With HBO’s Girls set to air its sixth and final season in 2017, its star and creator, Lena Dunham, reflected on the “accidental” creation of the controversial series at a New York Television Festival (NYTVF) panel on Thursday night.

“It was this weird aligning of the stars moment,” admitted Kathleen McCaffrey, HBO’s vice president of HBO programming, about how Girls made it on the air.

Dunham acknowledged she had no idea what she was doing when she pitched the pilot to McCaffrey who was a newly-minted exec at the time.

“I think I just went in there with total ignorance. Like, I made a movie in my parents’ house and now I will make a TV show for HBO.”

But Dunham thinks “there was something in the air” when Girls premiered that made TV audiences hungry for comedic shows featuring female protagonists.

“The year that Girls came out was the year that New Girl came out and 2 Broke Girls came out,” Dunham said, joking that her dad mistook the promo poster for 2 Broke Girls for her own. “And suddenly there was this amazing flood of female energy on television.”

Dunham and the show’s producers agreed that if it were pitched today, Girls would be a far different show if it got made at all, in part because the TV landscape is much more crowded now.

“It’s just so much more competitive now; there’s more strategy – it’s not just: ‘How about we give this thing a try?’” said McCaffrey.

Six years of evolution in diversity and inclusion in TV would likely change how the show was cast, Dunham said, responding to critiques that the series’ four main characters are all white.

“It’s something we really absorbed and care about and would do differently were we to cast the show today,” Dunham said.

“I said recently we never want to see a poster with four white girls on it again,” Dunham joked. “Our hair’s all kind of the same color, we all just kind of turn into a field mouse.”

Dunham told the audience that “one of your jobs as a storyteller is to move beyond the world that you see,” as she did with Girls, and instead create the world you’d like to see.

Nevertheless, Dunham and the show’s producers consider the show a success, despite its long-standing ratings lag (which they said may be attributed to scores of younger viewers watching the show on their parents’ HBO Go accounts), because it still manages to foment debate even six years in.

McCaffrey said the show’s low ratings never bothered her. “Every year to our great surprise people are still talking about it.” She added: “We try to be in a cultural conversation and we’ve been there.”

“We feel really privileged that people are still engaged, even if they’re angry and frustrated,” Dunham said.

Part of this effect is owing to the fact that Dunham herself is a controversial and, at time, polarizing personality who cuts a strong figure on social media.

“If anyone sort of started their public life when they were 23, things would come out of their mouth that weren’t properly phrased that they hoped wouldn’t live on the internet for all of time, but that’s the world that I’m living in,” Dunham said.

“There’s also the contingent of our culture that doesn’t like loud women and that’s real, too,” she added.

So aside from tweet battles with would-be presidents, what’s up next for Dunham? She’s taking her time deciding on her next project because she wants to find something she’s really passionate about, she said.

“You don’t realize how much your entire life and person and sense of self gets tied up in something,” Dunham said. “Who am I when the show is done?”

“We just pray to God we can be like Tina Fey,” McCaffrey said.

“She just keeps turning it out!” Dunham agreed.

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