Much like her character Jessa on Girls, Jemima Kirke tells it like it is.
And that's exactly what she does in the U.K.'s ES Magazine's latest issue, on newsstands now. Speaking for the first time about her split from Michael Mosberg, her husband of seven years, the actress explains why she felt compelled to revaluate their romance. "I got divorced, and I attribute that to acting," she says matter-of-factly. "And just asking myself, 'Is this really me?'"
At first, Jemima implies, their romance seemed kismet.
During her second stint in rehab, she met Michael (who recently set up his own rehab facility in Brooklyn). A year later, she got pregnant and the couple decided to marry. "I just wanted to keep it f--king simple: Yes, I choose you, let's do this. We'll live together and we'll raise the baby as a family,'" the actress tells the magazine. "You just want to do whatever is best for the child."
After become a bride at age 24, Jemima also became stepmother to Michael's two children from a previous relationship. "Getting pregnant does influence your choice, and that's why I think a lot of couples end up getting divorced later," the actress/painter says. "Because the kids are fine, they're in school, they've got their life set up and then you finally ask: 'Am I happy?'"
Jemima, 31, and Michael, 40, are parents to daughter Rafaella Mosberg, 6, and son Memphis Mosberg, 4. The actress doesn't know what their future holds, but she's not fazed by it. "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," she says. "And so then you start looking at your own life in that way. I've learned a lot more about myself and started to figure out what I really want."
After the divorce, Michael moved 15 blocks away from the Brooklyn brownstone he once shared with Jemima. "I'm going to miss being a unit," the actress says. "That's something that I think is taught to us societally, that a family is a mom and a dad, or two dads or two mom or whatever, but it stays together and it's one house. You do get really sad when you fail at that."
Girls had a bigger impact on Jemima's life than she ever imagined it would. The actress—who tried to quit the show after its first season—can't believe the series is ending after six seasons.
"I am not at all sentimental, and on the last day of filming, I was like, 'Oh God, do I have to hug everyone?' But after my very last scene I went back to my dressing room and I was like, 'Oh s--t, I think I'm going to cry.' Because it actually did mean something to me that it was over," says Jemima, creator Lena Dunham's longtime friends. "My life has changed so much because of it."
It seems the only thing that hasn't changed is Jemima's candor.
"It is important, I think, that people allow themselves to have opinions and to not be so f--king likeable," she says of being unapologetically herself in public. "Everyone is so precious and so safe with the things they say; everyone's so scared of being slammed and judged. I'm just not."
For more from Jemima, pick up ES Magazine's latest issue.