Lena Dunham has revealed she turned down the chance to appear on the celebrity version of the Great British Bake Off. The celeb version of the show, which is in aid of Stand Up To Cancer, has previously welcomed a number of big names from across the pond, including David Schwimmer and Teri Hatcher.
Speaking to Amy Poehler on her Good Hang podcast, the Girls star revealed she was initially up for the challenge when asked, despite not being able to bake.
"I thought, okay, surely they can't expect that much of us. They're not calling in chefs, they're calling in actors and writers," Dunham explained.
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Dunham then spoke to a producer who told her the first challenge would be to "make a crumpet that expresses who you are," and decided she could do a bread tribute to her two grey British shorthair cats.
"I could do a crumpet that had some grey coloring and then do ears on it, and then eyes and it could be my cats as a crumpet," she recalled.
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"And [the producers] went, 'OK great, so maybe almond butter could be the eyes and you could do some raspberry jam for the mouth.
"'Paul [Hollywood] obviously is not comfortable with any store-bought jams or butters, but we have a really simple pistachio butter recipe that we could send you, and I actually have a great short book on making jam.'"
Dunham went on to say she was then offered a book called The Science of Baking to help her get started.
But when she told her business partner Michael about the work she'd have to do he asked if she'd lost her mind.
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Dunham continued: "[The producers] said to me, 'Ovens go on at 8am and off at 6pm'. And I made some joke, like, 'At least you guys will help me turn those on'.
"And it was like, 'Oh, no, we're not allowed to touch any of the knobs.' And I just went, 'We're out of here. I'm sorry, guys.'
"I love to try to become an expert at something really quickly but this was way beyond anything that I could handle," she added.
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Stephanie is a freelance news writer, who previously covered WWE and AEW for Digital Spy.
After graduating with a degree in history from Queen Mary University, London, she studied journalism at Birkbeck University.
Outside of her work at Digital Spy, she writes about pop culture, with a special focus towards Irish media and how it intersects with politics.
You can read more of her work on her Substack page.
