• Home
  • Mail
  • Tumblr
  • News
  • Sports
  • Finance
  • Entertainment
  • Lifestyle
  • Answers
  • Groups
  • Mobile
  • More
Yahoo
    • Skip to Navigation
    • Skip to Main Content
    • Skip to Related Content
    • Mail
    Entertainment Home
    Follow Us
    • Oscars
    • Grammys
    • TV
    • Movies
    • Celebrity
    • Music
    • Videos
    • Movie Showtimes

    Lena Dunham's public apology to Aurora Perrineau, who accused 'Girls' writer of sexual assault, criticized: 'How the f*** do you still manage to make this all about you?!'

    Suzy Byrne
    Editor, Yahoo Entertainment
    Yahoo CelebrityDecember 5, 2018
    Reblog
    Share
    Tweet
    Share
    Lena Dunham has apologized to Aurora Perrineau — a year after she publicly cast doubt on Perrineau’s sexual assault allegations against a Girls writer and producer. (Photo: Getty Images)

    Lena Dunham should consider changing her middle name to “controversy” because here we go again.

    On Wednesday, in a guest editor note in the Hollywood Reporter‘s Women in Entertainment issue, Dunham penned a very public apology to actress Aurora Perrineau, who accused Girls writer and producer Murray Miller of sexual assault last year. At the time, Dunham and her then-collaborator Jenni Konner, issued a statement defending Miller and claiming Perrineau’s accusations are part of the “3 percent of assault cases that are misreported every year.” The pair, but mostly Dunham, took a hit for that and she tweeted an apology.

    Now, a year later, Dunham writes in a long essay that she made a “terrible mistake.” She explains, “When someone I knew, someone I had loved as a brother, was accused, I did something inexcusable: I publicly spoke up in his defense. There are few acts I could ever regret more in this life. I didn’t have the ‘insider information’ I claimed but rather blind faith in a story that kept slipping and changing and revealed itself to mean nothing at all. I wanted to feel my workplace and my world were safe, untouched by the outside world (a privilege in and of itself, the privilege of ignoring what hasn’t hurt you) and I claimed that safety at cost to someone else, someone very special.”

    Dunham apologized directly to Perrineau, writing, “To Aurora: You have been on my mind and in my heart every day this year. I love you. I will always love you. I will always work to right that wrong. In that way, you have made me a better woman and a better feminist. You shouldn’t have been given that job in addition to your other burdens, but here we are, and here I am asking: How do we move forward? Not just you and I but all of us, living in the gray space between admission and vindication.”

    She also acknowledged Perrineau’s mother, Brittany, calling her “fierce, powerful, a born leader, a patient mother, the kind of woman I hope to be.” (Perrineau’s father is Lost star Harold Perrineau.) Dunham said “getting to know” Brittany “has been the unexpected gift that came from being humbled and reassessing so much over the past year: about women and power.”

    To illustrate that, a few hours after the essay was published online, Dunham and Brittany Perrineau took the stage together at the Women in Hollywood event.  It was described a “big emotional moment.”

    Big emotional moment here as @lenadunham brings Brittany Perrineau to stage, mother of Aurora, and she apologizes to both for denying Aurora’s sexual assault. Lena says it is has now become most powerful teaching moment of her life. #WomeninEntertainment. Lots of tears here… pic.twitter.com/RNkgoFKWCR

    — Chris Gardner (@chrissgardner) December 5, 2018


    Dunham’s essay also talked about her own experience being the victim of sexual harassment and misconduct. She talked about hostility she faced in the writers’ room and the date rape she went public with. She also disclosed other experiences: “I didn’t want to tell anyone about the 70-year-old Hollywood luminary who was so angry that I rebuffed his kiss that he made me do 30 takes of the word ‘hello,'” she wrote, “or about the Oscar nominee who drove me to the place he lost his virginity while I asked again and again when I could be dropped home. I didn’t want anyone to know about the pseudo boyfriend who tied me up with my special-occasion stockings and forced himself inside me anally, or about my father’s friend who asked me to lunch but that I not tell my father we were meeting.”

