Dunham wrote and directed the movie, and played the leading role as Aura, a recent college graduate. Simmons had a more substantial part in “Tiny Furniture,” the 2010 independent feature that brought Lena Dunham to the attention of Apatow and other film and television satraps in New York, Los Angeles, and points east, west, north, and south. I think this is probably it for me, though, because the girl doesn’t get the job. I stuck to the script, until Lena said, ‘You can really go for it,’ and then I had fun. “At first, Lena had me as a ‘Devil Wears Prada’ type, but I felt a dealer like that would never be out-and-out nasty. “Oh, Barbara’s not my model,” she said, laughing. I said she was a dead ringer for Barbara Gladstone. Dunham moved off, and Simmons asked me if she had been believable as an art dealer. Simmons and Apatow talked about the late Andy Kaufman, her childhood friend, whose comic genius had been a big influence on them both. Simmons came out at this point and introduced me to her exuberant daughter and to Judd Apatow, one of the show’s executive producers. Dunham kept jumping up between takes and going around the corner to give directions: “Too nice, Mom,” and, later, “A little too strong.” After six or seven takes, Dunham said, “O.K.,” and the crew moved in to set up the next scene. Perched on the edge of a canvas chair in front of me, wearing blue plaid headphones and watching a monitor, was Simmons’s twenty-six-year-old daughter, Lena Dunham, who conceived, wrote or co-wrote, and starred in all ten episodes of the show’s first season and directed five of them. Understand?” The dealer, who was being played by the artist Laurie Simmons, looked right for the part-tall, dark-haired, and self-assured-and her line-reading was subtle: she sounded patronizing, but not unfriendly. As they talked, a gallery assistant came in with a cup of tea for the dealer, who glanced at it, saw that it was too strong, and stopped the girl on her way out. Thick black cables snaked into the back of the Gladstone gallery and up a flight of stairs to the second floor, where a film crew was shooting a scene for the second season of the HBO comedy series “Girls.” Two women, playing an art dealer and a young woman applying for a job, sat on opposite sides of a circular table.

Simmons in her Connecticut studio with props from her film, “The Music of Regret.” Photograph by Laurie SimmonsĪt nine o’clock on a wet Monday morning in June, Twenty-fourth Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues was parked solid with mega-trailers and tech-support vehicles.

Table For One, Sir? by John Simmons