Lena Dunham is gonna need Clarissa to explain this one to her.
Earlier this month, a rumor spread on the anonymous Instagram gossip account DeuxMoi claiming that the Girls creator was longtime “frenemies” with Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina the Teenage Witch star Melissa Joan Hart. According to unverified submissions, the women’s feud somehow involved a TV writer, daddy Dunham, Anjelica Huston, and child drag queens. Following? Neither are either of the supposed rivals.
“I’m not in a feud with anyone. I literally live in London and barely leave my home,” Dunham said in a call played on Tuesday’s episode of the Who? Weekly podcast. “I’ve never met Melissa Joan Hart, never been in a room with her, never seen her. I did see all of Clarissa Explains It All and all of Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” she said in a voicemail to hosts Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber. (EW has confirmed it was the real Dunham on the line.)
The Catherine Called Birdy director said she’d heard the podcast’s previous “delightful segment” outlining her purported feud with Hart and felt compelled to call in to give her “exclusive thoughts.”
“I only found out about this feud because Melissa Joan Hart said how much she was hearing about this feud,” Dunham explained, “but let’s just say I didn’t hear about this feud until Melissa Joan Hart talked about how much she was hearing about this feud, do you know what I mean?”
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images; Araya Doheny/WireImage Alleged frenemies Lena Dunham and Melissa Joan Hart
In a Nov. 11 Instagram post that included screenshots from DeuxMoi, Hart swore she had “no beef” with Dunham and said she was “truly confused” about where the rumor started. “I’m a fan of Lena’s work and all that she does to support females in our industry and hope to share a latte someday,” the actress wrote.
The current rumor seems to have spread after DeuxMoi posted blind items claiming Hart “has it out for Lena Dunham,” stating that they know each other because “Lena’s dad was friends with the creator of Clarissa Explains It All” and that the actresses allegedly got into a dinner party fight over “child drag queens.” Another anonymous tipster claimed that “Anjelica Huston said some very nasty things about Lena Dunham the other night at a party.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met Anjelica Huston,” Dunham clarified in her call. “My father did play doubles tennis with Mitchell Kriegman, the creator of Clarissa Explains It All. He gave me a Clarissa Explains It All T-shirt when I was 7, and also a denim jacket. It was very cool for me because I wasn’t a super popular child and it was exclusive cast gear. That being said, I never met Mitchel Kriegman, although I’m a fan and appreciate his support.”
Still, Dunham said she found the whole thing so ridiculous that it was actually amusing. “Having never met any of the people involved in this story, and having barely exited my home since the year 2018, it was definitely a surprise, and I’m not gonna say it didn’t tickle me,” she told the hosts. “I am a consumer of fake gossip, so it’s always interesting to me to see how the sausage gets made and then to hear you guys eat the sausage, spit it back out, and make something new with it.”
Dunham ended her call with a few of the pod’s inside-joke sign-offs to signify she’s a fan, as well as a new one of her own: “Love to everyone, including Melissa Joan Hart, because why not.”
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