Black Monday’s Andrew Rannells promises the series ‘gets wilder and weirder’

Set in the heady, indulgent days of the late 1980s, Black Monday captured the zaniness of Wall Street greed. One of its stars promises season two is even “wilder”.

Season two of Black Monday promises to be wild

If you’ve seen even 10 minutes of comedy Black Monday, you might flash back to The Wolf of Wall Street.

The 1987-set TV series stars Don Cheadle, Regina King and Andrew Rannells as second-tier traders who, in the universe of the show, inadvertently cause the Wall Street stock market crash known as Black Monday.

The period TV show has crazy 80s costumes, bonkers production design that really capture the tackiness and excess of the decade, and characters that do inexplicable things in a cocaine-fuelled era where greed was truly good.

Black Monday may not be as manic and over-the-top as Martin Scorsese’s movie, which arguably asked too much of its audience in its indulgence, but it’s still pretty wild. After that first season, how could season two, starting today on Stan, possibly top that?

“It keeps getting wilder and weirder in the best way possible,” Rannells told news.com.au.

“We weren’t sure how that was going to go. Our showrunners David Caspe and Jordan Cahan really managed to outdo themselves and, in every episode, there would be a moment during the table read when Don, Regina and I would look at each other and go, ‘are we really going to do this?’”

Andrew Rannells stars in Black Monday alongside Casey Wilson

Rannells, 41, plays Blair, a character who starts the first season as a babe-in-the-woods type working as a protégé to Cheadle’s Mo. Before the first season’s end, Blair will have betrayed his former mentor.

“With Blair, I didn’t expect to see him turn dark so quickly, so this season is more of that and it takes us in some unexpected places. With my character, they tease the possibility for some extra marital romance for him, which is a lot of fun. It doesn’t ever quite end the way you think it will, and it’s exciting to get to be on a show like that.

“The thing we talk a lot about on our set is the overpowering nature of greed, and what that can do to people who are otherwise good people. They try to be honest and work hard but something it’s just too tempting to do the wrong thing if the pay-off is going to be big.

“I see that in these characters, and maybe some of the things that happen in the world happen because of that – people get greedy and sloppy and they stop acting like human beings and start acting like greedy monsters.”

Rannells’ big break was originating the character of Elder Price in Book of Mormon on Broadway, but his breakout screen role was as Elijah in Girls, the gay ex-boyfriend and eventual housemate of Hannah Horvath, the complex lead character played by creator and actor Lena Dunham.

He’s also known for roles in The New Normal, How I Met Your Mother, A Simple Favour and voicework on shows such as Big Mouth. But Rannells has another talent.

Rannells was memorable as Elijah on Girls

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Last year, he released a book of personal essays, Too Much is Not Enough, detailing his experiences trying to crack the fame game on Broadway, and growing up as a gay kid in Omaha, Nebraska.

“Lena was very encouraging of me to write. She was very supportive of [my book] and I adapted one of those essays to be in the new season of Modern Love for Amazon,” Rannells said. “I think working with her, and certainly working with Trey Parker and Matt Stone on the Book of Mormon was very inspiring. Those guys have always written and produced their own material.

“I’ve had really great examples of how to do that well. I’m excited to write more hopefully in the future.”

Modern Love is an anthology series on Amazon Prime Video, adapted from stories published in a New York Times series. The first season featured performances from Anne Hathaway, Catherine Keener, Dev Patel and Rannells, who played a piano teacher in an episode with Diane Lane.

He has had two of his essay published in print, both of which he narrated for the Modern Love podcast. One of them is centred on a relationship he had with another aspiring Broadway performer who left him after Rannells became successful first. His writing is warm, evocative and unshowy.

Rannells doesn’t know when production on the second season of the TV show will start – though that all seems to be up in the air anyway due to coronavirus shuttering TV and movie productions the world over – but he said adapting his essay into a TV episode wasn’t something he had expected to do.

“Sometimes those are the best opportunities, when they come out of nowhere.”

Rannells got his big break in Book of Mormon, alongside Josh Gad

He said his dynamic with some of his fans have shifted since the release of his book, and he finds more young people who are considering a career in the arts are reaching out to him, or sharing similar experiences they had.

“I talk about some really personal things in the book, about an early relationship that I was in with a much older man when I was a teenager, and it breaks my heart when people tell me they had similar experiences.

“Maybe in some way, the book was helpful for them to know there’s always a way out of a situation, and that was really what my hope was. Sometimes when you’re in the middle of it, it feels like there’s no way to fix it and you sometimes you need someone on the other side to remind you that there is.”

In the first season of Black Monday, Rannells’ character starts off as an innocent protege

Rannells said he wants to keep writing, but he’s also, obviously, very much enjoying his opportunities on screen.

In the first episode of the new season of Black Monday, there’s a montage of his character living that 80s life of excess – if you watch the trailer, there’s a brief glimpse of Rannells in nothing but his underwear, performing some form of callisthenics.

Some actors, before a scene that requires them to strip down, freak out and crash diet for days beforehand. Rannells didn’t even get the chance.

“That one snuck up on me because it wasn’t initially part of the script,” he explained. “It happened at the end of a very long day, it was probably one o’clock on a Saturday morning and we just banged it out. There’s a shot of me injecting steroids, there’s a shot of me masturbating, it happened very quickly.

“It didn’t hit me until a couple of days later, ‘oh yeah, people are going to see that, that’s actually a thing people will watch!’.”

Black Monday season two is streaming now on Stan, with new episodes released each Sunday

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