RANDY ANDY
Bravo host has become the ringmaster of today’s insane celebrity circus
Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen
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NEW YORK Andy Cohen bounced in his seat and pumped his fist. Diane von Furstenberg, one of his guests on his Bravo late-night show Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, had just dished about her long-ago “brief love affair” with Richard Gere, in the most deliciously, bluntly vulgar terms.
Cohen has an uncanny radar for juicy details of famous people’s lives. That may be why his show has become a nightly raucous confessional for bona fide celebrities — even if they don’t always plan on it.
Cohen, 51, isn’t afraid to ask any question — or hand over the mic to a call-in fan who might have thought of a better one.
“I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of endorphin released in me every time someone reveals a secret,” Cohen said in a recent interview.
If he isn’t the architect of this decade’s celebrity culture, Cohen is certainly one of its ringmasters — a gleeful scholar of the intersection of social media, reality TV and gossip, dedicated to breaking down the barriers between the A-list and the C-list, and between fan and star.
“We embraced the idea that real people are as interesting, if not more so, than scripted characters,” said Lauren Zalaznick, the former Nbcuniversal executive who brought Cohen to Bravo. “Andy himself really embodies that.”
It was 10 years ago he started hosting his own show. Watch What Happens Live stands alone in the late-night landscape (Cohen is the only gay host; Deirdre Connolly is the only female showrunner; and about 75 per cent of the staff are women). On WWHL, they divulge the hardest drug they’ve ever taken (for Gwyneth Paltrow, it was ecstasy) or what they really think of Ben Affleck’s back tattoo (his ex-fiancée J.LO hates it).
His pot-stirrer techniques don’t always charm. This summer, a fan texted into the show to ask guest Tituss Burgess how he liked working with Eddie Murphy on a new movie. Cohen, who came out in college and was bothered by Murphy’s homophobic routines in the 1980s, made the question sharper: “I was just wondering if you got close at all,” he asked Burgess, who is also gay, “because he was very problematic for the gays at one point.”
Burgess bristled. “Any troubles he may have had with gay people, I guess, are gone because he loved me,” he said. Later, he slammed Cohen on Instagram: The show, he wrote, shouldn’t be “a place to rehash old rumours or bring a star negative press.”
Seems like Burgess hadn’t been watching much WWHL, where most stars anticipate personal questions and even bask in the awkwardness. Cohen never wants guests to leave angry, and they are allowed to designate certain topics as off limits. But he also recognizes that Bravo viewers love a good train wreck.
“Say what you will about that episode with Tituss, but it was a halfhour episode of television where he was not feeling me, and you saw it — and we’re not cutting around that,” Cohen said. Viewers, he said, “crave” authenticity. “They also might see that when they do this show, it generates a lot of extra attention,” he said. “And isn’t that the point of doing late-night talk?”
There’s also the matter of the cosy Clubhouse. “As a viewer, I think you feel that you’re eavesdropping on a conversation. And as a guest, you probably get lost in conversation,” said Connolly, who came to Bravo in July 2009 to launch Watch What Happens Live.
The show’s magic formula relies on a counterintuitive tactic that Connolly and Cohen settled upon early. On most talk shows, stars walk onstage knowing what they’ll discuss. In a pre-interview with producers, they’ve tried out their cute anecdotes or wacky stories.
But WWHL doesn’t do pre-interviews.
A writing staff of pop-culture obsessives help Cohen craft those potent questions, but so do legions of fans. WWHL evolved alongside social media, and now viewers can call in with questions or submit them via Facebook or Twitter. The show’s parlour games also help. Plead the Fifth, in which guests may take a pass on only one of three questions, “was a big revelation for us because ... people feel like they actually have to answer the question,” Cohen said.
Oprah Winfrey said she last smoked weed in 1982. Sally Field admitted she broke up with Johnny Carson by pretending to have a mental breakdown. Katie Couric said Matt Lauer’s most annoying habit was that “he pinches me on the ass a lot,” a quote that came back to haunt after NBC fired him over allegations of sexual harassment.
After graduating from Boston University with a degree in broadcast journalism, Cohen took an internship at CBS News in New York. He worked his way up to booker and producer on The Early Show and 48 Hours. And he blossomed as one of the cool kids of Manhattan media, chummy with the likes of Anderson Cooper (a friend tried to set them up on a date; it didn’t work) and Kelly Ripa.
“Before he was a big TV star, he was a really popular dude in the city and had some pretty highfalutin friends,” said actor Jerry O’connell, a Cohen pal. “Before he was famous, he was chilling with Sarah Jessica Parker.”
Cohen left CBS in 2000 to join Trio, a new arts- and culture-focused cable channel, where he bonded with network president Zalaznick. She brought him with her to Bravo in 2004 as vice-president of programming. Bravo took off around 2007 with a new slate of giddy, glamorous reality shows. Real Housewives soon became the table-flipping, cat-fighting crown jewel and Cohen was tapped to host the series dramatic “reunion” episodes. In January 2011, a post-season-finale episode with Kim Zolciak and Kroy Biermann of Real Housewives of Atlanta earned three million viewers. Cohen’s show bloomed, with him relying on his hard-news background.
“He didn’t come up in the standup clubs; he’s not an improv comic,” O’connell said. “He came up as a booker, where you’re in the trenches.”