Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (35 page)

“It was all you could do to SHUT THEM UP!” Evelyn said, herself screaming.

“I think it was the right—and only—thing to do, Andy,” my dad quietly agreed. They skedaddled out of there in a hurry, and at the time I wished I could have scurried right along with them.

Still, probably the most heated and most talked-about reunion of all was at the end of
New Jersey
’s second season, which was the first time all the women had been in a room at the same time with Danielle since the first reunion. The second season of that show was essentially fourteen episodes of Danielle vs. the other women. The uneasy feeling as we were getting settled at the Atlantic City Borgata was even worse than it had been for the Jill vs. Bethenny reunion of
RHNYC
. I knew going in that Teresa’s temper was intense, but I wasn’t expecting much more than raised voices. I was wrong.

The pot boiled over about an hour into the morning, when Danielle—totally off-topic—accused Teresa of not visiting her new nephew in the hospital, tipping off that she’d been in touch with Teresa’s sister-in-law. (Yes, Melissa Gorga, who would later go on to become a Jersey Housewife herself.) Teresa lost it, stood, and got in Danielle’s face. I didn’t know what to do. I had, like everyone else reading this, seen Teresa flip an innocent table on national television. Being a nice Jewish boy, I’ve never been in a physical fight in my life, and so if you rewatch a clip of it, you can see how completely awkward I am in trying to hold Teresa back, and indeed am eventually overpowered completely by the Italian Stallioness, who hurls me like a Raggedy Andy doll into my chair as Danielle walks off the set.

I spent the next fifteen minutes going back and forth from backstage to the stage, trying to calm both women down. Danielle was worried I wasn’t going to protect her as I weakly defended my not-quite-yeoman’s job, kind of sounding like my dad defending an action that my mom considered weak. “I got up … I helped … I’ll keep protecting you,” I muttered. She kind of, barely, bought it. (I did mean it, though; I would never in a million years allow anyone to put her hands on anyone else while I was there. And I now probably had the bruises to prove it.) When I got back to the set I pleaded with Teresa to just stay seated. “Just please do not get up off the couch. That’s the rule. Don’t get off the couch.” She nodded, but just as viewers sometimes wonder if Teresa processes what’s being said to her, in that moment I was not completely confident she wouldn’t get up again. At that point I didn’t contemplate that my ass had been kicked on-camera. I was way more concerned as a producer that the whole thing would dissolve into chaos and that we wouldn’t have a show at all.

When I returned from Atlantic City that day, I went straight over to my friends Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa’s house for a drink. They wanted to know what had happened at the show. “I don’t really remember—there’s too much noise in my head. I think I got pushed.” That push, when it aired, was replayed time and time and time again. An unintended consequence of learning that it was one of our highest-rated reunions to date was the ability to calculate just how many people all over the world had seen me get roughed up by a girl. When Teresa next appeared on
Watch What Happens Live
, I made her wear a seat belt during the show, as a joke. And because I was a little bit scared.

Danielle’s walk-off wasn’t unique. Walk-offs (or the threat of them) are common currency on reunion shows. They’re like a labor strike, with each side waiting for the other to blink. When Simon van Kempen joined us for the first
RHNYC
reunion, the other women threatened to walk off because they wanted
their
men to appear as well. The fact was that Simon had played a big role that season, so it seemed right to invite him. When Simon walked on, nobody walked off, and I thought we’d narrowly averted a huge crisis. Then, later on in the taping, Ramona became so upset that I’d brought up Alex’s nude photo controversy, which had erupted while the season was airing, that she walked off then, instead. At the time, I naïvely thought we’d have to get very creative in the edit to try to hide the fact that Ramona was no longer on the set, but after the show, I took one look at Christian and realized that it might have been the best thing that could have happened. It was all very theatrical. After that, we had a virtual parade of walk-offs in most of the franchises—not because of any encouragement from me, but because the Housewives look to each other for behavioral cues. At this point, though, angrily toddling off in your sky-high Louboutins seems very 2009, so I always beseech the women to just stay put.