    Dunham noted in her essay that there are probably people who “will think I am writing this to curry public favor” and she was “OK” with that — and that’s pretty much what the internet thought. Twitter was filled with comments from people seemingly exhausted with the star. Her apology was described as “unsurprisingly self-centered” and marveled over how she manages to make “this all about you, Lena Dunham?!”

    Lena Dunham’s apology to Aurora was unsurprisingly self-centered.

    — Truman Ports (@truman_ports) December 5, 2018


    How the fuck do you still manage to make this all about you, Lena Dunham?!https://t.co/7lGQgukWrz

    — Kayleigh Donaldson (@Ceilidhann) December 5, 2018


    the fontrum from reading that Lena Dunham letter is painful

    — Inkoo Kang (@inkookang) December 5, 2018


    People wondered why it took her a year to do it. (She did address it immediately after.)

    A year or so later? @lenadunhamapols
    Hey @lenadunham Go Away!
    Go the FLOCK away !
    An apology where you toss in how your #MeToo moment(s) IS infinitely worse than Ms Perrineau? rs? Shut Up & GO AWAY!
    We do not care about you! Shut Up! #UGH

    — alicia cabrerathomas (@aliceinglen) December 5, 2018


    You apologized a whole year later. Progress sis

    — valerie complex (@ValerieComplex) December 5, 2018


    They @ messaged THR to complain about giving her a forum.

    @THR please stop giving @lenadunham a platform. She is just the worst. At this point, you are @netflix and she is #woodyallen

    — Desiree (@desireepar) December 5, 2018


    They complained that Dunham trending on Twitter detracted from the national day of mourning over George H.W. Bush’s death.

    Yup a former President who crashed into the Pacific fighting the Japanese is being layed to rest but let's give people what they really want: a live tweetstorm of women congratulating themselves for being famous women. Oh and Lena Dunham life lessons.

    — Jeremy Fichaud (@FilmJunkie82) December 5, 2018


    They shared (and shared) why she rubs them the wrong way.

    Most mid-western conservatives thinks every liberal/progressive is just like Lena Dunham, so I kind of get why they hate us. That’s not really a joke, either.

    — Rylan Strader (@RylanDogg2) December 5, 2018


    Lena Dunham is a tool and white feminism at its worst. https://t.co/3FxNyiAJ8b

    — Laura Durnell (@LauraDurnell) December 5, 2018


    When will Lena Dunham become irrelevant and disappear? https://t.co/n13hJswLVn

    — Marilyn Ferdinand (@FerdyOnFilms) December 5, 2018


    I thought Lena Dunham disappeared. Or at least I hoped

    — Nadia (@EgoIsNotUrAmigo) December 5, 2018


    go away

    — Rachel What’s Vacation? Jacoby Zoldan (@rjacoby13) December 5, 2018


    Aurora Perrineau accused Miller of sexually assaulting her in 2012 when she was just 17. Although she filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and took a polygraph test, the district attorney declined to pursue charges.

    Miller’s attorney said at the time of the accusations that Miller “categorically and vehemently denies” the “outrageous claims” and that his legal team had “gathered overwhelming evidence directly contradicting these false and offensive claims.” That led to Dunham and Konner to release a statement in which they voiced their support for Miller and insinuated that Perrineau “misreported” the rape. The statement was met with a backlash, and Dunham later issued an apology on Twitter.

    In an interview with the Cut last week, Dunham acknowledged that she’s “not for everyone” and said she plans to step back from the public eye after a rough year in which she dealt with health issues, shuttered Lenny Letter, dissolved her partnership with Konner and received bad press for Camping. In that interview, she also said that when Perrineau made the  allegations against Miller in 2017, she had just undergone an elective hysterectomy and she was “high as a f***ing kite” from the surgery yet “I think I was just like, F*** everyone else. This is my tribe. Let’s keep it safe.”


    Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

    • Old Kevin Hart ‘joke’ about not wanting a gay son recirculates after he’s named 2019 Oscars host
    • Wrestling legend Dynamite Kid dies on his 60th birthday
    • ‘Walking Dead’ star Jeffrey Dean Morgan rescues Jack and Diane, a donkey and emu in love, who will live out their days together on his farm

     

     

     

    Reblog
    Share
    Tweet
    Share

    What to Read Next

    • Donald Trump slams 'Saturday Night Live' for mocking his national emergency

      Yahoo TV
    • Miranda Lambert Secretly Got Married: See Her Romantic Wedding Dress!

