Adam Driver was pressed about Lena Dunham’s memoir claims at the Cannes press conference for Paper Tiger, and he declined to engage. “I have no comment on any of that. I’m saving it all for my book,” said Driver, a two-time Oscar nominee, as reporters turned the spotlight from the film to the allegations.
The exchange landed at a moment when Paper Tiger had already drawn a strong response at Cannes, where the film received a ten-minute standing ovation. Driver was there promoting the project when he was asked about the account Dunham published in her memoir Famesick, and his answer made clear he had no intention of addressing it in the room.
Dunham’s memoir alleges that Driver was “verbally aggressive” and that he “hurled a chair at the wall next to me.” She wrote that while she was practicing lines in her trailer late one night, her lines suddenly vanished from memory and Driver screamed, “FUCKING SAY SOMETHING.” She also said he told her, “WAKE THE FUCK UP” and “I’M SICK OF WATCHING YOU JUST STARE.”
The memoir claims reach back to the years when Dunham and Driver worked together on Girls, the HBO series that ran from 2012 to 2017 and cast him as her on-screen lover. Dunham wrote that during the couple’s first sex scene in Season 1, careful blocking gave way when Driver hurled her this way and that, leaving her stunned and unable to speak for a moment after the scene.
That is the tension around the moment in Cannes: a film launch built for attention, and a question about a past collaboration that Driver plainly did not want to answer. Neon had already acquired U.S. rights to Paper Tiger after it was announced for an in-competition play at Cannes, which meant the film arrived at the festival with commercial momentum even before the memoir claims entered the conversation.
Driver’s refusal to discuss the allegations will not stop the memoir from following him as Paper Tiger moves through its festival run. The question now is not whether he answered in Cannes. It is whether the silence he chose there will be the one that follows him when the book comes out.
