Lena Dunham says she will “sit down” and “shut up” in post about privilege

"The Hollywood system is rigged in favor of white people"

Lena Dunham has shared a series of new tweets in which she addresses how she has benefitted from privilege in her career.

The Girls creator and star, who has been criticised in the past for showing white privilege, was responding after seeing her name trend on Twitter.

Many on the social media site suggested that her success was down to her position of privilege and family connections, and in a new thread Dunham acknowledged that her ease into the industry was helped by a system “rigged in favour of white people.”

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“Whenever I find out I’m trending, I have to immediately check if I’m alive! Then, I try and see if there’s a constructive dialogue to have on Twitter,” she began. “Often there isn’t, but today there really WAS.

“It actually wasn’t a dialogue – it was just me agreeing that the Hollywood system is rigged in favor of white people and that my career took off at a young age with relative ease, ease I wasn’t able to recognize because I also didn’t know what privilege was.”

Dunham noted that the “past ten years have been a series of lessons”, adding: “The lesson now? Sit down. Shut up, unless it’s to advocate for change for Black people. Listen. Make art in private for awhile- no one needs your book right now lady. Give reparations widely. Defund the police. Rinse & repeat.”

Girls, which ran between 2012 and 2017, was criticised throughout its run for its lack of ethnic minority roles, and Dunham revealed in 2018 that she apologised to star Donald Glover after he played the role of a black Republican, saying she hoped he didn’t feel “tokenised” by the part.

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Meanwhile, Dunham recently opened-up about her addiction to prescription drugs, saying she hit a low point while recovering from a hysterectomy and splitting from former boyfriend, Jack Antonoff.

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