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Andy Cohen is admittedly fearful of being canceled.
Following a series of lawsuits targeting the Watch What Happens Live host, 56, Bravo, and its parent company, NBC Universal, Andy is weighing in on Bethenny Frankel‘s reality reckoning, the Real Housewives franchise, and being famous while also sharing his thoughts on his Bravo future and more.
“It’s fascinating to me, the idea that you could say something and everything would be pulled away from you,” Andy shared during an interview with Vulture on June 3. “You have to be smart about what you say because there’s no nuance anymore. People are just waiting to be outraged by every little thing.”
“I like being provocative,” he continued. “It makes me feel alive in a weird way. [But] it’s dangerous … It’s like dancing on the water: Are you going to go over or not? Sometimes at night I’ll be in bed and I’ll think, ‘Huh, did I say something?’ I’m always waiting for the thing that’s going to make it all fall down.”
Even Andy’s mom, Evelyn Cohen, 87, said, “It’s like he blabs everything.”
Over the past several months, and amid Bethenny’s reality reckoning against Bravo, in which she’s called for reality stars to unionize, Andy has been accused of using cocaine with Bravo talent as well as “discriminatory and retaliatory conduct.” However, Bravo cleared him of the charges following an investigation and WWHL was renewed.
Andy has also continued to be involved with the Real Housewives franchise.
“Women are precious to me,” he explained. “I really respect the Housewives so much because they open up their lives in a sometimes very raw way, and I think that would be really hard to do. I don’t know if I have the constitution to do that on television. So the strength of these women ultimately to share that and then open themselves up for all sorts of conversations is something that I admire. So that’s why if someone says it’s about fighting or Gloria Steinem says this, I just think it’s a lazy trope.”
As fans may recall, Gloria Steinem, 90, appeared on WWHL in 2015 and suggested that the franchise was nothing more than “women all dressed up and inflated and plastic surgery and false bosoms and not getting along with each other.”
“I think that if it was just about women fighting, it would not still be on the air 18 years later and there wouldn’t be 10 shows going,” Andy said in response. “There has to be humanity and there has to be humor, and you have to connect with these women. And so, obviously, there is drama and conflict, but there’s a whole lot more.”
“I think it’s a feminist show,” he went on. “And I know a lot of feminists, by the way, who view this as a great feminist show — Roxane Gay, Camille Paglia, Sarah Paulson — just women that are very active in women’s issues, who view this as a great feminist show. The other great thing that I love about this show is that I love that we have put more women over 50 on television.”
Still, according to one unnamed former Real Housewives of New York City cast member, the series “went from silly humor about middle-aged women getting drunk and being delusional about their status and having funny, petty arguments, to Housewives investigating and doing opposition research and making up false story lines and leaking stories on each other and trying to get one another fired.”
Another ex-RHONY star, Leah McSweeney, 41, who sued Andy earlier this year, claiming he and his producers attempted to spark her to relapse for ratings, seemingly applauded the show for being “literally a microcosm of what the country is going [through]” in a December 2020 text to Andy.
In 2023, after Nene Leakes, 56, accused Bravo and NBCUniversal of racism, Bethenny, 53, began campaigning for Bravo talent, firing off a letter from her attorneys that took Andy by surprise due to how close the two of them once were.
“The sordid and dark underbelly of NBC’s widely consumed reality TV universe has remained under wraps for far too long,” the letter alleged.
Reflecting on Bethenny’s efforts against himself and Bravo, Andy called her behavior a “sustained attack,” insisting he’s never done cocaine.
“If you read my books, I tell you every drug I do,” he noted.
“It didn’t feel great,” added Deirdre Connolly, the executive producer of WWHL. “It feels like so disconnected to what our day-to-day is. I look around and I see real friendships, and people laugh every day. It’s chill and then all of a sudden it’s kind of like, Wait, what are people saying? This is not our workplace. That’s not true. And it’s like something insidious can seep in even when you really try your best not to let it.”
Despite the backlash, Andy continued working throughout the claims against him and the network.
“There was a lot of noise,” he admitted. “And I was definitely sad about it. But I’m telling you — and it sounds like bullsh*t — but when I walked into BravoCon, it was like, Dude, get off Twitter. That’s a bunch of clickbait. This is sanity.”
As he looked back on his decision to start a family at the age of 49, Andy said he told himself, “This is like the last exit to having kids.”
“I was financially to the point where I knew that I could do it and have the help that I needed if I did it alone. And I also felt like, You know what? If I never go to the Vanity Fair Oscar party again, I’m going to be okay,” the father of son Ben, 5, and daughter Lucy, 2, explained.
As for when he knew he was famous, that happened after Teresa Giudice, 51, shoved him at the Real Housewives of New Jersey season two reunion.
“I was out at the beach on vacation, and it was on Access Hollywood, and there was a big picture of it in the New York Post, and people were talking about it on Twitter,” he said.
Fame has certainly come with its ups and downs for Andy, but according to Andy, he does his best to “enjoy it.”
“I’m ultimately very appreciative of the whole thing. And you have to keep that perspective. You can’t go all in on it. Because it can all go away tomorrow,” he reasoned.
Regarding his future with Bravo, Andy described the network as his “happy place” and said he’ll “keep doing the Bravo stuff for as long as Bravo will have me.”
“It’s a glorious world. It’s fun. I love Bravoland. If you want to go to a different world, great. Go to a different carnival, but we’re having a lot of fun in here,” he added.
