As Girls enters its final season, writer and star Lena Dunham has further detailed her regrets about whitewashing the cast of the HBO series.
In a new interview with Nylon magazine, the 30-year-old New Yorker said her young age when penning the Emmy Award-winning dramedy was the reason it lacked diversity.
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"I wouldn't do another show that starred four white girls," Dunham said. "That being said, when I wrote the pilot I was 23. Each character was an extension of me. I thought I was doing the right thing."
"I was not trying to write the experience of somebody I didn't know, and not trying to stick a black girl in without understanding the nuance of what her experience of hipster Brooklyn was."
![“Looking back, I never want to see another poster that’s four white girls.”](/web/20170112084959im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/1/2/t/0/0/f/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtpuip.png/1484173907533.jpg)
The show's racial problem has been frequently dissected by the media. In season two, Dunham cast Golden Globe-winning actor Donald Glover to play her African American boyfriend, but for some critics, it still didn't go far enough.
Under the headline "Why Girls Won't Ever Overcome Its Racial Problem", The Atlantic's Judy Berman wrote in 2013: "Dunham continues to cast non-white actors only when race defines their character - which is to say, she still doesn't get it."
In several interviews, Dunham has admitted she was too focused on trying to represent women like her that she didn't realise there was a diversity issue until after the series premiered in 2012.
"There was a lot of dialogue around race on Girls when it first came out," Dunham said during a Hollywood Reporter actress roundtable in 2015.
![Donald Glover played Lena Dunham's boyfriend briefly in season 2 of <i>Girls</i>.](/web/20170112084959im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/p/u/v/v/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtpuip.png/1484173907533.jpg)
"It was an educational, painful process for me because I had been thinking so much about representing weirdo girls and chubby girls and strange half-Jews that I had forgotten there was an entire world of women that were being underserved.
"I think that was a really intense, complex and super important experience for me to witness and then become a part of that conversation about race on television.
![Actress Lena Dunham at the Glamour Live Summit 2016.](/web/20170112084959im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/5/p/f/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtpuip.png/1484173907533.jpg)
"It is our job as creators to represent more than just our experience and more than just what we've seen."
Dunham went into damage control just one month after the show - a Generation Y-style spin-off of Sex and the City - came out, telling National Public Radio: "Only later did I realise that it was four white girls".
"I really wrote the show from a gut-level place, and each character was a piece of me or based on someone close to me."
With Girls' sixth and final season premiering in the US on February 12, Dunham is now focused on publishing her second novel, Best and Always, about the complexities of female-male relationships, and on growing her digital newsletter, Lenny.
"I'm probably going to have a nervous crying breakdown," she told Nylon of the show's imminent ending.