Thursday, November 5, 2026

Girls (HBO) Sex Scenes: Lena Dunham, Jemima Kirke and Allison Williams

Lena Dunham and Riz Ahmed in the Montauk bed scene from Girls (3:12). The other 10 scenes from the series are further down the page.

Girls is Lena Dunham’s HBO comedy about four friends in their twenties trying to make it in New York: Hannah, a writer who never has any money, her elegant best friend Marnie, free-spirited Jessa and fast-talking Shoshanna. It ran for six seasons from 2012 to 2017 and it was famous, and sometimes infamous, for how much sex it showed and how unglamorous that sex often was. Dunham wrote, directed and starred, and she spent a huge part of the show naked. I have picked out every scene worth watching and put them on this page: 11 clips in HD, each with its length and what actually happens, from the ping-pong morning in “One Man’s Trash” to Hannah and Adam in the bath, Jessa on the couch and Marnie’s night with Charlie.

Hannah and Paul-Louis in Bed (3:12)

Season 6, episode 1 | With: Lena Dunham, Riz Ahmed

Season 6, episode 1, “All I Ever Wanted”. Hannah finally lands a paid writing job, a travel piece about surfing in Montauk, and spends most of it ignoring the surfing and falling for her instructor, Paul-Louis, played by Riz Ahmed. This is the morning in his little beach-shack room: pale green sheets, a sunlit window, the two of them lying naked and tangled together, half asleep, teasing each other and going back for more. It runs over three minutes and it is the most relaxed Lena Dunham ever looks on screen. Nobody is fighting, nobody is crying, and Hannah, for once in six seasons, is simply happy in bed.

Why this one first? Most sex on Girls is played for awkward laughs or ends in an argument. The Montauk scene is the exception: long, bright and genuinely romantic, filmed in the final season by a cast and crew who had stopped worrying about how any of it looked.

Every Other Sex and Nude Scene in Girls

Here is the rest, roughly grouped by character. Hannah has most of it, as you would expect, with Adam Driver as her on-off boyfriend Adam in most of her scenes; Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna each get their moments too.

Hannah Gets Up in Montauk (1:58)

Season 6, episode 1 | With: Lena Dunham, Riz Ahmed

The other half of the Montauk story. Paul-Louis is still sprawled across the bed when Hannah climbs out of it completely naked, wanders round his tiny room with its bunk bed and towels on the floor, and pads off to the bathroom. Dunham does the whole walk in daylight with nothing on and no fuss at all, which is exactly how she played nudity for the entire run of the show. It is one of her longest fully nude scenes in the series.

Topless Ping-Pong With Joshua (0:42)

Season 2, episode 5, “One Man’s Trash” | With: Lena Dunham, Patrick Wilson

The most talked-about episode Girls ever made. Hannah walks into the Brooklyn brownstone of Joshua, a handsome doctor played by Patrick Wilson, to own up about some trash, and ends up staying with him for two days. This is the morning of day two: a sunroom, a ping-pong table, Joshua in his shorts and Hannah playing him in nothing but her underwear, topless and grinning between points. It is silly, sweet and very bright, and the kind of scene only this show would think of.

Hannah and Joshua in Bed (0:47)

Season 2, episode 5, “One Man’s Trash” | With: Lena Dunham, Patrick Wilson

Earlier in the same episode. In the low light of Joshua’s bedroom he kisses her slowly while she lies back with her eyes shut, and then the clip jumps to the next morning, with Hannah stretched out naked across his huge white bed in the sun. Under a minute, but it is the warm part of an episode that ends in tears, and Patrick Wilson plays it beautifully gently.

Hannah and Adam in the Hotel Bathtub (1:51)

Season 3, episode 8, “Incidentals” | With: Lena Dunham, Adam Driver

A rare night of luxury for the show’s messiest couple. Hannah and Adam, played by Adam Driver, sink into an enormous tub in a dim hotel bathroom with paper screens on the window, Hannah topless in the water and Adam goofing around at the other end. There is no big drama here, just two people enjoying a bath, and it shows how good Dunham and Driver were at being comfortable with each other on camera.

Hannah and Adam at Home (1:39)

Season 3, episode 11, “I Saw You” | With: Lena Dunham, Adam Driver

Late in season 3, back in their shared apartment with the wood-panelled walls. The clip opens with the two of them having sex on the bed under a lamp, then Hannah sits up topless on the edge of it while Adam pulls on a T-shirt and they get on with their evening. Season 3 is the stretch where Hannah and Adam actually live together, and this is the most domestic sex scene they ever got.

