Representatives for Lena Dunham have denied the actor used racial slurs on the set of Girls after co-star Donald Glover jokingly implied she did.
Glover made the joke while presenting an award at the Writers Guild Awards on Sunday to writer and producer Paul Simms, who executive produced Dunham’s Girls and Glover’s own Atlanta.
In his joke, he said that after filming a sex scene for Girls (in which he played Dunham’s BF Sandy), he asked Dunham why she decided to work with Simms.
“She goes: ‘Honestly, this N-word lets me do whatever I want’,” said Glover.
“I remember thinking two things: One, Lena is using the N-word extremely liberally. Who does she think she is, Chevy Chase? And two, that’s the kind of producer I want.”
The joke not only implied Dunham used the word herself, but also makes fun of Glover’s Community co-star Chevy Chase, who has been hit with a slew of racism allegations.
Representatives for Dunham told The Daily Mail that the insinuations made within the joke were purely for comedic purposes and are not at all in line with the truth.
“Donald Glover told a joke referencing Lena Dunham for last night’s WGA Awards. It included, for effect, language Lena never used, nor would use. Full stop,” the statement read.
Later in his speech, Glover continued to allude to Chase’s alleged racism.
“This award was named after Herb Sargent, a writer who worked on Saturday Night Live and came up with Weekend Update with Chevy Chase,” said Glover.
“Chevy Chase once called Herb one of the funniest writers working in television. And Chevy Chase once called me… you know, this is about Paul.”
In 2018, Dan Harmon and Glover alleged that Chase would often stop the filming of Community to make “racist cracks”, and told Glover that “people think you’re funnier because you’re Black.”
“Chevy was the first to realise how immensely gifted Donald was, and the way he expressed his jealousy was to try to throw Donald off,” Harmon told The New Yorker.
“I remember apologising to Donald after a particularly rough night of Chevy’s non-P.C. verbiage, and Donald said, ‘I don’t even worry about it.’”
Although Lena Dunham might possibly be in the clear in this instance (if Glover was in fact joking), it isn’t the first time she’s been called out for controversial and bizarre behaviour.
