The Andy Cohen Diaries

by Andy Cohen

  Old friends everywhere: Ricki had great hair, Amanda was in fine form and her chemistry with my dad was off the charts as always (stepmother Amanda? Oy!), Troy looked amazing—vintage Troy from 1990—Bill was the perfect proud dad, Joanna was gorgeous, and most importantly Liza, who has the most consistently positive and celebratory energy of anyone I know, was present, poised, and so in love with Brian. Our toast killed. (It was surreal doing a routine in front of Joan.) Near the end of dinner, Joan—seated across from me—took an empty Ziploc from her purse and tidily filled it with meat for her dogs. At some point in the night Alexandra ran over to everyone and glitterbombed them, which would be irritating at anyone’s wedding but Liza’s, who is the Queen of Glitter. (Liza keeps the glitter industry robust.) So we all had faces full of it. Dancing with Kelly to a fifteen-minute version of “Last Dance” was a top three moment of our friendship. If there has ever been a moment when two people were feeling a song, it was then. Oh, and I danced with my mom to “I like big butts and I cannot lie” and that Icona Pop song “I Love It.” Bruce’s shirt came off on the dance floor, which is just what happens at this point. Someone took Hickey’s suit jacket and so he left wearing a stranger’s suit jacket. Went to Barracuda for a nightcap with Mark, Kelly, Hickey, and Bruce and ran into Keith Kuhl, who was the one who’d taken Hickey’s jacket by mistake! As mentioned, I live in Mayberry. Bruce, Hickey, and I stumbled—and I mean stumbled home—down Eighth Avenue and it was one of those New York City nights where everyone on the street is a supermodel. In front of my building Bruce drunkenly convinced me to bag going to Sag tomorrow. The countdown is on for his move back to LA and we need to maximize our time together. As I was going to bed, I saw that I had a message. It was from the bride, she just wanted me to know she was wearing a Mazel thong under her wedding dress. All was right with the world. Good night, NYC.

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 2014

  Woke up to rain, wondering in bed if Jeremy really knew the names of those Madonna songs. He could’ve Googled them. Or asked someone. Chilled out with Lynn and wedding debriefed.

  Bill Persky called and we had a lovefest. He said, “I love the friendship you have with your mom—it’s a relationship but also a friendship. And your dad is so elegant and just lets it happen. But you need to play catch with the man once in a while.” The Daily Mail’s online site, not a reputable source for much of anything, cobbled together my and Kelly and Mark’s Instagram pics from the wedding and did a breathless piece about Kelly at her “best friend’s” wedding, claiming that Bruce was the groom. Went with Bruce and Ava to Liza and Brian’s roof for more wedding debriefing. Mary Matthews says the Daily Mail is “Instagram journalism”—I like it! Billy Eichner came and we shared an Uber home with the dog. Got in bed so early it was a record—ten-thirty—and checked into a Designing Women marathon. It’s so 1990: they all look like drag queens, first of all, and they just sit around spouting about feminism. I was transfixed by Julia Sugarbaker’s enormous eyeglasses. Each half hour is like a play. They could do it now and call it Golden Designing Women. I still got it.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, 2014

  Bruce says Designing Women was kinda Housewives-esque and that’s an interesting concept. Anderson is heading to Israel. Poor guy. Mellow day. Did work at home and got sucked into The Wiz on HBO Family. It’s simultaneously awful and kinda great, featuring every huge black star from 1978 and Diana Ross—at thirty-four—playing Dorothy; the acting is, um, not amazing. It’s sporadically inventive, though, and feels huge, and when Diana sings “Home” at the end, all is completely forgiven. It’s worth it for that song and “Ease on Down the Road” and the scene where they kill Mabel King the wicked witch by pulling the fire alarm.

  Brought Wacha over to Bruce’s, where Barkin was cooking spaghetti and meatballs, and ran into Isaac Mizrahi in front of the building. He was wearing all black on an August summer day and was ready with a (good) show idea for us to produce together and a proclamation about his new “most chic Housewife” (Shannon Beador). I love him. The daft doorman wasn’t there and the sub knew who I was and sent me right up. Makes a difference! Barkin put me in a food coma with her spaghetti. We were live tonight at nine and after that dinner, I was schlumped in the backseat of Ray’s car on the way to the studio. It was Melissa and Joe, so I didn’t have to work too hard, but the audience was dead and I literally forgot what I was going to say mid-sentence at one point, which is never a pretty look on live TV and feels like forever even though it’s only a few seconds. I was in bed by eleven-thirty. Breaking a lot of early-bedtime records this week.

  MONDAY, AUGUST 4, 2014

  The Sunday Morning crew came to shoot me boxing with the Ninj this morning. I was kind of showing off for them and coming out of the gate hitting really hard and by the time they left, after three rounds, I was completely pooped. I limped through three more. Met Bruce and Liza at his house (temp doorman, sent me right up) and had our final wedding rehash (the three of us can rehash endlessly) before sending Liza off for her Hawaii honeymoon. The next big goodbye is going to be to Bruce in a couple weeks and I almost can’t handle it already. Come fall my life is going to be a whole lot lonelier. (Maybe that will push me into a boyfriend situation?) The show was RHOOC Shannon and Elisabeth Moss. I was stumbling all over words, but completely sober. Mom texted after we went off air: “Pretty good.”

