Andrew Rannells Navigates Adulting in 'Uncle of the Year'

Do you ever feel like you're adulting all wrong? The lives 30 and 40-year-olds are living today are often vastly different from the lives the generation before them lived. We're not as interested in marriage or kids or even job security, for that matter. This is exactly where Andrew Rannells, actor and writer from The Book of Mormon and Girls, starts things off with his new book, Uncle of the Year.

Now in his 40s with a successful career and relationship, why does Rannells still feel like the 20-year-old trying to make it? In a series of essays, Rannells covers everything from deciding not to have kids (while getting into a relationship with someone with two kids) to figuring out how to adult in an entirely new way than we've ever experienced. How do we create new milestones if we decide to not have kids and get married?

Rannells chatted about this and so much more on Newsweek's Parting Shot Podcast. To listen to the full conversation, including Rannell's reaction to reuniting with his The Book of Mormon co-star, Josh Gad, in the new Broadway show Gutenberg! The Musical!, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In your book Uncle of the Year, you really write from a place a lot of us are in: adults in our 30s and 40s, but living a life very different from the lives the generation before us lived. How do you think our path to adulthood is different?

I certainly took a little more time to sort of figure out what exactly it was I wanted to do. Now my path in terms of acting is obviously very specific, but the days of going to college or not going to college and getting a job right away that you stay in for 20 or 30 years, that doesn't happen anymore. Or it's very rare if it happens. So I think that kind of has a lot to do with it, too. There's a lot more searching time that is built in, for better, for worse, it sort of allows people to find what it is that actually does make you happy and what do you want your life to look like. I certainly felt that I had more space to sort of figure that out, I didn't rush into something right away at 22 or something.

We definitely are a generation that doesn't feel particularly emboldened to one job or one career. How do you think that changes how we approach our work?

I think, particularly with acting, it's very rare to find yourself in one job for a long period of time, it's piecing together year-to-year what your year looks like. On Broadway, I was very lucky that I got to be a part of shows for a year at a time, which is pretty rare. It's pretty rare. And even with Girls for six seasons, which is a long stint of knowing I had that job every year, but then there was still eight months out of the year that I was left to my own devices. So I think that is part of the business that I'm in, that's always kind of going to be the situation.

One of the things you write about in Uncle of the Year is the concept of like pretending to adult, that it sometimes feels like you're not really doing it right. I feel like social media has a big impact on that, how it seems like everybody gets it but you. How has that impacted you?

In terms of the comparison, I think it's dangerous. It's something that I certainly struggled with very early in my career and still struggle with. You can't help but compare yourself to other people and what other people have, and some of that is great. It keeps you motivated and keeps you ambitious and focused, but if taken too far, it just leaves you feeling never satisfied and often bad about yourself. What I started to learn in my 30s was that I can only do what I do. I had to sort of make peace with that. I'm not going to get everything. I would like to be offered all the jobs, but that's simply not the case. I feel very fortunate that there was not social media when I was a kid. I already know how stressful it was looking around me and seeing what other people were doing and feeling competitive and feeling jealous. So now to have it, it's hard as an adult to sort of face that. So for young people who are looking at their phones, or looking at a computer, and seeing all these things you and I know are mostly fabricated or produced in a way, it's hard to explain that to kids, especially young kids. They're working really hard to make it look like everything is perfect. I've watched my nieces nephews and my boyfriend's kids struggle with that. It's a tricky time, certainly to be a young person.

That's something else you wrote about, how so many of our peers are having kids, yet we don't necessarily want that life, and there's a sense of guilt that goes with that. Do you feel that?

Oh, totally. I'm 44 and a lot of my friends in their 20s, at the age where my siblings or friends that I went to high school with in the Midwest were starting families, nobody was doing that around me, gay or straight, quite frankly. But certainly the gay men that I knew were not starting families. But in my friend group, probably in the last decade, all of a sudden it seems like everyone's having children. But that was just never on my radar. And I talk about it in Uncle of the Year that, in a lot of ways, my career was a version of my child. That was the thing that I focused on. And those jobs were really important to me and sort of became all encompassing, and I was spending a lot of my time, most of my time, focused on that. So the idea of starting a family never really entered into my mind. It wasn't on the schedule.

But you entered into a relationship with someone who has children. Did that change your idea of having kids?

It was very unexpected. I met [him] when we were doing Boys in the Band. He has two kids, they're twins and at the time they were five. I didn't really spend a ton of time with them before we started dating, but then about a year after we did the show on Broadway and we were filming the film version for Netflix, then I was spending a lot of time with them. It was very different. My relationship to the kids in my life was the uncle. I was the uncle from out of town. I have 10 nieces and nephews. I would come in for holidays and things like that. Or they would come to visit me if I was in a show. It was a much more limited exposure. The day-to-day of spending time with kids was a big adjustment because the uncle tricks don't work long term. When you're helping a kid get ready for school or go to bed or making dinner, like those are very different skills than being the fun uncle.

So did this experience make you want to have kids of your own?

Um, no. It's difficult. I've always felt lucky. As a gay man that wasn't something I was just going to accidentally fall into. I wasn't going to unexpectedly be pregnant and wind up with a child. It's definitely something you have to plan for and decide you want. I love spending time with them. And I love the relationship that we've developed, but do I want to run out and get my own baby?

Yeah, I hear you. Considering the state of our generation, and how so many of us aren't getting married or having kids, where do you think we'll be as senior citizens? Will we just be a bunch of 70-year-olds walking around on Instagram Live?

Who knows what social media will look like. I don't know. I mean, I write about it a little bit. There's a chapter in my book about volunteering with SAGE, a great organization. I was paired with a couple of older gay gentlemen, just to hang out and help with things. And one of the things that I write about in that essay was that I helped them both find porn on their computers, because they had just gotten these computers, and both of them, separately, were like, "How do I find that pornography on the computer?" So while part of it was a little like, that's sort of sad, that's what I'm here for? But at the same time, I was sort of encouraged by the fact that like, oh, well, this doesn't really change. He's just still looking. Like, "How do I log into Sean Cody on my new computer?" And if I could help with that, and he still wanted to look at porn, I was like, "All right. Well, I guess that's my service here."

That's oddly reassuring. Speaking of reassuring, one thing that fans of Broadway are reassured by is that you and Josh Gad are reuniting for Gutenberg! The Musical! Ever since you two first did The Book of Mormon, I've always thought you two were the next Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick from The Producers. You're a perfect pairing. How excited are you for the new musical?

That's very complimentary. I'm really excited about it. Josh, and I have not worked together like this since The Book of Mormon. I've been lucky to go back to Broadway many times since then, but Josh and I have not had this chance. So to get to do this 12 years later, and that it's just the two of us just sort of messing around, I'm really excited. And with Alex Timbers, who's a director we both sort of chased for a long time and have wanted to work with, the fact that he's directing it, we finally wore him down to find a project for us. So I can't wait to dive in. I am slowly remembering Josh's antics from our Book of Mormon days, so I have to mentally prepare myself for getting back into bed with him, as it were.

Listen to H. Alan Scott on Newsweek's Parting Shot. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Twitter: @HAlanScott