During Sunday’s (March 5) Writers Guild Awards, presenter Donald Glover was on hand to award executive producer Paul Simms, and during his speech, he apparently jokingly said that Lena Dunham once used the N-word.
“I asked Lena [Dunham], ‘Hey, what made you decide to work with Paul [Simms]?’ And she goes, ‘Honestly, this n—- lets me do whatever I want,'” Glover said in his speech.
He continued, “And I remember thinking two things. One, Lena is using the N-word extremely liberally. Who does she think she is, Chevy Chase? And two, that’s the kind of producer I want.”
According to The Independent, Glover’s representatives confirmed that the comment was a joke.
Dunham’s representatives denied that she ever said the word.
“Donald Glover told a joke referencing Lena Dunham for last night’s WGA Awards. It included, for effect, language Lena never used, nor would use. Full stop,” they said.
Apparently, the actor who really has been accused of using the slur is Glover’s Community co-star Chevy Chase, who he referenced again in the speech.
“Chevy Chase once called [Saturday Night Live writer Herb Sargeant] one of the funniest writers working in television. Chevy Chase once called me… You know what? This is about Paul,” Glover said.
Per The Independent, that story appears to align with Community showrunner Dan Harmon’s 2018 interview with The New Yorker, where he claimed that Chase would “make racial cracks between takes.”
As for Dunham, this isn’t the first time the actress and writer has been accused of racism.
In 2016, as reported by an Australian news outlet, Dunham’s old tweets resurfaced, where she made several racist remarks as “jokes.” Plus, around the same time, her essays about visiting Japan were criticized as being racist by outlets such as The Guardian.
Dunham also faced backlash for her comments on a trip to India with her mother that appeared in a 2013 Rolling Stone cover story that was addressed by South Asian blog The Aerogram.
Dunham has been criticized for a string of other tone-deaf remarks over the years, including the time she claimed she wanted her casket to appear in a Pride parade.