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2014

  Liza called from her Hawaiian Airlines plane, excited to be in first class. I had an incredibly boring (almost fell asleep midway through it) workout today and wandered home feeling trapped in a web of monotony, feeling like I do the same thing every day and just blah. My languid spell was broken when I walked into my lobby and the sweet elderly lady from down the hall (who I overheard crying and pleading on the phone a few weeks ago) approached me. She was shaky, in a state. “I need a witness,” she almost begged, holding out a piece of paper. I agreed immediately and we walked over to Surfin’s perch, where I saw that I was about to sign her living will. My mind was racing, wondering what brought about this suddenly urgent situation. The moment felt simultaneously so personal yet completely anonymous. She looked on helplessly, and in the flash of a pen, it was over and I was in the elevator as Surfin provided her second signature. I had a quiet lunch in my apartment thinking about time, how fleeting it is. You see people in your building every day. You watch them age, their kids grow, change, and you see little things start to happen to us all. Then they are gone. You don’t see them again. The wonderful Italian couple down the hall who loved each other so much. He went first; she held on a few years, then disappeared. Now there’s a cute young couple in there. My current apartment belonged to a beloved woman who lived in this building for thirty years. Now I’m here, and I’m expanding into the apartment of the man upstairs, whom I never knew but was here for half a lifetime. Apartment living is at once intimate and impersonal, with moments like today that you can’t forget. Sometimes I wish I was Wacha.

  Went in to 30 Rock and schmoozed around Bravo for a couple hours, doing my thing. The Koons flower sculpture in front is in full bloom and now I love it. Shari and I had a productive Housewives catch-up. Sounds like RHOA is going great. Viewers aren’t thrilled with our Jersey reboot. We booked Kim Kardashian for next week and she wants to be perceived as a businesswoman now, so I said WTF are we going to ask during “Plead the Fifth” and our booker Robyn said, “How about ‘What has been your favorite business venture?’” We LOL’d. The live show was Tyra and Derek Hough and I guess Tyra likes to spotlight that she went to Harvard and is a businesswoman. So everyone wants to be known as a businesslady.

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2014

  You know what is not my favorite way to spend a day? Recording an audiobook. It is torturous reading back your words, and this is meta that I’m writing in my book about recording my book, but it is what it is. A minute after I Instagrammed a pic of me recording, I got an email from Nicole Richie saying, “NOTHING is worse than recording an audiobook! I di
dn’t even finish when I was supposed to do mine. I was also twenty-two and on pills, so don’t follow my lead.” She’s hilarious. The best part of the day was the cheeseburgers the producer, audio guy, and I ordered out from 5 Napkin Burger. Mine tasted like candy. I got home and Skyped with my mom, who made me promise I’m not an alcoholic. Also she kept telling me I had blood on my face, an accusation of which I was highly dismissive. Wacha went after a fly that was buzzing around and ate it out of the air. Impressive! He’s a hunter. The day will come when he kills a big water bug for me. I know it. Oh, and I found out today that he’s nominated for InStyle magazine’s “Super Stylish Pet” award, but he’s losing to Zooey Deschanel’s dogs Zelda and Dot. I am upset on his behalf. I want him to win but should I publicly solicit for votes?

  Dinner with Bruce, SJP, and Matthew at RedFarm downtown and after our hellos they asked what the red mark on my cheek was. Turns out I have been walking around with ketchup on my face since 2 p.m. I have been in contact with about twenty-five people since 2 p.m., and I couldn’t figure out that I had ketchup on my face? Bruce was fascinated that I don’t look in the mirror to check myself out in the course of the day. I really don’t until I go on the air. Maybe I’m not as narcissistic as I think I am. They’d all just seen the Lance Armstrong documentary and filled me in. Sounds like he actually is a more horrible person than I’d ever imagined. Every two or three years the tabloids print that SJ and Matthew are getting divorced, and I guess a whole new round of articles just came out. It’s nuts. I wish they would sue but that winds up being a huge time and money suck. I had to leave at nine-fifteen to go change and do the show, which turned out to be spontaneous and fun—Mel B and Mark-Paul Gosselaar were the guests.

