On paper, their careers seem diametrically opposed. Cohen started out his TV career producing news at CBS, but he made his name at Bravo as progenitor of the Real Housewives franchise and host of the late-night liquored-up gabfest Watch What Happens Live! Cooper, who comes from a background of wealth and privilege as the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, made his reputation as a newsman on CNN and 60 Minutes, bringing empathy and tough questions to hurricane coverage, war zones and feisty encounters with the likes of Pam Bondi. Cohen and Cooper have been pals (though never romantically involved) for decades, two openly gay and eminently crushworthy public figures whose differing styles (bubbly Andy, taciturn but occasionally giggly Anderson) complement each other nicely on stage and off.
In my phone conversation with Cohen, however, he was the one doing taciturn. Maybe I started off wrong by gushing inordinately about his books, which I sincerely believe have not gotten the credit they deserve, particularly his first one, the coming-of-age memoir Most Talkative: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture. Or maybe, judging by the tired rasp in his voice (and the occasional hiccup), he’d just had a Very Long Day of phone interviews. In any case, if he wasn’t exactly bubbly (and who could be as tirelessly bubbly as TV Andy seems to be?), he was perfectly cordial before he had to hurry away.
DW: I only recently discovered your books, and as a gay man who’s read his share of coming-out memoirs, I found that your first book was one of the most touching and the funniest that I’ve read.
AC: I appreciate that.
What seems to carry on throughout your career is that you’re an enthusiast. You’re not ashamed to tell somebody that you admire their style and their talent, and your ego sort of gets set aside in order to allow them to have their moment. Is that how you always have been?
For sure. As you can see from that first book, I’ve always loved pop culture and celebrity and entertainment — yeah for sure, I’ve always been kind of enthusiastic.
Your career arc is incredible. I can’t think of anybody else who went from behind the camera to on camera in the way you did it. I know you talk about how Bravo and Trio helped push that along, but did you always envision this?
It was what I originally set out to do, but I gave it up when I started working at CBS News because I just thought it wasn’t going to happen. So the fact that it happened and happened so brilliantly for me is just a great, happy set of organic circumstances.
Do you ever see that woman who told you, "How dare you think of yourself as an on-air personality?"
No, I haven’t. I know her name. I know exactly who she is.
What’s she doing now?
I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I bet she’s in her 70s now… I don’t know.
And a complete failure.
Yeah, right.
You met Anderson through a blind date that didn’t work out when you started talking about Gloria Vanderbilt too soon. But what happened after that? How did you connect?
We would see each other around. I think we started becoming friends when we both were friends with Barry Diller and we went on a trip with him. We were halfway around the world and just hanging out on a boat and we became buddies.
But he was adamant, and I guess you shared the sentiment, that there was never going to be anything beyond buddies.
Yeah, it was not going to be that kind of relationship from the start.
And that’s been a while — since you were in your 20s. And you both share a birthday weekend — was there a big 50th birthday bash for him?
There was not. He really avoided it. I was trying to get something going for him in LA, and he really wanted to have a low-key celebration this year. Which is what I did.
You’ve been doing the show together since 2015. There must be a lot of the same questions, but do you still think you can surprise him?
Well, I just embarrassed him on the show. We each had to answer a question about each other on the count of three and somebody asked what’s he most attracted to, and I said Latinos.
Is that true?
I think it is, but he may not.
You’re dating someone now, right — "the Brazilian Andy Samberg," you call him — so maybe you’re projecting?
Maybe, maybe.
You and Anderson travel together a lot through this, right? You don’t share hotel rooms, I assume.
No, we don’t.
But which one of you has the most elaborate beauty regimen? Who takes the longest to get ready?
Oh god, neither of us.
Really? You look so good.
Thanks. We’re both pretty simple when it comes to that.
And on stage, you ask him questions, he asks you questions, and the audience asks questions.
Yeah, it’s really a conversation, an organic conversation. We know what stories people enjoy the most, and so those are definitely integrated. We try to keep it topical. Not really political, but it’s topical. If he’s just interviewed the president or I just had some amazing thing happen to me, we talk about it — and then we open it up for questions at the end. It’s really fun. it’s just like a fun night out.
Like being in your Watch What Happens clubhouse.
Or like going out to a bar with us.
One of the things you said made you leave hard news was that you got tired of engaging in what you called this "sick kind of serial dating" where you get people to talk in their most vulnerable moments. I have to think that’s part of what Anderson has to do a lot; obviously in Katrina he did. Do you and he ever talk about that?
No. He’s just so brilliant. He’s a full-on newsman, he takes it seriously, and he does it well. I was never.. I mean.. He also knows how to speak the language of grief and loss, having experienced deep grief and loss in his own life. And what he’s doing is on a completely higher level than anything I ever did.
He said in an interview that you’re an optimist and he’s a catastrophist.
I see everything half full and he sees everything half empty.
Maybe that’s part of the secret to your success.
Yeah, I think so.
But you like to stir things up at the same time. I love your line, that "sitting on a powder keg in a roomful of loose cannons" is what you like to do. Is that something you can stir up in a Q&A period?
Oh yeah, definitely, when I need to. We love to rib each other, we have great chemistry, and we like to have fun. And we make it fun for the audience, too.
Another thing that’s so unique about your career: I don’t know that Edward Murrow and gosh, Johnny Carson? would ever have gone on a tour together.
Ha! Well, times have changed. This came about because Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller have been doing a tour for years. Anderson’s agent represents Bill O’Reilly and she saw us on stage together doing an interview for a book that I was doing, and she said, ‘Omigod, you guys should see if you could come up with a routine and take it on the road!’ So that’s how that came about. But you know what, they’re pulling me. I have gotta run.
OK. But can you just give a message to Anderson from all gay Floridians? Tell him that his interview with Pam Bondi…
Omigod, the best, right? Wasn’t that great?
Absolutely the best. You could hear the cheers from Florida.
Oh that’s great. I will definitely tell him. I agree.
This article appears in Oct 5-12, 2017.