Lena Dunham Reveals She Was 'Sweetly Fired' From HBO Before 'Girls'

Lena Dunham may be dubbed "The voice of her generation" by many, but before the 27-year-old "Girls" creator, writer, and actress found success on HBO, the network had already fired her.

In 2011, Dunham briefly worked alongside Kate Winslet on HBO's award-winning miniseries "Mildred Pierce."

"I got fired off of the one day I did on 'Mildred Pierce'," Dunham told Bill Simmons during an hour-long interview for his "B.S. Report." "'Fired' might be [a] rough [word] but I got sweetly dismissed from the one day I acted. They told me it was a three-day shoot and halfway through the first day, they were like, 'We got what we needed!'"

Dunham admitted she had a hard time mastering her character's accent and barely practiced after receiving the script.

"This was pre-'Girls,' post-'Tiny Furniture,'" Dunham explained. "I got called in to audition as a waitress, I didn't get that part but I was given a smaller part as a nurse who is in attendance while Kate Winslet's child dies."

Dunham's one line? "Her fever spiked around 8, we don't know if she's going to make it." And she flubbed it, acting more like herself than a 1930s nurse.

"Their faces dropped. It was a f------ disaster. They sent in a dialogue coach and I just got worse and worse and worse."

The incident haunts Dunham to this day, adding that "the best thing was that this year on 'Girls' we were doing a scene that required English accents and that dialect coach came to our set and I was directing and I saw her and had a full 'PTSD' reaction."

When Simmons tells Dunham she probably wasn't that bad, she assures the host she isn't exaggerating.

"I know I didn't do well because the producer of 'Mildred Pierce,' Ilene Landress, now produces 'Girls' and she said to me that she was auditioning extras in the basement to replace me because that's how bad I was."

Watch the convo at 45:54.