Filming of the sixth and final season of HBO’s Girls concluded yesterday in Mantauk, New York.
Since the show was released in April 2012, it has received critical acclaim for it’s originality, raw humour and realistic portrayal of women.
Creator and writer Lena Dunham, 30, posted on Instagram yesterday, “It’s 2am on Friday morning and we just finished shooting Girls. Forever…I know I’m not alone in the Girls family when I say this is the end of the largest and most potent chapter of my life so far.
“Before Girls I had zero identity, zero self-love and an urgent sense of untapped creative desire that kept me up and sweating at night in other people’s beds, wondering why vague sexual affirmation wasn’t enough to make me feel human. I had hardly an inkling of the responsibility we take on when we tell stories, or of the power words can have, but what I had – as an obsessed fan of shows from Girlfriends to Felicity to Ally McBeal– was the audacity to think that people might want to see women like my friends and me (broken, imperfect, angry) on television.”
She addressed her fans via Instagram, where she has a following of 2.8 million, thanking them for their unwavering support.
“You have made a big scary world seem small and intimate and I see blessings and safe havens everywhere because of the way you’ve normalized these experiences, the moments of being female that feel dark and unruly, that hurt like a gash,” she wrote.
“You’ve made me believe there was a place for the strange girls and the ones who don’t know how to love quite yet…Because we are just at the the beginning of a golden era in which every woman– no matter her race, religion, body-type, or the gender assigned to her at birth– can tell her story and have it heard and recognised for its essential her-ness. Let’s all make sure of that together, okay? We must.”
Finally, she shared an image of herself and Allison Williams in tears, mourning the end of a television show that touched, inspired and challenged so many people.
On behalf of Girls’ fans, who have been with Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna and Jessa every step of the way, we are so thankful to have laughed and cried with a television show that portrayed women as three dimensional, complex and startlingly imperfect characters.
Our exposure to “real” female bodies, and “real”, often quite confronting, sex scenes, has hopefully sent a loud and clear message to Hollywood that this is what women want.
The comedy-drama has been an enormous part of our generations growth into adulthood, and no doubt the six series will be watched for decades to come.
We eagerly await the final season which will air in 2017.