List of Girls characters

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Girls is an American television series created by Lena Dunham that aired on HBO from April 15, 2012, to April 10, 2017. [1] The series centers on four young women navigating their twenties in New York City.

Contents

The show has been noted for the realistic portrayal of its characters, including the semi-autobiographical portrayal of lead character Hannah Horvath by writer, director and actress Dunham. [2] Dunham herself told NPR that "each character was a piece of me or based on someone close to me". [2]

According to Forbes reporter Madeline Berg, "In Girls, characters and relationships lack veneers. Whereas most television shows compel you to like their protagonists, Girls wants you to believe them." [3] Writing in The Washington Post , Katherine Boyle compared Girls to reality TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians , "without the witty dialogue and Golden Globe nominations". [2] She writes, "The highbrow 'Girls' characters joke about the perils of sexting, just like the Kardashian women do. The girls mock Hannah's tiny breasts – and the camera fixates on them – in the same way the Kardashian sisters make fun of Kim's posterior." [2]

Cast timeline

ActorCharacterSeasons
123456
Lena Dunham Hannah Helene Horvath Main
Allison Williams Marnie Marie Michaels Main
Jemima Kirke Jessa Johansson Main
Zosia Mamet Shoshanna Shapiro Main
Adam Driver Adam Sackler Main
Alex Karpovsky Raymond "Ray" Ploshansky Recurring Main
Andrew Rannells Elijah Krantz Recurring Main
Ebon Moss-Bachrach Desi Harperin Recurring Main
Jake Lacy Fran Parker Recurring Main

Main cast

Hannah Horvath

Lena Dunham Lena Dunham 2012 Shankbone.JPG
Lena Dunham

Hannah Helene Horvath is an aspiring writer living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, originally from East Lansing, Michigan. Known for her spunk and bad decisions, she struggles to support herself and find a direction in her life.

At the start of the series, Hannah's parents announce their decision to stop supporting her financially. She leaves her unpaid internship for a job at a law firm, but quits when endemic workplace sexual harassment leads to awkward misunderstanding with her boss. [4] In season two, she is offered an e-book deal to write a series of personal essays based on the strength of her freelance contributions to online publications. The stress of the book deal causes a relapse of the obsessive–compulsive disorder symptoms she suffered in her youth, but the experience brings her closer to Adam, her on-again, off-again, love interest. [5] [6]

After the death of her editor causes the book deal to fall through, she takes a job writing advertorials for GQ magazine in season three. She briefly attends the Iowa Writers' Workshop in season four before returning to New York and becoming a high school teacher. There, she enters a relationship with Fran, a fellow teacher.

In the final season, Hannah becomes pregnant after a brief fling with a surf instructor during a writing assignment. She later leaves New York City to take a teaching job upstate and raise her baby. [7]

Marnie Michaels

Allison Williams Allison Williams July 2012.jpg
Allison Williams

Marnie Marie Michaels is Hannah's best friend and, at the start of season 1, roommate. Along with Jessa, Charlie and Elijah, Marnie was a classmate of Hannah's at Oberlin College.

At the start of the show, Marnie works as an art gallery assistant, but is later fired in Season 2. While she finds work in another art gallery founded by Soojin, the young assistant of an artist Marnie had a fling with, she eventually gravitates toward a career in music. In the midst of this career instability, she moves back in with her mother in New Jersey.

Domineering and arguably as self-centred and narcissistic as Hannah, Marnie struggles in her relationships with Charlie and Ray for much of the series, and eventually ends up marrying her musical partner, Desi Harperin.

A chance reunion with Charlie makes Marnie realize that she wants to divorce Desi. [8] However, they try to continue their music partnership to ride the wave of fleeting commercial success they experience when one of their songs is featured on television. [9] When both her career and her marriage collapse, she eventually moves upstate with Hannah to help raise her baby. [10]

Jessa Johansson

Jemima Kirke Jemima Kirke headshot.png
Jemima Kirke

Jessa Johansson is one of Hannah's closest friends, a global citizen of British origin, and is known for being bohemian, unpredictable, and brash. At the start of the series, Jessa has recently returned to New York from a stint abroad, and becomes roommates with her cousin, Shoshanna, in Nolita, Manhattan. She has had a turbulent relationship with her father throughout her life. [11]

Jessa navigates many life struggles and poor choices, including a short-lived marriage to a venture capitalist named Thomas John and a stint in rehab due to heroin and cocaine addiction. In rehab, she becomes close to Jasper, an older man; the two briefly reunite in New York when he finds her at the baby boutique where she works. [12]

At the start of season 5, Jessa is studying to become a therapist and attending substance use support group meetings. When she pursues a relationship with Hannah's ex-boyfriend, Adam, she and Hannah have an explosive falling out. Jessa and Adam are then inspired to create an independent film about the experience. In the final season, she struggles with the realization that her life is in tatters, and is abandoned by Shosh. She also decides she is not ready to become a therapist. While she remains in a relationship with Adam at the end of the series, she manages to make her peace with Hannah before she leaves New York. [13] [14]

