The busiest man in reality television, and our lord and savior, Andy Cohen, has evolved from a behind the scenes player and “that dude who hosted the reunion show” to a full-fledged celeb in his own right, and is poised to become even more well-known now that his quirky talk show Watch What Happens Live is now on a whole five nights a week.
There’s no doubt Andy played a huge role in Bravo’s transformation from obscure basic cable network to one of the nation’s main suppliers of rich people drama and D-listers. While he’ll be putting in much more time on-camera these days that doesn’t mean he’ll be abandoning his role as Executive Producer, telling the Hollywood Reporter that he’ll “remain in charge of all development and talent” (his use of the word talent makes me think of Andy as a Barbizon modeling agent!) and will remain an executive producer of Top Chef and all iterations of Real Housewives.
While he admits that this will remove “twenty something” odd shows from his workload, he is still very involved in a few projects featuring stars Bravo basically created including Jeff Lewis and Bethenny Frankel: “Jeff Lewis has an incredible new show coming on, Interior Therapy, we’re in post on that show, I can’t imagine stopping watching rough cuts of that show. I’m very invested in it and I want it to be right. I just got two new episodes of Bethenny Frankel’s new show today, I’m seven in already, and I probably want to finish that season out. So, there’s a lot of work that I feel I will probably continue doing.”
Given the success of the shows Andy has had his hand in, we doubt his bosses at Bravo would want him to stop producing shows, either. His influence can definitely be felt in other shows, especially with his crown jewels — Real Housewives and Top Chef; he admits to THR that there are “at least 25 Housewives rip off shows right now.”
Speaking of the Housewives, in a separate interview with Wetpaint, Andy lets Jill Zarin finally score a point in the ongoing media war that is her existence by giving her credit for finding Bethenny and Ramona Singer on Real Housewives of New York, saying “Jill helped us cast Bethenny and Ramona. She absolutely did.”
Andy, however, makes it clear that he doesn’t believe Jill deserves a commission for that. If you recall, Jill revealed last week that she wanted a finder’s fee for discovering Bethenny. “I don’t get a commission for it,” said Andy. “She’s done very well from the show, so that’s her commission. But she did [help cast them]. She absolutely can take credit for finding Bethenny and Ramona.”
He also stands by his decision to let Jill go, along with her co-stars Alex McCord and Kelly Bensimon, claiming, as Jill has probably said to her daughter hundreds of times, that its for the show’s own good: “And I just think, whether the ratings are down this season or up, for the long-term health of the New York Housewives, we did the right thing.”
TELL US: ARE YOU ENJOYING THE DAILY EDITIONS OF WATCH WHAT HAPPENS? WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ARE THE HOUSEWIVES RIP-OFF SHOWS? DO YOU THINK JILL ZARIN DESERVES COMMISSION FOR FINDING BETHENNY AND RAMONA? IS ANDY COHEN YOUR LORD AND SAVIOR?