At the end of the day, true emotion is the main ingredient behind a great reunion. Kandi is someone who “goes there”—she is an emotional woman who feels things deeply. Other women wipe fake tears in order to build sympathy. I won’t name names, of course, but review the contents of your DVR and judge for yourselves. But, truth be told, the line between real and fake (tears, not boobs) can get a little murky. In 2011, I was interviewing Slade Smiley on the Season 6
Real Housewives of Orange County
reunion. Slade is a serial dater of OC Housewives, an incredible character whom we couldn’t make up if we tried—not even his name! Slade has appeared and reappeared on that show, most recently as Gretchen’s boyfriend. In this interview, Slade was saying that he loved Gretchen so much that he would let her go if he knew she was going to have a life surrounded by wealth, because that’s what she really deserved. He seemed like he really meant it, and Gretchen was silently weeping (or acting like she was weeping and doing an expert job of it). I was looking at Slade and I could see that his eyes were watering, a cue to me that he was in the zone where he could potentially really break down and cry, which is always interesting. So I started thinking—in a moment of half puppeteering and half producing—that it would be really something if Slade actually broke down. We’d never seen the man get emotional like that, and I thought it would lend a new dimension of depth to him and the show. Usually during an emotional interview I try to lock eyes with whomever I’m speaking to and let them know that I am there with them feeling it all, which I usually am. And when I feel something, my eyes tend to get a little glassy-looking. (I have very dry eyes, so this is, in fact, semi-common.) My face usually registers a look that I assume mirrors my feeling of empathy and conveys to whomever I’m speaking to that we’re on this journey together. At least, that’s what I’ve always thought. Now that I’ve seen myself on TV, I know that that look is also similar to the way a baby looks when it is pooping or moments away from wailing. In either case, it sometimes allows whomever I’m talking with to emote along with me. But in the case of Mr. Smiley, he wasn’t going there. I was so in the moment, though, that before I knew it, I realized that I had actual tears running down
my
face. In my peripheral vision, blurred though it was by a cataract, even more tears ready to spill out, I saw the camera pointed directly at me, and I dissolved in terror.
I cannot be seen on national television weeping for Slade. I’m the only one crying on this set!
At that thought, I started surreptitiously dabbing at the tears on my cheeks, wondering what Slade—who was still talking—must be thinking. Then I started simultaneously laughing and trying not to laugh, over my self-induced tears for Slade Smiley, which was even more inappropriate than the crying had been a moment before. After all, the man was still pouring his heart out to me.

I guess that’s why these reunions are so universal: You laugh, you cry, and then you laugh again. What these women are living out on TV are just exaggerated versions of our own lives. Sure, many of them have money and houses with big closets stuffed with furs and jewels and shoes to-die-for, but in the end, the things they wrestle with are the same things we all wrestle with: love, family, friendship … betrayal. Who hasn’t longed for an opportunity to set the record straight or to finally just say how they’ve really been feeling? Maybe next time I head home for a high school reunion, I should try to lock eyes with a couple of my classmates and get them to spill their guts about things they thought they were long over. Hey, now that I’m thinking about it, shouldn’t I have gotten the invitation for my next reunion by now? Maybe it’s lost in the mail. Clayton High School Reunion Planning Committee, call me!

*   *   *

In 2009, NBC broadcast a special celebrating the best sketches from
The Women of Saturday Night Live
. They shot one original sketch, written by Paula Pell and Emily Spivey, which was a brilliant parody of pretty much every
Housewives
reunion show we’ve ever done. Shooting this sketch, surrounded by my favorite hilarious women, on a re-creation of that horrible
RHNJ
Season 1 set with Tina Fey, Cheri Oteri, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Nora Dunn, Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, Rachel Dratch, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Amy Poehler, and Laraine Newman was one of the high points of my career. If anyone had told me I’d get to play myself on
SNL
, I would’ve said they were high.

Andy Cohen sits in a gorgeous overstuffed chair flanked by the ladies: MOLLY, MAYA, TINA, and NORA on one side and ANA, RACHEL, CHERI, and KRISTEN on the other side. They look amazing: hair big and coiffed and they are dressed outrageously to the nines. The set is perfection, blue background, chandeliers, candelabras.

ANDY

Hello everyone, I’m Andy Cohen, and welcome to the
Women of SNL
reunion show. I am thrilled to be a part of this gathering. I’m such a huge fan of all of you, so this is truly an honor. Here with me today is—

CHERI

You bet your ass it’s an honor.

[They all chuckle daintily.]

ANDY

Exactly! An honor. Thank you, Cheri.

[As Andy introduces the ladies, we cut to each one of them as they smolder to camera.]

ANDY (cont’d)

Let’s welcome Molly Shannon, Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey, Nora Dunn, Ana Gasteyer, Rachel Dratch, Cheri Oteri, Kristen Wiig, and, joining us from Los Angeles, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Amy Poehler, and Laraine Newman.

[Cut to: Amy and Julia and Laraine.]

AMY/JULIA/LARAINE: (ad-lib hellos)

[Cut to: Int. Real Housewives of SNL set.]

[They all ad-lib hellos.]

ANDY

You all have had such wonderful years at
SNL
. I wanna catch up on your lives since you left. Nora Dunn, let’s start with you. You look amazing.

NORA

Thank you, Andy.

ANDY

Has it been difficult for you since your divorce from the Count?

NORA

I am a Countess, but I am not going to discuss the Count.

[Cut to: All the ladies looking uncomfortable.]

CHERI

She don’t wanna talk about the Count!

NORA

I want to talk about my new exercise video.

ANDY

Oh, yes, you have an exercise video.

NORA

It’s fantastic, Andy. All the exercises are designed for you to do while you’re doing other things, like getting your legs sanded or going to the opening of Billy Bush’s new restaurant. It’s called “The Classy Countdown to Fitness: Working Out with the Countess.”

KRISTEN (O.S.)