The reboot of Girls will have its creator and several original faces — but not the breakthrough boyfriend who made a generation of viewers argue about messy men in brownstones. Adam Driver, who played Adam Sackler on the 2012 series, has confirmed he will not reprise the role. Asked about returning, he told Cinema Blend: “No, but I wish them the best of luck.”
A five-episode reunion without Sackler
Lena Dunham created Girls and is coming back for the revival, which is planned as a five-episode series. The original comedy followed four twenty-something women navigating the awkward, often humiliating stretch of post-college life in New York City and ran through 2017. Alongside Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet and Andrew Rannells are also set to return, which means the core friend group — and at least one essential comic sidekick — can pick up a conversation the audience never quite finished.
Driver’s absence still changes the chemistry. Sackler was not a guest star; he was the chaotic counterweight to Dunham’s Hannah, a role that helped turn Driver from a New York theater name into a global screen presence. A short-run reboot can absolutely work without him — five episodes is a reunion, not a second childhood — but it will have to find a new source of friction. Wish-them-luck interviews are polite. Recasting the emotional weather of a show is harder.
What Driver is doing instead
The actor’s next widely flagged screen assignment is a sharp left turn from Brooklyn apartments: he is set to play Mister Sinister in Marvel’s upcoming X-Men film, directed by Jake Schreier and due in 2028. That is a very different costume, and a very different kind of fandom, from the HBO-era conversations that made Sackler a character people still quote.
For Entertainment watchers, the news is cleanly two-sided. The Girls revival now has a defined shape — five episodes, most of the original women, no Driver — and the man who once slammed doors in that universe has publicly closed this one. He did it without drama, which may be the most un-Sackler exit possible. The interesting question is no longer whether he comes back. It is how the reboot writes around the empty space he just confirmed.