Girls star Andrew Rannells revealed one of the show’s longest-kept secrets on Obsessed: The Podcast nearly a decade after HBO’s Emmy-winning millennial comedy-drama ended.
When the suit-wearing, clean-cut, charming news anchor Dill Harcourt swept Rannells’ character, Elijah, off his feet in the fifth season of Lena Dunham’s Girls, fans immediately began speculating that the fictional TV host, played by Corey Stoll, was based on a certain specific CNN news anchor. Now, the actor is revealing the character’s true origin.
“I told Lena and [co-creator] Jenni Konner a story about when I was 25 that I had dated Anderson Cooper, and I told them about the experience and what that was like. And, then it became the story that Elijah had in the series,” Rannells, 47, admitted on Obsessed: The Podcast after being pressed about his “horrified” expression at an earlier question. “That’s what I thought you were gonna ask about.”
“It also explains your reaction before we started recording, when I said, ‘I might go all gray like Anderson Cooper,’” Obsessed: The Podcast host Kevin Fallon said, pantomiming Rannells jumping from his seat.
“No, and that was—it was a very brief relationship,“ Rannells, who is currently promoting his new film alongside Allison Janney, Miss You, Love You, replied. “But when I told them that, they were like, ‘Oh, that’s a fun story.’”
Early in the show’s fifth season, Elijah encounters the older, suave news anchor at a bar. The two immediately hit it off and begin a brief—albeit passionate—love affair, until Dill’s adult stability and Elijah’s aimless youthfulness butt heads. Dill ultimately calls off the relationship in search of his true lifelong partner, breaking the younger man’s heart.
“God, you’ve opened up my mind and my heart. I’ll think of you every time I go to Brooklyn,” Dill tells Elijah as the two part.
For almost a full decade, Rannells and the rest of the cast denied any such comparisons to his real-life counterpart.
“I think the general idea that he’s this powerful, you know, adult, is what’s important. For my money, his job could have been any number of things," Rannells said in an interview with Elle shortly after the episode’s release.
“I don’t know. I was playing Dill Harcourt. I did not base this character on anybody," Corey Stoll said at the time.
Cooper, 58, even commented on the onscreen relationship, putting forward his own theory for the character’s real-world inspiration.
“I’m obsessed with Girls, but I’m a few episodes behind. I just met Lena Dunham at Sundance and she didn’t mention anything to me, but I’d be flattered,“ he told the New York Post in 2016. “Wait—is that the guy Andrew Rannells’ [character] is dating? I thought he was more of a [Bill] O’Reilly character. I’m a friend of Andrew’s. I should ask him."
Cooper did not respond to a request for comment.
In his upcoming film, Rannells has strayed from his Girls character towards a new archetype.
“I kind of say it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever gotten to do,“ he said of Miss You, Love You. “It really is because I’ve been very lucky that I’ve gotten to make a career of being sort of a sassy gay friend. But sometimes I want to be a sad gay friend character archetype.”
Miss You, Love You begins streaming on HBO Max on May 29.
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