Andy Cohen
Andy Cohen is an actor, born 1968.
Cohen ran the network before he appeared on it. He spent years inside Bravo's programming department, developing and buying the shows, and the on-camera career grew out of the executive one rather than the reverse. That order explains almost everything about how he works: he is a talk-show host who is also, in effect, the commissioning editor of most of his guests.
Watch What Happens Live started in 2009 as a small after-show attached to Bravo's reality slate and became a fixture. It is a loose, clubhouse-sized format, closer to a pub lock-in than to late night, and its real function is that celebrities who have been media-trained into saying nothing will say something careless inside it.
He also executive produces The Real Housewives and hosts its reunion specials, and the reunions are where the actual craft lives. They are hours of managed argument, and the skill is knowing precisely when to stop enjoying the row and ask the question that ends it. An Emmy for an outstanding reality-competition programme sits on the producing side of his record.
The screen credits either side of that are cameos as himself, in Difficult People, The Stand In, 30 Rock: A One-Time Special and Billy on the Street, plus a turn as a talking head in Visible: Out on Television.
Movies (5)
TV (14)
- Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen (2009)
- Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen (2009)
- The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2015)
- The Kelly Clarkson Show (2019)
- Lip Sync Battle (2015)
- Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (2016)
- Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (2020)
- Difficult People (2015)
- Married to Medicine (2013)
- Billy on the Street (2011)
- Who's Talking to Chris Wallace? (2022)
- Miley's New Year's Eve Party (2004)
- The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo (2020)
- Visible: Out on Television (2020)
Where to start with Andy Cohen
Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen is the format to sample first, and a single episode will settle it for you: the show either reads as the loosest interview slot on American television or as a half-hour advertisement for a cable network, and both readings are defensible.
If you want him doing something else, Visible: Out on Television is the most substantial thing on this list, a documentary series about television's slow and grudging treatment of gay life, and he is a genuinely good interviewee in it. Difficult People uses his persona as a joke and he takes the hit well. Billy on the Street is the funniest two minutes. Married to Medicine shows the host mode that is arguably his real job, and The Stand In is the film cameo for completists.