Andy Cohen Speaks Out

It’s a frigid Sunday afternoon in April, and Andy Cohen is perched on a park bench, ruminating about the ups and downs — but mostly the ups — of his nearly three-decade-long career in broadcasting. Occasionally, a passerby walks past and smiles, or shyly waves hello. This, it quickly becomes apparent, is a common occurrence for Cohen, 55, who seems to be something of the unofficial mayor of this cobblestoned, townhouse-lined neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, where he — and now his two children, Benjamin, 5, and Lucy, 2 — has been living for 27 years. Everybody, it seems, loves Andy Cohen. Well, not everyone, but we’ll get to that in a moment. He started his career in New York in his early 20s, a precocious, fiercely ambitious network executive with not-so-secret dreams of making it big in front of the camera as a TV host (despite being told by a mentor that he had “no charisma”). Today, he’s not only a producer of one of the most successful reality franchises in television history (the one with all the Housewives), but he’s spent 15 years as host of Bravo’s much-buzzed-about late night talk show Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, on which everyone from Hillary Clinton to Mariah Carey has answered his jaw-droppingly blunt questions. He oversees two unruly radio channels on SiriusXM — and hosts two shows himself. He has written five best-selling books (about himself, naturally), and every New Year’s Eve he entertains millions of CNN viewers worldwide by getting wasted on camera with his pal Anderson Cooper.