Girls Is Returning To HBO: Here's What The Cast Have Been Up To Since 2017
A decade on from the show's end, we will once again see Girls on the small screen in the very near future as the core cast reunite.
On October 13th , a video sprang up on the HBO Instagram account to announce that Girls — the era-defining, occasionally controversial, and painfully millennial show — would be returning next year.
This surprising news came in the form of a video call between the four original actresses: Lena Dunham (who created the series and plays Hannah), Allison Williams (her uptight friend Marnie), Zosia Mamet (the hyperactive Shoshanna) and Jemima Kirke (the free-spirited Jessa), with Andrew Rannells (Hannah’s close friend Elijah) jumping in a little later on. Needless to say, this came as a shock to many, not least as it arrived so soon after the release of Dunham’s tell-all memoir, Famesick, in which a few people involved with the show (Adam Driver included) didn't exactly come off too positively.
Whatever happens with all of that going forward, Girls has been officially greenlit for a five-episode revival that will go into production in early 2027. As we wait for more info, here’s what the cast have been up to in those intervening years.
Lena Dunham (Hannah)
Though I’d highly recommend reading Famesick (even if you’re not the biggest Dunham fan), we can kind of sum up this fascinating book as a memoir of how tough it is to have a generationally dizzying rise in the industry at a very young age. Dunham’s first success, as the writer, director, and star of her sophomore feature Tiny Furniture, came when she was still 23-years-old — and she was tapped up by Judd Apatow to create Girls for HBO just a year later. Since the success of the series, Dunham has moved away from acting roles significantly, appearing in only small parts in movies like Apatow’s This is 40 and the underrated Neighbors 2, and later playing one of the Manson girls in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
Since moving to London in 2021, however, fans have been enjoying a comeback: first as the writer of Catherine Called Birdy and the Netflix series Too Much (in which she plays the older sister of Megan Stalter’s Jessica), but also as the co-star (alongside Stephen Fry, who cameos in Too Much) of the 2024 movie Treasure and the director of the pilot for the great HBO series Industry . Later this year, Dunham’s fifth movie as director — a New York set rom-com called Good Sex, starring Natalie Portman and Meg Ryan — is set for release on Netflix.
The Girls revival feels like the appropriate next step for her enticing second act.
Allison Williams (Marnie)
As Marnie, Allison Williams might have survived the most terrifying scene in the history of Girls, and yet few would have expected the actress to go on to become something of a scream queen when the series started out. That all changed with the release of Get Out in 2017, in which Williams gives a fantastic performance as the psychotic, cereal-eating girlfriend of Daniel Kaluuya’s increasingly horrified protagonist.
Williams has since followed that up with the 2018 Netflix horror The Perfection and (so far) two movies and a show in the M3GAN franchise. She has also found time to pop up in the Colleen Hooververse with the recent adaptation of Regretting You. On the small screen, things have been quieter, but you can see her as Kit Snicket in the acclaimed Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Zosia Mamet (Shoshanna)
For Zosia Mamet (daughter of David), everything started to happen for her in the early 2010s after her turns in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg and as Peggy’s photographer friend Joyce in Mad Men led directly to landing the role of Shoshanna in Girls.
Like her co-stars, Mamet’s screen roles since the show ended have been mostly supporting parts: shows like The Flight Attendant (she plays the best friend of Kaley Cuoco’s Annie) and The Decameron and movies like Under the Silver Lake and Madame Web.
Look out for her in Luca Guadagnino’s excellent upcoming movie Artificial.
Jemima Kirke (Jessa)
As essentially the Samantha Jones of Dunham’s millennial remake of Sex and the City, Jessa needed to be played by an actress whose levels of charisma clearly stood out from the pack, but luckily Dunham had an ace up her sleeve with Jemima Kirke: an old friend who she’d cast in Tiny Furniture and managed to successfully pitch to HBO for the role — which Kirke proceeded to knock out of the park.
Since then, Kirke has continued to be a staple of the New York scene, where she DJs and works as an artist while continuing to pick up occasional roles in TV shows (like the Emma Stone and Jonah hill series Maniac, as Hope Haddon in Sex Education, and in the Sally Rooney adaptation Conversations With Friends) and small budget indie movies (like the Alison Brie and Dave Franco joint The Little Hours).
We look forward to seeing her reprise her most iconic character next year.
Adam Driver (Adam)
Of all the familiar names to come out of Girls, Adam Driver came off the worst in Dunham’s memoir — she described him as being volatile on set, and prone to outbursts — which is likely why he has thus far not been connected in any way to this upcoming reboot.
Of all the Girls breakouts, however, there’s no denying that Driver had the most substantial movie career: an actor who’s managed to balance his work between the biggest franchises around (Kylo Ren in Star Wars, Mr. Sinister in the upcoming X-Men reboot) and an ever-increasing collection of auteur collaborations, including Spielberg (Lincoln), Scorsese (Silence), Jarmusch (Paterson), Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) and Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman) — the latter two of which earned him nominations at the Oscars.
Christopher Abbott (Charlie)
Driver’s arrival in the MCU (announced via video at the D23 event in August) was an especially big moment for Girls fans as it came just moments after Christopher Abbott was confirmed as the next Charles Xavier.
If you are less familiar with Abbott's work, don’t be surprised: unlike Driver, the actor who made his name as Charlie in Girls has spent the last decade seeking out more and more challenging roles, weaponising his good looks in movies like Possessor, James White, Poor Things, Sanctuary, and The Testament of Ann Lee in the process. In that time, he’s mostly avoided mainstream fare, but having just had his first child with Aubrey Plaza this year, he appears to be moving into a different era.
So far in 2026, we've seen the release of East of Eden and the next decade looks like it's about to be dominated by a certain school for gifted children.
Andrew Rannells (Elijah)
Between the Girls finale and this upcoming revival, Andrew Rannells has been all over the place: starring in The Boys in the Band alongside Jim Parsons for Netflix, appearing as a recurring guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race, and providing his voice to a host of characters across a wide range of animated shows.
Listen closer to the forever sweater-vested Matthew in Big Mouth or to Mark’s best friend William in Invincible and you will hear Rannells' unmistakable tones.
Alex Karpovsky (Ray)
Of all the Girls cast members who looked likely to go on to big careers, you would've put good money on Alex Karpovsky. For his performances as Shoshanna’s on-again/off-again partner Ray, the actor picked up a number of awards at the time, but he’s kept things admirably off-beat ever since.
Sure, you can see him in shows like Nobody Wants This and Curb Your Enthusiasm and even movies like Hail, Caesar!, but Karpovsky has mostly spent his time writing and directing his own micro-budget features, like Rubberneck and Woodpecker, which can usually be found at indie film festivals like SXSW.
Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Desi)
Though a later addition to the cast than the others on this list (he played Marnie’s hippy boyfriend Desi in the last few seasons), Ebon Moss-Bachrach has been up to so much lately that it'd be weird to leave him out of this piece.
Indeed, Girls might have been the big break the actor had been waiting for (he'd been trying to make it happen in the industry since 1999), but The Bear (a show for which he went on to earn two Emmys for) elevated his career to a whole new level when it dropped on FX in 2022. After that first season, Moss-Bachrach started popping up everything, from Andor to The Dropout. Now, as the latest actor to become Ben Grimm/The Thing, his upcoming slate reads: Doomsday and Secret Wars, followed by a little project with Michael Mann for Heat 2.
All of that while continuing to ply his trade on the New York stage? Not bad at all, cousin.
