Subscribe to Lemonada Premium for Bonus Content

When a young Andy Cohen sat in front of his family’s TV watching hours and hours of soap operas, his mother grew increasingly concerned about his future: Was he destined to become an “airhead”? But Andy’s obsession with melodrama paid off. He’s defined modern television as executive producer of the Real Housewives reality show franchise, and he’s spent 15 years as the host of the boundary-pushing talk show Watch What Happens Live. We discuss the little moments that could have changed everything for Andy, how he decides what to share and keep private, and why he has so much respect for actors — and I for reality show editors.

Follow me on Instagram at @davidduchovny. Stay up to date with Lemonada on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium. And if you want to continue the conversation with other listeners, join the My Lemonada community at https://lemonadamedia.com/mylemonada/

For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

David Duchovny, Andy Cohen

David Duchovny  01:09

Acting styles have been changed by reality TV, I think, not just acting styles, but the way we act in life. Because, you know, it’s the cliche that we’re all playing parts right, and I guess that’s what reality TV is, is banking on. But you know, if you look back and on acting styles over the last 50 years, you know you have Brando, which is like the the bench watermark, I think, and he’s mumbling and he’s not enunciating his words, and he’s real. He’s realer than we’ve ever seen. And then you have the next 40 years of everybody you know being Brando’s children. And we’re all doing, in effect, an imitation of what Brando did, in the same way all rock and roll guitarists after Hendrix are doing an invitation of Hendrix, more or less, most of them, anyway. And then you I think, the next big leap, the next big jump, or the next big break, is reality TV, when all of a sudden the bachelor or love Island, or, you know, Andy shows on Bravo, the Kardashian stuff, it’s changed the way we appear on camera. It’s changed not only acting. Reality has become more presentational, as presented reality filmed entertainment has become more soap opera like so I think there’s a skewing going on in both the way we behave as quote, unquote, normal people in everyday life and what is considered to be decent acting in reality shows. It’s kind of a funhouse mirror effect that’s happening in my mind now, as I’m trying to describe it, but hopefully I’ve gotten somewhere there. I’m David Duchovny, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Andy Cohen is the host and executive producer of The Real Housewives franchise and Bravo’s late night talk show. Watch What Happens Live. An exclamation point is basically responsible for some of the most successful reality shows ever, including the housewives franchise, which he started a Bravo back in 2006 and has become a cultural phenomenon, spawning spin off after spin off. When Watch What Happens Live. Premiered in 2009 Andy became the first openly gay host of an American late night talk show. He’s kind of everywhere in pop culture, even hosting a New Year’s Eve show. So you’ve probably seen him, even if you don’t know it or don’t know his name, and if not well, here he’s found his way over to my show. After I did his radio show, I asked him to do my podcast, and he was kind enough to just say yes, and you know, mention enough to show up and bring the goods. So here’s my tit for tat chat with, Andy Cohen.

 

David Duchovny  04:01

I’m really excited to talk to you because I was trying to, like, come up with, like, an overarching kind of a motif, which is false, right? When you kind of go into an interview thinking, Okay, I’m going to try and shape it this way.

 

Andy Cohen  04:15

Right.

 

David Duchovny  04:16

And I do want to talk to you about, you know, how you’ve grown as an interviewer, or how you how you haven’t grown whatever your stance towards yourself as the person who’s asking the questions, as opposed to the person who’s being asked the questions, which is something that I’m dealing with all the time. But what I came to as, like the symbolic, overarching drama of Andy’s life was kind of a search for a family, in a way, not that you didn’t have a family to begin with, but what I liked was that I saw you kind of gravitating towards different family situations in your life, whether it was, you know, your original family and then your friends, you. Seem to have a real strong connection to an orbit of friends, and then obviously the Bravo family and the families, and then your own family. And as a father of two kids, now.

 

Andy Cohen  05:14

You did homework for this.

 

David Duchovny  05:16

Well, you have to, I mean, you have to, don’t you? I mean, you’re under the gun. You know, you’re under a daily gun, so you can’t I mean, what kind of homework can you do? But if you were doing one or two a week, you do homework.

 

Andy Cohen  05:27

Right, yes.

 

David Duchovny  05:29

I think so, true.

 

Andy Cohen  05:31

Yes, I absolutely would. And you know, Larry King famously did no homework, and you could kind of tell, by the way.

