At 25, Andrew Rannells was receiving calls from Anderson Cooper on a satellite phone, with helicopters audible in the background. For a young actor who was thoroughly dazzled by the journalist, it felt like the beginning of something extraordinary.
Now, Rannells is sharing more of the story—and how differently he understood those calls at the time.
Speaking with his former Girls co-star Zosia Mamet on OMG Obsessed, Rannells recalled meeting Cooper through friends after appearing in Hairspray on Broadway. He was still relatively unknown and found Cooper enormously impressive.
According to Rannells, they dated on and off across roughly nine months. Looking back, he acknowledges that the actual number of meetings was fairly small, even though the connection stretched over a longer period.
The telephone calls made an impression. Cooper would contact him from overseas and say he had been thinking about him. Rannells took that attention to heart and began imagining they might be falling in love.
Later, he started wondering whether other people were receiving similar check-ins. That is his recollection and speculation; his account does not establish what any other calls involved or whether the two had agreed to an exclusive relationship.
He remembers feeling hurt. The romance eventually faded when he went away for work.
But the experience did become part of his creative life. Rannells later told Girls creators Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner about dating Cooper, and the story helped inspire Elijah’s relationship with a famous television news anchor. A youthful romantic disappointment had found its way into television.
His present-day relationship supplies a warmer next chapter. Rannells and actor Tuc Watkins met while playing lovers in The Boys in the Band, and their connection continued beyond the stage.
In a CULTURED interview earlier this year, Rannells described living in Los Angeles with Watkins and Watkins’ teenage twins. Their mornings involve getting the children ready for school and feeding the dog.
It is a lovely glimpse of the life that followed those dramatic telephone calls: two actors, a shared home and the ordinary routines of being together.
📷 @andrewrannells @tucwatkins
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