Andrew Rannells

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Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR.

**Jesse Thorn** (0:49)
It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. Earlier this week, we heard from the great Alison Janney, star of The West Wing, I, Tanya, and the new movie Love You, Miss You. Next up, we have Janney's Love You, Miss You co-star, Andrew Rannells.
Rannells plays Jamie in the film. Jamie is the assistant to a world-renowned journalist whose stepfather just died. The journalist is a busy guy, too busy, it seems, to head to New Mexico to help his mom deal with the fallout of that death. So it falls on Jamie. Rannells is great in it, just like he always is, charming, handsome, sort of unfailingly Midwestern friendliness. Maybe you saw Rannells on Girls or The New Normal. But if you know Andrew Rannells for one thing, it was probably the part that made him. Rannells played Elder Price, the lead role in the original run of The Book of Mormon, one of the biggest musicals of all time.
When I talked with Rannells in 2013, we kicked things off with a bit from that old timer of a performance. In this song, Elder Price is just faced a crisis of faith. He reaffirms his Mormon beliefs with the showstopper, I Believe.

**Andrew Rannells** (2:41)
Andrew, welcome to Bullseye.

**Andrew Rannells** (2:43)
Well, thank you for having me. That's a special kind of torture to have to listen to yourself.

**Jesse Thorn** (2:48)
So one of the things, I didn't get to see Book of Mormon in New York.

**Andrew Rannells** (2:53)
Oh, forget it.

**Jesse Thorn** (2:53)
I know. Sorry, I'm out of here.
And but one of the things that I've loved about hearing you sing the songs and seeing you on, you know, televised performances and stuff like that, is that the tone of the musical and especially your part calls on you to be a very classic Broadway guy. You know what I mean?

**Andrew Rannells** (3:20)
Yeah. It's the juvenile role in technical terms. Elder Price was very much written as like Trey and Matt and Bobby Lopez wanted him to be sort of quintessential musical theater leading boy.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:34)
What did you get from them after you got the part? What did they tell you they wanted?

**Andrew Rannells** (3:40)
Not a lot. I mean, I feel like it was one of the rare experiences as an actor that I looked at that material and I thought, I know exactly how to do this. Like this one, I know how to do. Because a lot of times you struggle with stuff, particularly like with audition material, you want to try to find the way in, you want to try to, how am I going to inhabit this? And with that one, I just looked at it and I thought, I think my gut instincts are going to be correct on this one, and I shouldn't overthink this.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:11)
When I see Mormon missionaries on the street, which I do, I lived here, a lot of door-to-door Mormon missionaries, as a non-Mormon, I'm always awed by their commitment to that faith, especially in the context of them being young men, 18, 19, 20, 21-year-old men. I mean, it would have terrified me to do anything like that.

**Andrew Rannells** (4:46)
Oh yeah, I certainly don't have that conviction.

**Jesse Thorn** (4:51)
I was gonna ask, is there anything in your life that you've ever believed in in that way?

**Andrew Rannells** (4:58)
Well, I mean, I guess like, I mean, if I have a version, I suppose, is like musical theater, that I moved from Nebraska to go to New York because I had this passion to be on Broadway. So I suppose that in a way is my version of that.

**Jesse Thorn** (5:15)
Was that always your goal as an actor to be?

**Andrew Rannells** (5:17)
100%, yeah, that was my goal. That was a finish line for me, was to get in a Broadway show.

**Jesse Thorn** (5:22)
What was the first show you ever did? I mean, ever, not just professionally.

**Andrew Rannells** (5:26)
As a child, the first show I ever did was a children's theater production of The Snow Queen.