Lena Dunham Talks About Obsession After Heartbreak In Netflix’s ‘Too Much’

In the new Netflix rom-com series Too Much, Megan Stalter stars as Jessica, a New York workaholic in her mid-thirties, who is reeling from a broken heart after her relationship ends. To make things even worse, her ex moves on quickly with another woman (played by Emily Ratajkowski). Jessica cannot help but become obsessed with her, comparing herself to her and over-analyzing what went wrong.

Too Much was inspired by the relationship between co-creators Lena Dunham, of Girls fame, and her husband, Luis Felber, a British musician. When she began writing the script, Dunham knew she wanted Stalter to portray Jessica, but she has clarified that the story is loosely based on her life and that Jessica is not her.

Dunham’s bold style and sharp wit make her writing stand out; her characters are beautifully complex, relatable in their flaws, and often delusional. With Jessica, in particular, her relatability comes from that urge to compare herself to the woman who ends up with her ex. This painful rumination usually arises from a need to understand why it didn’t work out and what was missing or wrong in the relationship. There’s a need to quiet that inner, sometimes cruel voice that says you weren’t enough, good enough, or, in Jessica’s case, that she is too much.

Jessica’s fixation on her ex and his new girlfriend pushes her to take a job in London, where she plans to escape and live a solitary life like a Brontë sister. She soon meets Felix (Will Sharpe), a musician with troubles of his own, and the two form an unusual connection that’s impossible to ignore.

Dunham, who also served as writer, starred as Jessica’s sister, and directed eight of the ten episodes, discussed Jessica’s woes in an interview just before the show’s July 10 premiere.

“I think the thing about writing this character was that I really wanted to lean into the idea that so often, especially in your thirties, you’re comparing yourself to all these milestones that are around you, especially in the context of Instagram; the amount of people who are posting pictures of their houses and their babies and their lives…if you’re a person who feels like you’re a late bloomer, or maybe you created a life and then it collapsed, it can be very lonely. I wanted to show what it looked like for a woman to be starting over, and starting over with trepidation, but also with determination. And I really approached it from that angle first and then tried to bring in this male character of Felix and deepen him as the series went on.”

Unbeknownst to those in her life, Jessica makes daily Instagram videos wherein she’s talking to this woman, but her private account accidentally becomes public, and her messages go viral. Dunham wrote a scene where the two women meet and actually like one another and become friends.

“I was thinking about the way that so often, you’re not even in an obsessive relationship with your ex. You’re in an obsessive relationship with your idea about what your ex’s new life looks like, and this person who comes after you takes on this form of almost a terrifying apparition, and you’re projecting so much onto them. And so it felt interesting to me, the idea that especially in this lonely moment in her life, that person becomes both an enemy and a crutch for Jessica,” Dunham explained, admitting she’s experienced this dynamic.

“I’ve had the exact same experience, which is the majority of the time that I am threatened by someone, what it actually means is there’s something in them that I’m drawn to. And also, it makes perfect sense that two women who were attracted to the same person would also be attracted to something in each other. And I loved that scene so much. We shot it towards the end of the production,” she added, reflecting on filming that pertinent scene.

“It was moving because I’d been filming Meg and Emily separately, with Jessica in these long, aggressive dialogues with her, and then they sat down in front of each other, and they were so lovely and vulnerable and surprising. I loved the idea of these two women becoming allies in some way.”

When asked if she feels this love story is complete with the happily-ever-after wedding scene at the end, Dunham said she believes there’s more to tell here. She reflected on the ending of the first season of Girls. “My goal was like, ‘Well, if we don’t get picked up again, this will be complete as it is.’ And it was always my goal with every season. I was like, ‘Well, if they don’t let us do another one, it’ll be complete as it is.’ You want to feel like you’ve put something into the world that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That being said, I love these characters. I do think that marriage is not the end. It’s not a happy ending. It’s sort of a complicated beginning. So, I would love the opportunity to write more for these characters.”