52 Minutes With … Andrew Rannells

He’s happy to take on any character, gay or otherwise. Just don’t expect him to play a role model.

- E. Alex Jung

I’M SO CONFUSED, because I was in Fire Island last summer and I was like, When the fuck did they film that?” Andrew Rannells says. We’re talking about gay representation on TV, and I’ve just asked him if he’s watched the trailer for Fire Island, the new reality-TV show on Logo that follows six friends as they summer in “gay Disneyland.” The Girls actor—who gets to unleash his 20-something id as Elijah Krantz, Hannah Horvath’s ex-boyfriend turned gay best friend and roommate—is more interested in the logistics of the shoot than anything else. “Do they go to Tea?” He’s talking about the big party—the party—that starts every afternoon in the Pines at a bar near the ferry dock. I confess that I’ve never been to Fire Island. “Oh, it’s the best,” Rannells says. “I took a girlfriend of mine there this past summer. I think she thought it was going to be all this dancing, house music, and drugs, and it’s not! We had a beautiful house that we rented, and we grilled and swam in a pool, and it was very chill.”

We’re still watching the trailer when there’s the requisite dramatic turn, as one man accuses another of having “hooked up with other people,” and the accused shouts, “Are you fucking kidding me?” The manufactured drama doesn’t faze Rannells. “Gay people: We get drunk and fight just like straight people!” he says. “We’re not looking for role models on Logo. Let’s have some fun.”