The Girls Farewell Tour is in full swing. Word is the final season is decent to good so that’s nice, to go out on a positive note. Jemima Kirke, who plays Jessa, recently made headlines by announcing that she and her husband of seven years, Michael Mosberg, had split last summer. They have two children aged six and four. Jemima (whose dad is former Bad Company drummer, Simon Kirke) received a BA in art and considers herself primarily an artist. She was friends with Lena Dunham from school and did her a “favor” by agreeing to appear in Tiny Furniture, which led to Girls. She even tried to quit Girls after the first season because the fame was a bit overwhelming. And now, Jemima is now blaming (crediting?) acting for the failure of her marriage.

Jemima Kirke blames her divorce on her acting career.

The Girls star ended her marriage to Michael Mosberg last summer after seven years of marriage as she began looking at her life in a different way.

She told ES Magazine: ‘I got divorced, and I attribute that to acting. And just asking myself, “Is this really me?” So much of my life has been about reaction, just following the flow rather than making a strong choice.

‘In acting you are always asking yourself why you do things, why you make the choices you make. Everything means something. 

‘And so then you start looking at your own life in that way. I’ve learnt a lot more about myself and started to figure out what I really want.’

And the 31-year-old actress and her husband, a former lawyer, married in 2009 and have two children together, a six-year-old daughter Rafaella and a son Memphis, four. 

‘I’m going to miss being a unit,’ she said. ‘That’s something I think is taught to us societally, that a family is a mum and a dad or two dads or two mums or whatever but it stays together and it’s one house.’

‘And you do get really sad when you fail at that.’

Jemima met her husband while they were in rehab together. She’d first entered a treatment centre a few years before for ‘everything’ including cocaine and alcohol. 

‘When you are in rehab and afterwards, you think you are an addict. I didn’t actually feel like the label fit but I went through with it because I gave it credit for giving me a life and I was scared that if I abandoned it it, I would go back to right where I was.

She now believes she, and other young people are labelled with a diagnosis too early on. 

‘They’re not fully formed yet, so diagnosing them is premature,’ she said. ‘I think there is such a thing as a circumstantial problem and I think that’s what I had – and I think you can change.’ 

[From ES Magazine via Daily Mail]

Jemima almost perfectly articulated my views on parenthood to Time a couple of years ago and I find myself in agreement with her a lot. But she kind of lost me here. I think I understand what she is trying to say. She was living her life as a series of dot-to-dots but when she began acting she was forced to be introspective and she decided to apply that introspection to her own life. That’s how I read it. Although I think that’s candy-coating it, to say the least. She told the blog StyleLikeU that she dramatically cut her long blonde hair in 2015 after a huge fight with Mosberg when “was feeling self destructive.” But later, when she decided to go shorter, he was the one who cut it into a bob, something she called “romantic.” I mean, come on – there’s a lot going on there.

Her comments on rehab are interesting to me for two reasons: the first is a friend of a friend once voiced to me that same thought about being diagnosed as an addict at a young age. She was put in rehab at 17 and at 28 wondered if she really was an addict or was just told she was. (I know she eventually decided to try drinking again but I don’t know what ultimately happened with her drinking.) The second is, in 2012, Jemima said she met her husband at a doctor’s office when she was being seen for bronchitis. It’s clear that she wasn’t ready to discuss her stay in rehab at that point, and that’s her prerogative.

As for Girls, for anyone who’s ever wanted to give it a try but couldn’t find a reason, I have one for you: new-to-me-dreamboat Riz Ahmed appears in the first episode! I swear, that man could charm the paint off the walls.

Photos credit: WENN Photos