Anderson Cooper has claimed pal Andy Cohen is battling to maintain his TV career amid a series of explosive lawsuits from former Bravo stars.
Bravo boss Cohen, 56, has endured a turbulent few months after RHONY star Leah McSweeney alleged in a lawsuit that he shared cocaine with Real Housewives cast members – as well as playing favorites and fostering a toxic workplace culture – which he denied.
In the ensuing weeks, NBCU revealed a workplace investigation, Vulture reported, as ‘rumors swirled that Cohen was hiring a crisis-PR team and negotiating a “departure package.”‘
The outlet cited that amid what appeared to be a mounting career crisis for Cohen, ‘Nothing happened,’ as he remained broadcasting without interruption on his outlets, appeared at the Met Gala while his show Watch What Happens Live was renewed through next year.
From there, Cohen was cleared by eventually Bravo and NBCU ‘in their outside investigation,’ the outlet noted, adding that Cohen appeared to take a victory lap with a cover story in The Hollywood Reporter with the Mad Magazine-inspired headline, ‘What, me worry?’
Anderson Cooper has claimed pal Andy Cohen is battling to maintain his TV career amid a series of explosive lawsuits from former Bravo stars
Cooper, 57, told Vulture: ‘Every day when I turn on my phone, I see content that Andy Cohen is responsible for. Much more so than any late-night host.’
Adding that Cohen ‘makes it look easy’, Cooper said he is ‘paddling really, really fast under the water’ – but would not be drawn on specifics.
Lawsuits mentioned in the story included a 2022 suit from The Real Housewives of Atlanta alum Nene Leakes against, him, Bravo and NBCU alleging racism.
Another noted was Dorinda Medley’s butler Marco Vega’s filing against Bravo and NBCU over Real Housewife of Beverly Hills’ alum Brandi Glanville’s conduct during production of the Bravo series Ultimate Girls Trip: Return to Bluestone Manor in 2021.
Another suit was filed by Real Housewives of New Jersey alum Caroline Manzo, against Bravo and NBCU over Glanville’s conduct during production of Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip.
Glanville earlier this year publicly accused Cohen of sexual harassment.
Cohen told Vulture that he ‘didn’t like’ being at the center of the storm, adding that ‘there was a lot of noise’ and he ‘was definitely sad about it.’
He added that his in-person experiences wildly differed from the tensions being described online.
Bravo boss Cohen, 56, has endured a turbulent few months after RHONY star Leah McSweeney (pictured) alleged in a lawsuit that he shared cocaine with Real Housewives cast members – as well as playing favorites and fostering a toxic workplace culture – which he denied
Adding that Cohen ‘makes it look easy’, Cooper said he is ‘paddling really, really fast under the water’ – but would not be drawn on specifics
‘I’m telling you – and it sounds like bulls*** – but when I walked into BravoCon,’ he said, ‘it was like, “Dude, get off Twitter. That’s a bunch of clickbait.” This is sanity.’
In the piece, Cohen said he enjoys the fame that comes along with his high profile in media.
‘I lived in New York for 15 years without being able to get reservations at restaurants, so yeah, of course I’m going to enjoy it,’ Cohen said, adding that he ‘had a sense of how to behave’ once he began getting recognized.
He added, ‘Then I had a lot of people who were normal people who were becoming famous, Housewives who were turning into beasts as a result. So 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.’
Cohen has blasted former Real Housewives Of New York City star Bethenny Frankel for her ‘reality reckoning’ after years of friendship and working together.
The Bravo boss was featured in a piece from Vulture titled ‘The Last Inappropriate Man on Television How Andy Cohen survived the Reality Reckoning (at least for now).’
It chronicles how the Real Housewives executive producer has navigated through what he described as ‘sustained attack’ in the form of reality TV unionization efforts Frankel led, nasty allegations and a series of lawsuits from former Real Housewives cast members.
Cohen has blasted former Real Housewives Of New York City star Bethenny Frankel for her ‘reality reckoning’ after years of friendship and working together
It is claimed in the article that Cohen had been especially close with the 53-year-old Skinnygirl CEO as they talked all the time and both lived in New York in addition to having homes near each other in The Hamptons.
Cohen pulled no punches when it came down to Frankel’s attempts to unionize reality stars as he branded the effort a ‘sustained attack’.
The outlet cited a number of sources who cited an on-air argument between Frankel and Cohen on Watch What Happens Live in December of 2022 as a factor in the series of events surrounding Cohen in the year-and-a-half since.
At that time, Cohen looked to ‘hash out’ a disagreement he had with Frankel over a Real Housewives-themed podcast she had started called ReWives.
Cohen told Frankel he felt launching the podcast was ‘kind of hypocritical’ after she had ‘been trashing the Housewives publicly for the last three years.’
Frankel didn’t back down in defending herself, telling Cohen that she was irritated he’d said the sentiments ‘publicly’ as opposed to ‘privately’ reaching out to her.
‘What I said to you privately was, “Wow, I’m glad to see you are embracing the housewives,”‘ Cohen told Frankel, who replied, ‘Which is not the same thing you said publicly.’
Frankel added, ‘I actually haven’t been trashing the show – I said it wasn’t for me because I do think it was toxic and I’m entitled to not want to be there but still want to talk about it … how could I be on for more than a decade and not have reflections to share? I’m not trashing people on the show.’
The two went back and forth, with Cohen pointing out to Frankel that she had called the spinoff RHONY Legacy boring on her TikTok page.
Cohen ‘had been especially close with Frankel’ out of ‘all of the Housewives’ in the Bravo universe, according to the Vulture story, as ‘they talked all the time’ and ‘met up occasionally’ near their homes in New York City and the Hamptons.