      Entertainment Tonight
    • Lindsay Lohan denies threatening to 'expose' CBS after mom Dina failed to win 'Big Brother'

      Yahoo TV
    • For Biden and Pence, wildly differing receptions from international allies in Munich

      Yahoo View
    • Jussie Smollett responds to reports he may have paid men to attack him

      Entertainment Weekly
    • Don Cheadle Makes Powerful Political Statement as 'Saturday Night Live' Host

      Entertainment Tonight
    • Bella Hadid Celebrates The Weeknd’s 29th Birthday as Couple Cuddles Up in Matching Camo Looks

      People
    • Chris Pratt and Fiancee Katherine Schwarzenegger Expand Their Farm Family With Baby Lamb

      Entertainment Tonight
    • An Intern at His First Day on the Job Was Among 5 Killed in Illinois Mass Shooting

      People
    • 'SNL' built an entire magical sketch around British showman Mika's 'Lollipop'

      Yahoo Music
    • ‘SNL’ Mocks Trump’s Press Conference, Compares Him to a Coke Addict

      Rolling Stone
    • ‘Saturday Night Live’ Ratings Slip With Host Don Cheadle

      Deadline
    • Meghan Markle Is Returning to the Big Screen in a Surprise Re-Release of One of Her Films

      People
    • Jim Carrey calls Trump’s birth “the real State of Emergency” in hilariously disturbing political cartoon

      Consequence of Sound
    • Kelly Clarkson's Cover of Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's 'Shallow' Might Be the Best One We've Heard

      Entertainment Tonight
    • ‘Saturday Night Live’ Cold Open – Alec Baldwin’s Trump Declares ‘Fake’ Border Emergency

      Deadline

    Japan's Leader Nominated Trump For Nobel Prize At Washington’s Urging: Report

    Titan: “I have nominated you, respectfully on behalf of Japan, I am asking them to give you the Nobel Peace Prize,” Trump said, apparently quoting the prime minister..... This feels very reminiscent of the medical letter that Trump wrote and demanded his former personal physician to sign.

    Join the Conversation
    1 / 5

    4.1k

    • Victoria Beckham looks to '70s prints, Preen influenced by dance

      Reuters
    • 'Aquaman' 'director' James Cameron tells us how he really feels about James Wan's 'Aquaman'

      Yahoo Movies
    • Alec Baldwin’s Latest ‘SNL’ Sketch Has Trump in Another Twitter Rant

      The Wrap
    • Why are people getting less refunds from their 2019 tax returns? Your questions, answered

      Yahoo View
    • Chicago police believe Jussie Smollett staged his attack: Report

      Consequence of Sound
    • Beyonce's Valentine's Day Look Couldn't Be More on Theme in Sassy New Photos

      Entertainment Tonight
    • 'Devastated' Jussie Smollett Denies Orchestrating Attack After Police Say Case Has 'Shifted'

      People
    • Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin Hold Hands in NYC as Singer Continues Treatment for Depression

      People
    • Jussie Smollett Denies Report That He Paid to Orchestrate Assault

      Indiewire
    • Jussie Smollett Viewed As “Active Participant” By Cops In Alleged Assault

      Deadline
    • Riverdale's Camila Mendes Says Her Boyfriend and Costar Charles Melton's 'Cami' Tattoo Is Fake

      People
    • I Don’t Like the Lakers or the Celtics, but I Love Their New Collaborative Gear

      Esquire
    • 'SNL': Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump Delivers Nonsensical State of Emergency Press Conference

      Entertainment Tonight
    • Kenny G Explains How He Pulled Off Kanye West's Valentine's Day Surprise for Kim Kardashian

      People
    • Don Cheadle Hosts SNL: Watch Video of the Best & Worst Sketches

      TVLine.com
    • Alec Baldwin Declares a National Emergency on ‘SNL’: ‘Wall Works’

      Indiewire