Shoshanna Shapiro

Zosia Mamet Zosia Mamet 2016.jpg
Zosia Mamet

Shoshanna Shapiro is Jessa's naive and innocent American cousin and a Media, Culture, and Communications major at New York University. The character is fast talking and her lack of enunciation gives her a mumbling, nervous persona. She is a fan of the TV series Sex and the City and is embarrassed to still be a virgin at the start of the series. [15] Her first serious boyfriend is Ray. While Shoshanna breaks up with him at the end of season 2, the pair remain close throughout the rest of the series. [16]

Shoshanna struggles to balance her academic and personal life throughout season 3 and discovers she is ineligible for graduation as she failed one class. [17] While she eventually graduates, she finds the postgraduate career search more difficult than she expected. She meets Scott, a love interest, at a job interview, but the two break up when Shoshanna pursues a career opportunity in Japan. [16]

After being laid off from her role in from Japan, Shoshanna returns to New York and takes a job helping Ray promote his coffee shop. She eventually realizes that her friendship with the other three has only ever held her back, and ultimately distances herself from them. By the end of the sixth season, she is engaged and has a new cicle of friends. [18]

Adam Sackler

Adam Driver Adam Driver by Gage Skidmore.jpg
Adam Driver

Adam Sackler is an aloof, passionate young man who works as a part-time carpenter and actor. At the start of the series, he is in a casual relationship with Hannah. Their relationship becomes more serious after the season 2 finale, in which he runs across town to Hannah’s side when the stress of her book deal severely impacts her mental health. [5] The pair grow distant due to the pressure Adam experiences when he is cast in a Broadway production of Major Barbara . [19] While they agree to a long-distance relationship as Hannah attends the Iowa Writers Workshop, this falls through and Adam has already begun a new relationship with Mimi-Rose upon Hannah's return to New York. [20]

Adam is an alcoholic who has been sober for years. [21] He develops a bond with Jessa when they begin attending the same support group. The two develop a volatile relationship, causing a rift between Hannah and Jessa. When Hannah becomes pregnant, Adam considers reuniting with her to help raise the baby, but the pair ultimately decide not to rekindle their relationship. [22]

Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Jerry Saltz has endorsed the idea that Adam is intended to be a fictional scion of the real-life Sackler family, and that Adam's substance abuse and art world adjacency are intended as commentary on the real-life family's controversial relationship with the opioid crisis and arts philanthropy. [23] Dunham has not commented on whether the character's naming was intentional.

Ray Ploshansky

Alex Karpovsky Alex Karpovsky 2012 Shankbone.JPG
Alex Karpovsky

Raymond "Ray" Ploshansky is introduced as Charlie's friend, but later becomes a friend of the others and the group's straight man. Unlike Hannah and her other friends, Ray is in his thirties. [25] He works at Grumpy's, a local coffee shop. By the second season, he enters a relationship with Shoshanna. Even though the two break up, the experience encourages Ray to take himself more seriously; at the start of season 3, he is made manager of a spin-off of Grumpy's called Ray's. He also briefly dates Marnie in season 3. [26]

Galvanized by poor traffic conditions in his neighborhood, Ray mounts a successful campaign for city council in season 4. [27] He deals with competition from a hipster coffee shop across the street from Ray's throughout seasons 5 and 6. [28] When Hermie, the proprietor of Grumpy's, dies in season 6, Ray continues Hermie's oral history project to document gentrification in Brooklyn. [14]

Elijah Krantz

Andrew Rannells Andrew Rannells 2011.jpg
Andrew Rannells

Elijah Krantz is Hannah's ex-boyfriend from college who reveals that he is gay. Despite some initial hostility between the pair, they eventually become friends and later on-and-off roommates. The two grow much closer as roommates. Despite being gay, he has a one-night stand with Marnie that is a brief source of tension in Marnie and Hannah's friendship.

In seasons 3 and 4, Elijah dates Pal. Elijah enters a relationship with sophisticated television host Dill Harcourt in season 5 but is eventually heartbroken to realize that Dill is unwilling to settle down with one person. [30]

Elijah aspires to become a Broadway performer and often tries to ingratiate himself into theatrical social circles. At the end of the series, riding off the emotions of his final conversation with Dill, he has a successful audition for a Broadway musical adaptation of White Men Can't Jump . [14]

Desi Harperin

Ebon Moss-Bachrach Ebon Moss-Bachrach by Gage Skidmore.jpg
Ebon Moss-Bachrach

Desi Harperin is introduced as Adam's co-star in Major Barbara and soon becomes Marnie's bandmate. Despite having a girlfriend, Clementine, he and Marnie engage in a sexual relationship. The secret nature of their relationship is a source of personal and professional frustration for Marnie as record label executives believe the pair would be more marketable as a romantic item. [31] When Clementine eventually breaks up with Desi, he and Marnie have a public relationship. They become engaged, and later marry.

In season 6, Marnie eventually ends the relationship with him when she tires of his childishness and self-indulgence, though they continue their musical partnership. It is revealed that Desi is addicted to prescription pain killers after Marnie cheats on Ray with him.

Fran Parker

Jake Lacy Jake Lacy at TCA 2010.jpg
Jake Lacy

Fran Parker is a fellow high school teacher at St. Justine's whom Hannah dates in season 5. While more emotionally stable than Adam, Fran is very critical of both Hannah's teaching style and her personal decisions. [16] [32] Fran moves in with Hannah and Elijah, but he and Hannah break up by the end of the season.

Recurring characters

Minor characters and guest stars

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