HBO, Lena Dunham Ponder Life After ‘Girls’

Related: When In ‘Doubt,’ Double Down on Diversity

While Girls is ending,there will be more projects between creator Lena Dunham and HBO, says Kathleen McCaffrey, HBO’s VP of programming. The network exec says the two parties will wait for Girls to wind down before identifying the next project. “We’re excited to find it,” she said.

Girls’ 10-episode sixth, and final, season starts up Feb. 12.

Before there was Girls, McCaffrey had a general meeting with Dunham based on Dunham’s 2010 indie film Tiny Furniture. The stars aligned, says McCaffrey, as Casey Bloys, then head of comedy at HBO, was keen to develop a “20-something Girls show.”

McCaffrey calls Bloys, now HBO’s president of programming, a “spirit guide” to Girls. “He’s been a great big brother throughout the whole project,” she said. McCaffrey isn’t saying much about how Girls will end, but allowed that it will be a very atypical series finale, and “very, very Lena.”

Girls’ legacy, she adds, will be that it has showed that offbeat series from offbeat female auteurs can work. “It has hopefully opened doors for women who don’t have a traditional story to tell,” said McCaffrey.

Michael Malone

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C/Multichannel News, covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot, about what’s new in television, and Series Business, a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy and New York magazine.