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2014

  New York City is so weird without Liza in it. She never travels, so she’s always here. And I don’t watch the weather, I just ask her what it’s going to be. So now I have no clue what the forecast is. Fucking honeymoon. Meanwhile I do know the forecast where she is: there is a tropical storm and hurricane headed for Hawaii! And Liza emailed that the New York City Empress of Weather, Janice Huff, just started following her on Instagram. Coincidence? I don’t think so.… Does Janice Huff rely on Liza for her weather reports too? Is she following Liza for info on the hurricane? Met this morning with Gordon the architect and Eric my designer—we’re on our third set of plans and though I’m incredibly excited, all I could think as we went over each room is how broke I am going to be when this is all over. At the gym, I convinced myself that Jeremy Googled the names of those Madonna songs. I took a break and texted him and he said, “I really knew.” I have never been prouder of my nephew. By the way, the kid is a straight-A student and excels at everything he touches but it took him spitting two Madonna song titles at me for me to give him respect. It’s too late for me to get my priorities in order but I am thrilled he’s on the right track.

  Bruce and I saw the Imelda musical Here Lies Love at the Public, where we ran into Radzi and her friend, the guy who is dating Susan Sarandon. She said he has a new reality show coming on and he said it’s not a reality show, it’s a “docu-series,” and that’s a pretty way of saying “reality show.” It’s what I say all the time and it’s what Oprah said when she launched OWN. It makes people who are on the shows feel better about being on a reality show. The musical was incredible—super-inventive staging, great score. It’s like a moving theater piece where the audience is a part of it (usually I hate that but it worked here). And Imelda was just as horrible a person as you remember—and to think that the Reagans had them airlifted out of the Philippines to live in Hawaii for the rest of their lives! The U.S. had to help them?

  My show was Daniel Radcliffe and Rebecca Romijn. Daniel Radcliffe’s security guy is crazily handsome—in the same league as Lady Gaga’s. Bruce and I had a mini going-away night for him, just the two of us, at the Copacabana, which is gay and isn’t the original Copacabana, just someplace that uses that same name. The roof is retractable, though, so that’s a bonus.

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 2014—NYC–SAG HARBOR

  Drove out with Bruce. Had to go straight to East Hampton and endure that tragic stretch from Southampton on 27. Hung out with Bruce and Ava in the pool and Ava got even cuter. Went by the Countess LuAnn’s new place in Sag Harbor to discuss her role on RHONY next season. She asked if I would consider bringing Jill back and then as an aside mentioned that there was no way Bethenny would ever come back. I agreed. Went to the Palm for Jonah’s sixteenth-birthday dinner with Troy, Bruce, and Ava. I will never forget first meeting Jonah ten years ago right when Troy brought him back from Africa. Bruce and I taught him how to play baseball in Bruce’s lush backyard as a helicopter flew above us and Jonah freaked out wondering what the hell he was seeing in the sky. He has grown into an amazing young man. People who eat at the Palm are my people, but that East Hampton branch is essentially full of barbarians. The noise level is unprecedented—it’s people just yelling at the top of their lungs at each other. Rachel Zoe came by the table and gushed over Ava’s J.Crew sequined hot pants and top. I heard that Jill Zarin was on the porch but I didn’t see her. When I got home I looked up Imelda Marcos in the Warhol Diaries and besides commenting about how fat she got, Warhol wrote that after partying with her on Malcolm Forbes’s yacht in 1984, “Everybody said that once Imelda gets started partying you can’t stop her, that she’s always the last to leave, and it was true, she was going strong.” Apparently she had a mic and sang about twelve songs on the boat. I solicited for votes for Wacha on Twitter for the stupid InStyle award and now he’s beating Zooey Deschanel’s dogs. Meanwhile he is perfectly content running around trying to eat flies out of the air, so why am I bothering? Oh, and he has 65k Instagram followers.

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 2014—SAG HARBOR

  Gorgeous day! No humidity and in the eighties. Mark and Kelly picked Wacha and me up to go to the Perskys’ on their boat. It was his first boat ride and he just chased shadows and reflections on the floor the whole time. The Perskys were in full summer gear with incredible meatloaf sandwiches, topped off by Joanna’s peppermint ice cream, of which I had two helpings. I couldn’t help it. When I got home I had a great nap, then Wacha fell asleep on my shoulder and the cuteness of it was too much to bear. I decided if he didn’t wake up I’d have to cancel my plans. He did wake up and Mark and Kelly picked me up again, this time for the Seinfelds’ dinner party. (Having the Consueloses down the street makes for an incredibly convenient designated-driver solution on nights when we’re invited to the same places.) The Ninj was fighting tonight in Atlantic City and on the way over Mark and I worried about him. The party was outside and beautiful. Nacho Figueras got interrupted midway through telling me his polo-playing schedule for the rest of the year by a call on his phone from Aspen. “It’s Aspen,” he said. I want Aspen to call me! (Was it Goldie?) Cameron Diaz told Bruce and me about her new apartment. She is digging Restoration Hardware and I think I need to take a deeper dive into their essentials, like couches. A lot of people at the beach are digging Resto Hardware. Gwyneth Paltrow was there and so was Rachel Zoe. We were seated next to Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick, but I didn’t believe it was Kourtney. (I am really bad with Kardashians because I don’t watch that show.) It was her, though. We talked about NY vs. LA in the summer. Scintillating. They left very early. There was dancing. Bruce spilled rosé all over Kelly. Home by one-fifteen.