(JTA) — Lena Dunham posted on Facebook a heartfelt tribute to the cast and crew of her successful HBO series “Girls” hours after filming the series finale.
“When we shot our pilot six years ago, I never dreamed that I could be so fulfilled by the process of art-making, of collaboration, of honest expression. And so through this show I developed an identity, gained a new kind of family and began my life in earnest. It’s an embarrassment of riches,” Dunham wrote in her Friday night post.
Dunham announced in January that the series’ sixth season would be its last. It will premiere in early 2017.
The dramatic comedy, which centers on a group of 20-somethings navigating young-adult life in New York, has won multiple Emmy and Directors Guild of America awards since its debut in 2012. Dunham, the show’s star and co-writer grew up in New York.
Dunham thanked the fans who “made a big scary world seem small and intimate,” and the critics who “pushed us to grow.”
Dunham also thanked her character, Hannah, in the post. “Thank you for being the dark and the light, for being my longest relationship to date, for letting me fall on my face and also embrace total selfhood in ways I’ve never been quite brave or insane enough to do as plain old Lena D. You give zero f**ks and you got zero chill in you. You are so bad and you are so good. You were my twenties way more than I was my own twenties. All your adventures became mine. As I worked and worked and worked some more, you cried and f**ked and danced. And look at you now! Be safe always, baby. I’d tell you to be wise and careful as well, but I know you far too well for that,” she wrote.
She acknowledged the series’ other main characters, saying it would “take awhile to understand the heartbreak of saying goodbye to these characters, these collaborators and this life.”
“I conceived of ‘Girls’ when I was 23 and now I’m nearly 30 — the show has quite perfectly spanned my 20s, the period of time that it’s about — and so it feels like the right time to wrap our story up,” Dunham said in a statement in January announcing the end of the show.
In April, Dunham and writing partner Jenni Konner signed a deal with Random House to turn their lifestyle newsletter Lenny into a publishing imprint. Dunham and Konner will oversee a line of books featuring “exciting, emerging voices in fiction and nonfiction,” Random House announced.
Lenny launched last September and covers topics such as feminism, politics, fashion and current events.
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