Andrew Rannells has revealed new details about his past romance with Anderson Cooper, describing how the relationship unfolded over roughly nine months when he was 25.
The Tony Award-nominated actor discussed the short-lived relationship during an episode of the OMG Obsessed podcast with his Girls co-star Zosia Mamet.
Rannells said he had recently appeared in Hairspray on Broadway and was not widely known when he met the journalist through mutual friends. He said they dated “off and on” over a period that lasted about nine months, although they met relatively few times.
“He was super cool and so smart and would do things like call me from a satellite phone… and be like, ‘I was just thinking about you.’ And there would be helicopters going on behind him,” Rannells said.
He recalled believing the dramatic phone calls were a sign of a serious relationship, before later realising Cooper may have been using the satellite phone to contact several people.
“I was very young and sort of thought, ‘I guess we’re in love.’ And he was maybe rolling calls on that satellite phone,” Rannells said. “There was maybe a few people he was checking in with… And I was so hurt that I was like, ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.’”
Rannells said the romance eventually ended without a major dispute, after he left to work elsewhere. “So it ended, not badly, but it just fizzled out because then I went away to work,” he said.
Anderson Cooper romance inspired Girls storyline
Rannells previously said the experience later became the basis for the story given to his character Elijah in the HBO series Girls.
He said he told series creator Lena Dunham and co-creator Jenni Konner about dating Cooper at 25, as well as his feelings about the relationship. “Then it became the story that Elijah had in the series,” he said.
Rannells has since been in a long-term relationship with fellow actor Tuc Watkins, whom he met while they were appearing in The Boys in the Band on Broadway in 2018.
Speaking about their relationship on The Drew Barrymore Show in 2020, Rannells joked: “We met and I felt like such a lazy actor that I fell in love with my co-star. I was like this is so cliché.”
