Entertainment
Andrew Rannells on his new musical Tammy Faye and gay representation in TV: ‘There have been great strides’-Hugh Montgomery-Entertainment – Metro
The star was never going to turn down a musical with music by Elton John.
The star was never going to turn down a musical with music by Elton John (Picture: Marc Brenner)
There are many reasons why actors may be attracted to a particular project, but sometimes you barely need to ask, so obvious is the draw.
Such is the case with Tammy Faye, the new musical about notorious US evangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker at the Almeida Theatre; directed by the venue’s artistic director Rupert Goold, it boasts a book by Britain’s most in-demand playwright/screenwriter James Graham, lyrics by Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears and music by Elton John, no less.
So when Andrew Rannells – the American star of hit TV series Girls, among other things – was offered the part of Jim, he was only ever going to answer one way.
‘I had wanted to work with Rupert for a very long time and almost had the chance a couple of years ago, but the timing didn’t work out,’ Andrew explains. ‘So it seemed really extraordinary for him to then come to me with a script that had music by Elton and a book by James – it was too good to pass up.’
Creative team aside, though, there was also the obvious dramatic pull of the story of the Bakkers, which was recently the subject of an Oscar-winning biopic as well.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Tammy Faye and Jim were pioneering in bringing Christianity to a mass television audience, through their PTL (Praise The Lord) network, becoming huge celebrities in the process – only to experience a precipitous fall from grace, when Jim was exposed for paying off a church secretary who accused him of rape, and subsequently jailed for defrauding his and his wife’s followers to fund their lavish lifestyle.
Andrew’s character is a daring contrast to the fundamentally good-hearted Tammy Faye (Picture: Marc Brenner)
‘Once the money got in the way, and the fame, it just sort of corrupted everything,’ as Andrew puts it.
In contrast to the flawed but fundamentally good-hearted Tammy Faye, Jim makes for a testingly unsympathetic character for Andrew to play. These days, he is back on air and hardly contrite; last year, he was ordered by a court to refund buyers of a fake Covid cure he had plugged on his show.
‘I don’t think I have figured him out, because I don’t think that Jim Bakker has figured himself out,’ Andrew says. ‘I don’t know what kind of lesson he learned from the first part of his life. It’s very confusing.’
Returning to theatre sees Andrew come full circle (Picture: Luke Fontana)
For all the challenges of the role, though, being back doing musical theatre ‘feels like returning to my comfort zone’, Andrew says. After all, it was musicals with which he first made his name, getting his big break in 2011 as one of the leads in the original Broadway production of The Book Of Mormon.
If Andrew made his name in theatre, he is now just as celebrated for his screen endeavours, which really began with the plum role of Elijah, the wry best friend of Lena Dunham’s heroine Hannah Horvath in Girls.
Lena’s comedy-drama about New York twentysomethings, which ran between 2012 and 2017, was one of the most talked-about, and divisive, shows of its era, and Andrew says that, as a newcomer to TV, it was incredibly exciting to work on.
But at the same time, he admits, seeing the criticisms that his friend Lena had to endure as the series went on was an unpleasant education in ‘how media in general likes to build up people as special voices and then tear them down later,’ as he puts it.
Andrew is an established theatre star unlikely to be phased by Tammy Faye’s high production values (Picture: Marc Brenner)
Andrew is also notable for being one of America’s most prominent gay actors, and has played a rich range of gay characters, from Elijah to Larry in Ryan Murphy’s all-star revival of 1960s play The Boys In The Band, which was first seen on Broadway before being turned into a Netflix film.
Despite the prejudice that gay actors have historically faced, Andrew never questioned being open about his sexuality, he says. ‘The first time that anyone asked [about it] was when I was in The Book Of Mormon. At that point, I was already a 32-year-old man with several ex-boyfriends and there was kind of no going back.’
When it comes to gay and queer representation on screen, Andrew is hopeful about the improvements he has seen over his career: He says: ‘There’s always a distance to travel… but I think that certainly in the past ten years, there’s been great strides.’
One question I have to ask is: can he imagine there being a Girls reunion at some point? ‘I personally could totally imagine it,’ he says. ‘I think it’s probably too soon at this point to tackle that, but I would love to see where all of those folks are in ten years.’ You read it here first…
Tammy Faye is at London’s Almeida Theatre until December 3.
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