Andrew Rannells

Andrew Scott Rannells was born on August 23, 1978, in Omaha, Nebraska, the fourth of five children born to Charlotte and Ronald Rannells. He grew up in the Hanscom Park neighborhood of Omaha with three sisters and an older brother. He attended Our Lady of Lourdes grade school before enrolling at Creighton Preparatory School, an all-boys Roman Catholic institution in Omaha, where he was sexually abused by a priest; he left the Catholic Church upon graduating. As a child, Rannells took classes at the Emmy Gifford Children's Theater and performed at the Omaha Community Playhouse, the Firehouse Dinner Theatre, and the Dundee Dinner Theatre, appearing in his first play at age eleven. He was a 1997 YoungArts alumnus, alongside Zuzanna Szadkowski and Michael Benjamin Washington, and did community theater in Omaha with fellow Creighton Prep alumnus Conor Oberst. In 1996, he appeared in a Grease spoof commercial alongside Amy Adams. After graduating high school in 1997, Rannells relocated to New York City and studied theater at Marymount Manhattan College for two years before transitioning to full-time auditioning.

Before establishing himself on Broadway, Rannells built an early career through voice acting and regional theater. In the mid-1990s, he was cast in television productions by the animation company DIC Entertainment following an Omaha casting call. From 2001 to 2004, he worked with New York City-based 4Kids Entertainment, providing voices for English-language dubs of anime series including Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, and served as voice director for the dubs of Kirby: Right Back at Ya! and Sonic X. From September 2000 to August 2001, he toured in Pokémon Live!, playing the character James — an experience he later described in his 2019 memoir, Too Much Is Not Enough: A Memoir of Fumbling Toward Adulthood, as deeply uncomfortable, citing the character as an offensive depiction of a gay man and acknowledging that financial necessity drove him to accept the role. His regional theater work during this period included productions of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Miss Saigon, and Thoroughly Modern Millie. For his portrayal of Hedwig at the Zachary Scott Theater Center in Austin, Texas, in 2002, he received the Best Actor in a Musical honor at the B. Iden Payne Awards.

Rannells made his Broadway debut in 2005 in Hairspray, initially as an understudy before assuming the role of Link Larkin. He subsequently joined the First National Tour of Jersey Boys as Bob Gaudio, completing his final tour performance on December 6, 2008, in Toronto, before reprising the role in the show's Broadway production in January 2009. His Broadway career reached a defining moment in 2011 when he originated the role of Elder Kevin Price in The Book of Mormon, the musical written by Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Robert Lopez. The performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for his contribution to the original Broadway cast recording. His final performance in the production was on June 10, 2012.

In 2015, Rannells temporarily stepped into the role of King George III in Hamilton on Broadway, covering for Jonathan Groff from October 27 to November 29 while Groff fulfilled prior filming commitments. The following year, he played Whizzer Brown in the Broadway revival of Falsettos, directed by James Lapine, alongside Christian Borle as Marvin and Stephanie J. Block as Trina. The production ran from October 27, 2016, through January 8, 2017, and his performance earned him a second Tony Award nomination, this time for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. In 2018, he played Larry in the Broadway revival of The Boys in the Band, a limited engagement marking the play's 50th anniversary; the production won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. Rannells reprised the role alongside the full revival cast for the Netflix film adaptation, released on September 30, 2020. In 2023, he reunited with his Book of Mormon co-star Josh Gad for the limited Broadway run of Gutenberg! The Musical!, which played from September 15, 2023, to January 28, 2024.

Beyond Broadway, Rannells made his London stage debut in 2022, originating the role of Jim Bakker in the musical Tammy Faye at the Almeida Theatre. The performance earned him a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical in 2023. He had been announced to reprise the role for the production's Broadway transfer in fall 2024 but withdrew following unsuccessful contract negotiations and was replaced by his Falsettos co-star Christian Borle.

Rannells developed a substantial screen career alongside his stage work. He starred as Bryan Collins in the NBC sitcom The New Normal during its 2012–13 run and played the recurring role of Elijah on HBO's Girls from 2012 to 2017. Beginning in 2019, he starred as Blair Pfaff and served as a producer on the Showtime series Black Monday, which premiered on January 20, 2019, ran for three seasons, and was cancelled in January 2022. In 2020, he appeared in the Netflix film adaptation of The Prom as Trent Oliver. His voice acting work has continued throughout his career, with main roles on Netflix's Big Mouth, where he voices Matthew MacDell, and on Amazon Prime's Invincible, where he voices William Clockwell.