Hannah and Adam in Bed (1:44)

Season 3, episode 1, “Females Only” | With: Lena Dunham, Adam Driver

The season 3 opener finds Hannah and Adam in a happy patch. They lie naked together on a bed of loud floral pillows in a warm, dim room, kissing and talking, and Hannah ends up on the phone with Adam still wrapped around her. It is a lazy, cosy scene and a nice reminder of how far these two came from the awkward sex of season 1.

Hannah Tries Role-Play (2:13)

Season 3, episode 10, “Role-Play” | With: Lena Dunham, Adam Driver

Worried that Adam is drifting away into his Broadway rehearsals, Hannah decides to spice things up. She puts on a platinum blonde wig and a strappy black harness, and plays a stranger he has just met. The clip follows her round the apartment and across the bed in the outfit, then the two of them in the dark. It is a funny, brave little scene and the plan does not go the way Hannah hoped, which is very Girls.

Jessa and Adam on the Couch (1:48)

Season 6, episode 1 | With: Jemima Kirke, Adam Driver

By the last season Jessa and Adam, the couple nobody saw coming, are living together, and this is them at home. Jessa sprawls on the big brown couch in nothing but her underwear with a bowl in her lap, while Adam wanders round in his briefs, and before long they end up tangled together on the cushions. Jemima Kirke is topless for most of the clip and she plays it as if there is no camera in the room at all. For more of her, see my Jemima Kirke page.

Marnie and Charlie: The Panic in Central Park (2:25)

Season 5, episode 6, “The Panic in Central Park” | With: Allison Williams, Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner

After a fight with Desi, Marnie walks out, runs into her old love Charlie and spends one long night with him. This clip picks up when they get back to his place: a red lamp, a mattress, and the two of them in bed, kissing and talking until they fall asleep. Then comes the morning: Marnie wraps herself in a towel and heads to the shared bathroom down the hall, where she meets one of Charlie’s neighbours, played by Julia Garner in a black bra. It is the night Marnie realises she wants a divorce. Her Allison Williams page has the rest of her scenes.

Shoshanna and Matt (1:53)

Season 1, episode 4, “Hannah’s Diary” | With: Zosia Mamet, Skylar Astin

Shoshanna, the youngest and most anxious of the four friends, bumps into a cute old acquaintance named Matt, played by Skylar Astin, and invites him back to her pink-curtained room to “watch a movie”. Off come the clothes to reveal a plum-coloured bra, and the overhead shot of Shoshanna’s face while Matt goes down on her is one of the funniest moments of season 1. Zosia Mamet never did nude scenes on the show, but this is the sexiest she ever got.

What I Left Out

Not every sex scene on Girls is one you want to watch again. I left out the season 2 scene between Adam and Natalia that most viewers saw as him pushing far past what she wanted, plus a couple of Natalia’s other scenes that are too dark to make out. I also skipped the scenes where the nudity has nothing to do with sex (Hannah breastfeeding in the finale, a naked run through a cemetery and the season 4 home birth), very dark clips you can barely see, a few long compilations that repeat scenes already on this page, one kitchen clip I could not match to an episode, and older low-resolution copies of the season 5 episodes. What is left is every scene where the nudity is part of a good moment.

Why Girls Still Gets Talked About

Few shows have caused as many arguments. Girls won the Golden Globe for Best Television Series, Musical or Comedy, Dunham won Best Actress the same night, and it picked up a BAFTA for Best International Programme. In 2019 The Guardian ranked it 18th on its list of the 100 greatest TV shows of the 21st century. A lot of the noise was about the nudity. Dunham got undressed in almost every episode and refused to apologise for having a normal body on television, and the sex was written to be real rather than pretty: clumsy, funny, sometimes sad. That is exactly why these scenes still feel different from anything else HBO was showing at the time.

About Girls (2012-2017)

Girls was created by Lena Dunham and executive-produced by Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner. The first season was filmed in New York in the spring and summer of 2011, the series premiered on HBO on April 15, 2012, and it ran for six seasons and 62 episodes until April 16, 2017. A lot of Hannah’s story came from Dunham’s own life, including the money trouble and the writing career. The whole series streams on HBO Max.

Actor	Character
Lena Dunham	Hannah Horvath
Allison Williams	Marnie Michaels
Jemima Kirke	Jessa Johansson
Zosia Mamet	Shoshanna Shapiro
Adam Driver	Adam Sackler
Alex Karpovsky	Ray Ploshansky
Christopher Abbott	Charlie Dattolo
Andrew Rannells	Elijah Krantz
Patrick Wilson	Joshua (season 2)
Riz Ahmed	Paul-Louis (season 6)