‘Girls’ Star Andrew Rannells Finally Confirms Anderson Cooper Romance Inspired HBO Love Story

One of Girls‘ biggest long-running rumors has finally been confirmed.

During a Wednesday, May 27 appearance on Obsessed: The Podcast, actor Andrew Rannells admitted that his brief real-life romance with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper inspired one of the HBO series’ most memorable relationships.

“I told [Girls creator] Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner a story about when I was 25 that I had dated Anderson Cooper and I told them about the experience and what that was like,” Rannells, 47, revealed while discussing the origins of Corey Stoll‘s suave news anchor character, Dill Harcourt, who romanced Rannells’ fan-favorite character Elijah during season 5.

“And then it became the story that Elijah had in the series,” the actor explained on the podcast.

Girls fans had speculated for nearly a decade that Dill — an older, polished TV journalist — was loosely based on Cooper, 58, but Rannells and the show’s cast repeatedly denied the comparisons at the time.

The relationship storyline quickly became one of the HBO hit’s most talked-about romances after Dill swept Elijah into a whirlwind affair before ultimately ending things over their different stages in life.

Despite giving Girls‘ creators the idea, Rannells stressed on the podcast that the romance with Cooper was “very, very brief.”

When asked about the plotline, Cooper previously brushed off the rumors himself, joking in a 2016 interview to the New York Post that he thought Dill seemed “more of a Bill O’Reilly character.”

“I’m a friend of Andrew’s,” Cooper told the outlet. “I should ask him.”