Ray is quickly becoming one of our favorite characters on Girls. Scott Meslow sat down with Alex Karpovsky, the man who plays Ray: 

• How much do you want people to read the “real you” into the character?
  
  I want people to be engaged by the character. If that means they have to apply a lot of similarities between him and me, so be it — I don’t care, I’m not offended. He’s not a necessarily a likable person, and it’s okay if you don’t think I’m a likable person, as long as you are engaged by the character. 
  
  
• This isn’t the first time you’ve played a character named after yourself — you also wrote and starred in a film about “Alex Karpovsky” called The Hole Story in 2005, and your character on HBO’s Girls was originally named “Karpovsky.”
  
  Right. Lena [Dunham] wrote the pilot and asked me to be in it. When she sent it to me, and it said “Karpovsky,” the only note I had was, “Can we change the name?”
  
  
• Why do you think you end up playing “yourself” so often?
  
  Different directors would have different reasons, each of which you could probably analyze, [but] I think oftentimes stories need a character to agitate, or stir things up — unsubtle things, just to keep the story going forward. And for whatever reason, people think sometimes, in certain contexts, I can do that with a comedic wit. Maybe that’s why they cast me. But I don’tknow why. Maybe they have their own reasons. It’s not to be the romantic lead. Not to have a pretty face. [laughs]

Read the full interview