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" Writers, actresses, and general bad-ass women Mindy Kaling and Lena Dunham appeared on the &amp;#039;Power of Story: Serious Ladies&amp;#039; panel at Sundance Film Festival, and said some pretty brilliant stuff about why it&amp;#039;s SO annoying when people assume that they are the same people as the characters they play on screen. Both Mindy and Lena have had to face constant comparisons with their respective characters, from descriptions of Lena Dunham as an\u00A0entitled, narcissistic twenty-something, like Hannah, to Mindy Lahiri&amp;#039;s views on guns being ascribed Mindy Kaling. &amp;quot;More than any other male characters, people really do think that what my character is saying is what I believe,&amp;quot; said Mindy.\u00A0 &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a reason people have trouble differentiating between me and my character,&amp;quot; commented Lena Dunham,\u00A0&amp;quot;Mindy and her character. We basically share a name; you guys share the same name. There are stylistic similarities. We have the same voice; we have the same face.&amp;quot; But, say both Lena and Mindy, there&amp;#039;s a massive difference in how we connect women and their characters, versus men playing roles.\u00A0\u00A0  &amp;quot;At the end of the day, I don&amp;#039;t think that Larry David or Woody Allen or anyone else playing some version of themselves are walking around with a million people who think they know and understand you on a deep and abiding level,&amp;quot; said Lena. &amp;quot;Woody Allen is proof that people don&amp;#039;t think that everything he says in his films is stuff that he does.&amp;quot; Picking out one of the most memorable examples of this weird dynamic, Lena and Mindy discussed Hannah&amp;#039;s infamous &amp;quot;I think that I&amp;#039;m the voice of a generation&amp;quot; line. &amp;quot;It is a confusing thing when people equate the words that come out of your character&amp;#039;s mouth with some real-world philosophy that you absolutely don&amp;#039;t possess,&amp;quot; said Lena. &amp;quot;I\u00A0have accepted now, for better or worse, that that will be on my grave.&amp;quot;  Mindy also briefly covered the strange way critics and audiences react to female characters who aren&amp;#039;t &amp;#039;likeable&amp;#039; or are anti-heroes (think Skyler in Breaking Bad, and basically ALL the characters in GIRLS). &amp;quot;Likeability is not remotely important to me,&amp;quot; said Mindy. &amp;quot;Relatability is very important to me,&amp;quot; noting that it&amp;#039;s important for female characters - and all characters, actually - to\u00A0be complex, difficult,\u00A0and interesting.\u00A0 You can watch the full panel, complete with other awesome women Kristen Wiig and Jenji Kohan, below:      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/entertainment/news/a32922/mindy-kaling-lena-dunham-characters/>