Photography courtesy of Bravo
In 2012, Andy Cohen wrote about his journey from TV-addicted Clayton teenager to Bravo exec in his memoir Most Talkative. This month, he releases The Andy Cohen Diaries: A Deep Look at a Shallow Year. Inspired by The Andy Warhol Diaries, the book delivers lots of dish and a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Cohen’s life. The executive producer of The Real Housewives franchise, Cohen attends the Met Gala with Sarah Jessica Parker, stars as Zeus in Lady Gaga’s “G.U.Y.” video—and describes how Gaga once urinated in a garbage can out of desperation while in the dressing room of his talk show, Watch What Happens Live. There’s also a Karlie Kloss cameo and the epic presence of a Ralph Lauren sweater-coat, which “looks like a bomb exploded somewhere between SantaLand and Washington, D.C.” and inspires horror everywhere Cohen sports it. Usually, that’s while walking his new dog, Wacha.
Was that the notorious sweater you were wearing at the Beggin’ Pet Parade when you visited St. Louis in February?
Yes, it was! Well, it was one of them. It’s not the one that is so controversial. There are actually two. The one I was wearing wasn’t the one that’s like a minor character [in the book]. The one that’s in the book kind of looks like a Christmas sweater. It’s like a sweater-jacket.
I remember watching you go by during the parade and thinking, “Damn. That’s a nice sweater.”
I love the sweater I wore that day. It’s really warm, too.
Are you still writing the new book?
I finished it today.
Congratulations!
Thank you very much. The entry for yesterday will be the last one in the book.
What was the writing process like? You make a comparison between writer, actress, and artist Lisa Jane Persky, who you worked with early on, and Warhol’s assistant. Was Persky interviewing you for those early diary entries?
A little bit. I was so busy, I didn’t have time to write. I was still at Bravo every day. Basically, I was calling her and just regurgitating as much as I could about what I had going on, and she was interviewing me. She was sending the notes to me at the end of the month, and I would write entries based on those notes. Then I realized I just needed to sit down and write. At the end of each day, I would start writing. Some days, I didn’t have time, and I would write down six things and know I’d have to come back to it. Other days, I knew there was so much. I played in a celebrity MLB softball game in Minneapolis this summer, a day before the All-Star Game, and I knew there was so much there that I had to basically write much of the thing at home. I also did a lot of writing on planes. I take a plane to L.A. every week or two; that’s 10 hours round-trip for me to sit there and go back over what I’ve been doing the week before.
It sounds like a different process than for Most Talkative, where you referred to old journals.
It was a straight memoir. Writing this was interesting because I was living it as I was writing it.
And there was plenty happening as you wrote it, with a new dog and a new production company, also called Most Talkative.
I kept saying to my editor, “I wonder what’s going to happen this summer. I wonder if there’s going to be some weirdly dramatic event that shifts my focus on everything.” It’s interesting to see what did wind up happening in the last six weeks. There were a couple of little things that went down that definitely add focus.
The tone is different, too. It has this immediate, almost voyeuristic quality.
I felt like if I’m writing a diary, I have to share, and it has to be opinion-based. It’s gotta be a diary! That being said, I am hosting a talk show every night, and I want to get people on, so I’m doing this dance where I have to give the reader dish, but I also have to make sure I’m not up shit creek at the end of the day.
What about friends and family?
In May, I sent them the first half of the book and said, “Look, you’d better get your heads around this and understand what I’m doing here.” They have to get over the shock of seeing my life in this format and of finding out things about me that I haven’t told them. They were really cool. They’ve been really supportive, and they know this is my thing. I think it was kind of shocking to them, but the more they read, the more they felt like “Oh my God. We love it!” But at the beginning, it was just shocking to them because they were reading my diary.
The book’s a riff on The Andy Warhol Diaries. Is there any overlap in celebrity stories between the two books?
There are a lot of people in my book who were in the Warhol Diaries: Barry Diller, Diane von Furstenberg, Debbie Harry, Cornelia Guest, and Madonna. Weirdly, the more I go along, the more I start realizing there are all these people who are in both.
Your version of New York seems radically different than Warhol’s, though. There’s a passage noting that Warhol was once afraid to sit next to someone with “gay cancer” at Studio 54. You remark how lucky you feel to have been born in the time you were. It was a haunting passage in a funny book.
It’s amazing to me. I love the Warhol Diaries. I’m not saying I’m Andy Warhol or anything like that, but I knew I had the material for a really rich, pop-culturally relevant document of what’s going on right now in New York City, and that’s I think what I tried to do with the book. But it’s amazing how stark the comparisons are not only to life in New York, but life as a gay man in New York—just night life and everything. It’s so different.
What are your favorite parts of the book?
It’s hard to say. I love the stuff with my family, and there are a lot of little bits about day-to-day life in New York City that I love—things that tickle me, like about my dry cleaner, very random things. I love how there’s a great continuity in the book where I run into someone one day who kind of irritates me, and then I keep running into them—flight attendants or whoever; the guy on the plane who was on the flight with Madonna turned out to live in my building. There’s a lot of wild stuff like that, and it’s just kind of amusing to me. I like that I’m able to take people behind the scenes of my show and tell them stuff they don’t know, things that went on when they were watching it.
What about St. Louis stories?
There’s a ton of St. Louis stuff in there. I wind up playing in this celebrity All-Star Game with Ozzie Smith—Jon Hamm talks me into it. And Jason Motte comes and hangs out with me in Miami for a day.
Speaking of the Cardinals, let’s talk about Wacha the dog—the real star of the book. One thing that surprised me is how big of a step getting a pet was for you. I’m guessing you didn’t grow up with pets.
No, he’s my first animal. I say this book is like going behind the scenes of a talk show, a look behind closed doors in New York City, but it’s definitely a love story about a man and his dog… I just hope Michael Wacha isn’t too creeped out that I named my dog after him—it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision.
Well, there are a lot of dogs in St. Louis named Yadier.
It’s a great name, I will say!
Aside from Wacha, the biggest news in this book is about your new production company.
I’ve always been a TV producer, and I always will be. So running this company is just an extension of what I’ve always done. I’ve got some great projects in development, some of which I talk about in the book. They’re all kind of reality things—all unscripted, which is what I do.
Was it scary to start your own company?
It’s been great! But I don’t really have a normal day. I wake up at a different time every day, and I travel an incredible amount. The on-air stuff takes up a huge chunk of my time, as does Housewives. It’s a big time balance.
Who will be on your show this season?
We’ve got some huge names. I’m going to have to start writing volume two of this diary soon.
Cohen visits the Skip Viragh Center for the Arts at Chaminade College Preparatory School (425 S. Lindbergh) on November 25 as part of the Maryville Talks Books series. For more information, call 314-367-6731 or visit left-bank.com.
