Andy Cohen Talks About The Real Housewives

Article from Crushable.com.

Exclusive: Bravo's Andy Cohen Reveals 'Housewives' Secrets
By: Amanda Ernst
Andy Cohen wears a lot of hats: He’s Bravo’s head of programming. He’s the host of Watch What Happens Live, on the same network (obvs). He’s the object of Grandma Wrinkles‘ affection.

He’s also the foremost Real Housewives expert, with gossip to spare.

In an interview with Crushable, Andy dished the dirt on Real Housewives of D.C., which premieres August 5 at 9 p.m. ET. “In every city we’ve done the Housewives, it feels like the real barometer of social status is money, and in D.C. that’s really out the window,” Andy told us. “It seems that it’s all about proximity to political power and we wanted to look at that and see how that comes into play. And also there are a lot of overtones of how race politics come into play in social circles in D.C.”

Andy, who revealed he’s “very” involved in the casting and editing of the Housewives shows, let us in on a little of what will make D.C. different. “I think the playground that they’re in really dictates part of the story that’s being told,” he said. “And so they’re really talking about politics, they’re living in that world, they’re going to political functions, but they’re also really fun and high-end and glamorous and funny. There’s stuff that unfolds at the Salahi’s winery that is quite compelling.”

Getty Images

Speaking of the Salahis, we wanted to know what happened after D.C. housewife Michaele Salahi and her husband Tareq crashed the White House State Dinner last fall. “It was a very intense period of time,” Andy said. “There was a discussion a couple of months later about whether they would be a part of the show. We had been shooting them for months and months and months before this incident happened, and when we looked at all the footage of everything we had and everything that had gone down, Michaele was all intertwined with Stacie and Mary and Cat that we felt like she was an essential part of the story. And so she’s in and I think that what unfolds with them is quite compelling and the incident that happened at the White House is only a very small part of what makes Michaele so compelling.”

We will get to see a little of the incident during the series, Andy promised, although “what you really see is the aftermath and you see how it affects the women, her friends.”

At the time of the incident, there was talk about the Salahis possibly not being on the show at all, since Bravo reportedly follows more women than are used in the Housewives shows. Andy agreed that happens often. “We often shoot more people than wind up in the show because we don’t know what we’re going to get,” he said. “We don’t know where the story is going to go. And we don’t know if someone is going to leave half way through, which has happened in Orange County a couple of times, and it happened in New Jersey this season.”

They’re also always on the lookout for new housewives, in the six cities where they’re already shooting (in addition to D.C., New York, New Jersey, Atlanta and Orange County, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was announced earlier this year), as well as in new cities. But if Andy has his eye on new cities, he’s keeping mum. “I don’t want to blow it,” he told us.

Andy did debunk one myth though: rumors of a possible Real Housewives in the Lone Star state. “It’s all rumor,” he said of Real Housewives of Houston. “And by the way, we have cast in Texas before, but we have nothing going right now…for one reason or another we didn’t move forward. But, it’s an ongoing process.”


Also ongoing: casting for new housewives in New Jersey and New York. With at least one New York housewife probably bowing out for the next season, Andy wouldn’t reveal whether any of the current housewives would be returning. “We haven’t announced anything nor have we determined anything,” he said.

As for replacing Dina Manzo in New Jersey, Andy said it’s in the works, but knocked down speculation that he had hinted at Kim G being the next housewife on Monday night’s Watch What Happens Live. “I wouldn’t read anything into it,” he told us.

Moving on from casting news, we had to ask Andy the burning questions that everyone has about the Housewives franchise. It’s been getting a lot of flack for manufacturing drama and carefully editing scenes to hype the tension between ‘wives. “It’s a TV show, it’s not paint drying,” Andy told Crushable. “I think it’s important that the show be entertaining and compelling. If we showed a 2-hour dinner in real time versus a 7-minute version of the highlights, I don’t think that would be very compelling. I think Bethenny once said about the editing…it’s like when you tell a friend about a date. You tell your friend about a date in three minutes and you hit all the salient points. She said and that’s what winds up happening on the housewives. A meal gets really condensed down but you come away really getting the integrity of what happened at the meal.”

Still, Andy said Bravo producers do step in “when something gets out of hand or unpleasant,” between the housewives. As for the Kelly Bensimon breakdown/breakthrough last season, he said, “Kelly left the island the next morning and I think that speaks for itself.” Andy called the so-called “Scary Island” trip “a disturbing situation” but he never put down Kelly. “I think she’s fun and light and energetic,” he said. “And I do think that she doesn’t want to engage in conversations that she thinks are trivial.”

One conversation we loved was Kelly and Andy’s during the Real Housewives of New York City reunion show. Andy told us it’s sometimes “a little awkward” to have a back and forth with the ‘wives during reunion shows, since he already knows many sides of the story. “They know I know. And sometimes I really don’t know,” he said. “But I really have to be a conduit for the viewer. I’ve seen every rough cut of every episode and I’ve heard during production what happened. So it’s a very complex.”

Andy also has his opinions about Danielle Staub, the central drama-causer on Real Housewives of New Jersey. “I think she’s complex. I think she’s intense,” Andy told us. “I would never begin to even kind of psychoanalyze her. I think she can be really entertaining to watch and I think she can be very vulnerable. I think that she can be very aggressive.” Still, Andy said he doesn’t believe Danielle is really gay. “I think she’s having fun and flirting,” he said.

And when we asked the question that everyone has about Real Housewives of New Jersey – what did Danielle do to Dina? – Andy expertly dodged. “I don’t know is the answer. I don’t know, nor would I feel comfortable saying if I did.”