Chuck Palmer (a fantastic Matthew Rhys) after she’s published a story with allegations that he coerced college students into having sex with him. Palmer initially defends himself claiming Hannah’s made a mistake by using Tumblr posts as her evidence. Eventually, he convinces Hannah to apologize only to flip his power play back on her in a truly shocking moment in a series with a long history of shocking moments.
Shepard jumped on the phone last week to talk about “American Bitch” which is arguably one of the stronger stand-alone pieces of half hour content in any form created over the past year. You can read our full interview below.
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Gregory Ellwood: You’ve been with the show, basically, since the beginning doing a couple episodes pretty much every season. What was the process like to figure out which episodes you would direct every year?
Richard Shepard: I’ve basically done two episodes a season, for six seasons, which is like the greatest summer job in the history of mankind. Things definitely change. At the beginning, I was the first director ever to direct something that Lena had written that she wasn’t directing. She shared the responsibility of directing her work and in that way was its own level of pressure, obviously. But, we were just starting out at a new show. It was very much in its infancy and they were still trying to figure out the film language that they were gonna use and the type of story they were gonna tell. But, by the second season, I developed a relationship with Lena [where] I think she trusted me in a way. That I had proven myself in that I hadn’t completely destroyed her writing. She started feeling a little bit more comfortable [about] the things she wanted to write about. The third episode I ever directed for ‘Girls’ was “One Man’s Trash”, which was a Patrick Wilson episode, and I think a very successful collaboration in terms of working with Lena creatively. But, I think it also opened her mind as well as the minds of other producers into what kind of episodes they could do. As each season progressed, Lena started specifically thinking of me for certain types of episodes which are like the fantasy like you’re a television director. The end of the day on television, it is the show writer-creator who has the final creative say. Unlike in movies, in which the director usually does. Because Lena sorta sensed what I’d like to do and what she liked me to do. She started funneling these bottle episodes towards me and it ended up not being a great effect on the way we made the show and, certainly, the episodes we created.
Describing it as a bottle episode seems on point because “American Bitch” could just as easily be a short film. You could’ve never watched the show before and just watch this episode and completely appreciate it as a singular project.
I think one of the things that was tricky for Lena as a writer and why she’s such a good writer is her understanding of her character and the way that her characters have grown over six seasons. I think if she had written that “American Bitch” episode in season two it still might have felt very self-contained, but it wouldn’t have felt like it could fit into the “Girls” world. I don’t think that Hanna Horvath would have been ready in the second season of “Girls” to have that discussion. But, by the sixth season, I think she figured out a way to make it feel like it could be an episode of “Girls” but yet also exist in its own universe. What I loved about it was that challenge of treating it almost like a short film. How do we add the dramatic language that makes sense for this story, but still feels part of “Girls”? And how do we really tell a self-contained story that is provocative in an interesting visual way, but really it’s just two people in an apartment talking for 80% of it?
Which is what I was gonna say, because, sure, lots of episodes of ‘Girls’ have scenes in apartments, but a lot of it also takes place in different locales in New York City. Were you able to have any say in terms of the particular apartment they picked?
Yes. I’d like to think that I had a lot of say in trying to figure out the visual world of the episode. In many ways that is the director’s job, and Lena and Jenni Konner are such confident showrunners that they encourage the director to bring something to the table. But, for me, locations are just as important as casting the right actors. Because, if it’s the wrong location it can send the wrong message in many different ways, and in this case I had a very specific vision of what type of apartment Chuck Palmer would have. We scouted a lot of apartments, and when we found this one it felt lived in and grand in the same way. It felt aspirational but real, also. And then you mix that with the fact that Lena and Jenni allowed me a full day of rehearsal with just Matthew and Lena and Jenni in that apartment. We were able to really plan out our blocking for the scene and then, because we had a two week time difference between the rehearsal and shooting, Matt Munn, our production designer, was able to create those paintings in the apartment that mimic the shots that we were gonna do. I think added a real way of visual interest to that episode that made, hopefully, opened it up in its own way, because I think we were challenged by not going outside. But I think that in many ways those paintings and the way we approached directing the sex and shooting the episode, all contributed to, hopefully, the uniqueness. And then Lena also was always encouraging of conversations about the script, and for me I felt one of my biggest contributions was suggesting that the daughter comes home and that she’d play the Rihanna song so that we could spend the time in the living room as they’re watching her play in a just visual situation, so that the audience would have some time to deal with the episode they’d just witnessed. I felt like with so much dialogue that they may not have had a chance to feel it emotionally. And so I argued, heavily, for that sequence so that they could actually process what they were just watching by watching the way Hanna was looking at Chuck Palmer.