If you still think of Jemima Kirke as just Jessa Johansson, you’re missing the point. Honestly, for years, the industry basically treated her like the character she played on HBO: a chaotic, beautiful, unreliable bohemian who stumbled into acting because her friend Lena Dunham asked her to. It was a narrative Kirke herself lean into for a long time. She’d tell interviewers she wasn’t "really" an actress, that she was just a painter who happened to be on a hit show.
But then something shifted.
Maybe it was the rigid, terrifyingly composed headmistress she played in Sex Education. Or the subtle, crumbling maturity of her role in Conversations with Friends. By 2026, the "reluctant actress" label has finally started to flake off. What’s left is a performer who—despite her best efforts to play it cool—is one of the most interesting screen presences we’ve got.
The Lena Dunham Era and the Jessa Mythos
We have to start with the Dunham of it all. Most people first saw Kirke in Tiny Furniture (2010). She played Charlotte, a character that felt less like a performance and more like a documentary capture of a specific type of New York girl. It was indie, it was raw, and it led directly to Girls (2012–2017).
For six seasons, Jessa was the soul of that show’s messiness.
She was the friend who would marry a venture capitalist on a whim and then forget to tell you. Kirke’s performance was magnetic because it felt dangerous. You never knew if she was following a script or just existing in front of the lens. This birthed the misconception that Jemima Kirke was just playing herself. While Jessa was certainly a "horrible version" of her younger self, as executive producer Jesse Peretz once noted, the longevity of that role required a craft that Kirke was, at the time, too "prideful" to admit she possessed.
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Beyond the Brooklyn Loft
After Girls wrapped, there was a period where it felt like Kirke might just retreat to her painting studio in Red Hook and never come back. She did a few indie projects that flew under the radar:
- Ava’s Possessions (2015): A weird, stylish horror-comedy where she plays Ivy.
- The Little Hours (2017): She plays a nun. Yes, really. It’s hilarious and foul-mouthed.
- Untogether (2018): This one was special because she starred alongside her real-life sister, Lola Kirke. It’s a messy look at relationships that felt very much in her wheelhouse, but with a sharper, more adult edge.
The Pivot: From "Bohemian" to "Buttoned-Up"
The real turning point in the Jemima Kirke movies and TV shows timeline happened when she started playing women who actually had their lives (ostensibly) together.
In 2021, she joined Sex Education as Hope Haddon. It was a shock. Watching the girl who famously wore a see-through dress to a wedding on Girls play a conservative, power-tripping headmistress was a stroke of casting genius. She was "deliciously vindictive," a phrase that gets thrown around a lot but actually fit here.
Then came Conversations with Friends (2022).
Playing Melissa, a successful writer caught in a complex web of infidelity and intellectual posturing, Kirke showed a vulnerability we hadn't seen. She wasn't the "loose cannon" anymore. She was the one being cheated on. She was the one with the mortgage and the reputation. It was a quiet, devastating performance that proved she could handle Sally Rooney’s specific brand of internalised misery.
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Recent Hits and the 2025 Surge
By the time City on Fire (2023) hit Apple TV+, Kirke was firmly in her "Mature Lead" era. As Regan Hamilton-Sweeney, she played a woman dealing with a family dynasty, a crumbling marriage, and a shooting in Central Park. It was high-stakes drama, and she anchored it.
More recently, in early 2025, she made a surprising guest appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Playing Claire Morgan in the episode "False Idols," she brought a certain "indie film" gravitas to the procedural world. It was a reminder that she’s no longer just a "friend of the creator"—she’s a working actor who can drop into any world and make it feel lived-in.
The Dual Life: Painter vs. Performer
You can't talk about her filmography without talking about her art. Kirke is a RISD-trained painter (class of 2008), and she’s spent the last few years trying to bridge the gap between these two identities.
She used to see acting as a "lesser medium."
Now, she sees them as extensions of the same thing. Her portraits—which have been exhibited at galleries like Sargeant’s Daughters—often focus on women in moments of transition. She even did a series on women in their wedding dresses after her own divorce. That same eye for "the awkward truth" is what makes her acting work. She’s looking for the layers. In a 2024 interview, she mentioned that she often pauses movies to discuss specific shots with her kids, treating film as a technical craft rather than just "pretending."
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Directorial Ventures
Kirke has also stepped behind the camera, specifically for music videos. If you want to see her visual style without the dialogue, check out:
- "Dusk Till Dawn" (Zayn feat. Sia): She stars in this one, looking like a noir femme fatale.
- "Marlon Brando" (Alex Cameron): She directed this for her long-time partner. It’s weird, funny, and visually distinct.
- "Best Life" (Alex Cameron): Another directorial credit that shows her knack for capturing the absurdity of modern life.
What’s Next for Kirke?
As we move through 2026, Kirke is being more selective than ever. She’s navigating life as a single mother in Brooklyn while teaching film classes at the Red Hook Art Project. She’s recently been involved in the short film Fame and Other Four-Letter Words, which premiered at Tribeca, playing a role that reportedly pokes fun at the very concept of celebrity—something she clearly has a love-hate relationship with.
Actionable Insights for the Kirke Completist:
- Start with the "Big Three": If you want to see her range, watch Girls (the origin), Sex Education (the villain arc), and Conversations with Friends (the dramatic peak).
- Don't skip the music videos: Her work with Alex Cameron gives you a better sense of her personal aesthetic than any big-budget TV show ever will.
- Look for the "Gaze": In every role, Kirke has this way of looking at other characters like she’s about to paint them. It’s her secret weapon. She isn't just reacting; she's observing.
The "Jessa" shadow is finally receding. What’s left is an artist who stopped apologizing for having more than one talent. Whether she’s playing a nun, a headmistress, or a grieving socialite, Jemima Kirke has finally convinced us that she’s exactly where she belongs—even if she still claims she just "fell into it."