Nora Ephron’s Advice Helped Lena Dunham Nab Jack Antonoff

Image by Glamour

By Anne Cohen March 11, 2014

When you want good advice, you go to the experts. And really, who could dish out dating advice better than Nora Ephron?

In Glamour magazine’s April edition, which she covers, Lena Dunham talks about the words of wisdom that changed her dating life, courtesy of the beloved creator of “When Harry Met Sally.”

“You can’t meet someone until you’ve become who you’re becoming,” Dunham recalls her “hero” saying. Those very words. she says, led her to meet her boyfriend of two years: Jack Antonoff, of fun. and Bleachers fame.

Per the interview

“Yeah! [Before Jack] I was all tortured about whether I should get back together with this guy I’d been seeing for five months,” Dunham tells Glamour. “We’d broken up, and it felt like my only chance at romance for the rest of my life. But Nora was like, ‘No, no, no.’”

“So I broke up with him in January, ‘Girls’ debuted at the beginning of April, and then I met Jack at the end of April. The dialogue around the show already existed, so it was sort of clear to him what the baggage of dating me was going to be.”

“I remember talking with him on our first date and him being like, ‘God, all the articles about your nudity on the show are such bullshit,’” she continues. “It’s funny, ’cause in some ways that’s the conversation we still have when I’m upset [about stuff I read].”

The April issue of Glamour hits newstands on March 18. For a sneak peek at Lena’s thoughts about the universe, click here.

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO