Lena Dunham took Andrew Scott from hot priest to 'hot medieval dad' in Catherine Called Birdy

Lena Dunham is a devout worshipper of Fleabag's "hot priest" actor Andrew Scott, whom she morphed into a new breed of hunk in her upcoming movie Catherine Called Birdy.

The Girls creator-star joked that for his role in her latest feature — an adaptation of Karen Cushman's beloved 1994 novel about a rebellious 13th-century girl bucking tradition — Scott embraced a previously untapped "hot" side of his persona as the titular character's father.

"Now he's 'hot medieval dad' and we can't change it," Dunham joked Sunday at the film's world-premiere screening at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, where she was joined by the film's stars, including Scott, Game of Thrones actress Bella Ramsey, Sophie Okonedo, Joe Alwyn, and Isis Hainsworth.

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Scott told the audience that he'd wanted to work with Dunham due to her extraordinary work in film and television, particularly HBO's dramedy series Girls, which many now consider groundbreaking.

"One of the conversations that Lena and I had at the beginning was that, when you sideline women in any society, you also mess up some of the men, too," Scott said. "One of the ways we developed the father was that he suffers from having to be sort of macho…. We tried to bring a little complexity to it."

Catherine Called Birdy debuts in select theaters on Sept. 23, followed by its Amazon Prime Video streaming premiere on Oct. 7.

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