 

David Duchovny  05:43

It’s funny I’ve got, you know, as kind of odd as Larry King was when I did his show. It was kind of one of those Hollywood milestones that you do.

 

Andy Cohen  05:52

Right,.

 

David Duchovny  05:53

Whereas, like, and I had my little parking cone that said David Duchovny right by the Larry King parking cone, and my assistant took a picture of it as if it was a big deal, and I still have it.

 

Andy Cohen  06:04

Wow, isn’t that interesting? Yeah, for me, I guess it was Letterman and Stern.

 

David Duchovny  06:12

Right, Stern too, yeah.

 

Andy Cohen  06:13

It’s so weird going on other having a show and going on other shows and see how people do it. Every show has its own kind of ecosystem and vibe, and it’s an interesting kind of sociological experience jumping around from show to show. There were a couple shows that I did that actually made me feel bad about myself when I left, I was like, oh, there was something so impersonal and weird about that I didn’t feel like I connected with the host, and it felt really they were both in LA, I won’t say what shows they were, but they were. It just didn’t feel great. And I was like, Oh, this is interesting. I’ve never felt like this after a show.

 

David Duchovny  06:58

What was that feeling? Just like I wasn’t myself, or I wasn’t valued in some way.

 

Andy Cohen  07:04

The feeling was I’m I was trying really hard. I felt like the host was kind of looking down on me a little bit. I felt like the audience was very far away. There was no connection there. The whole thing felt very isolating. I find talk shows in LA very weird to begin with. Kimmel is not but I feel like there’s they all feel like they’re gonna be on tape and aired a few days later. Nothing feels immediate, you know.

 

David Duchovny  07:35

Right? Well, your show is called, watch what happens live, right. There you go. This. This has got to be a little nerve wracking every damn day to do that.

 

Andy Cohen  07:44

No, I feel it more with the radio, to be honest, because there’s more time to fill and I I worry. Now I listen to a podcast recently, and the host just wouldn’t shut up and let the other person answer the question. And I was thinking, oh God, I think that’s what I sound like on the radio. I just, I was like, Oh, dude, you need to, like, cut your questions in half on the radio. But sometimes, when.

 

David Duchovny  08:12

I get excited, you get excited.

 

Andy Cohen  08:14

Excited, yes so Ithink in terms of the amount I talk, I think it has to do with my level of either enthusiasm or nerves or awkwardness and trying to make it less awkward. But sometimes it can be more awkward.

 

David Duchovny  08:33

I was thinking less in terms of, like, the flow of your words. You know, not so much. Why can’t I shut the up? But why can’t I shut the fuck up about that, or about this, about, you know what? I mean, it’s not so much just a constant talking but like, the filter is something that you, you obviously have a relationship with, or don’t, you know, and it’s something that you think about here I am talking over you, but, yeah, you go ahead. No, you’re not.

 

Andy Cohen  09:00

No, the filter is very interesting. I mean, the filter, we live in a very interesting time where, you know, everyone is waiting to be outraged. I am a semi outrageous person who has a live microphone in front of him at all hours of the day, which can, which is, you know, a potentially very dangerous situation.

 

David Duchovny  09:26

Absolutely.

 

Andy Cohen  09:26

So you I, but I do think I know what the line is more.

 

David Duchovny  09:35

Please tell us all, because we love to know. We would love to know, because it shifts. It shifts, and it’s shifting, and it will continue to shift.

 

Andy Cohen  09:44

I think there’s two lines. There’s the line that you’re gonna cross for yourself. So if I’m on the radio and I’m telling the story for the first half hour of my radio show of what I did for the weekend, or, you know, stuff about my kids, I have my own personal line about how much I’m gonna share. So if I saw Dad and company at the sphere, you know, I may say I took mushrooms. I may not. If I am talking about my kids, I have a really good sense of, okay, well, I will tell this story. It seems pretty relatable, and there’s so many stories that I won’t tell that maybe don’t seem relatable, or people could have strong judgments about that. I don’t really want to put myself out there for. So I feel like I have a pretty good sense.

 

David Duchovny  10:40

But that’s interesting to me, because a lot of of what, what you’re doing on the talk show is trying to, not trying to get, but allowing people to cross lines for themselves.

 

Andy Cohen  10:50

Trying to get yes, no, you’re right.

 

David Duchovny  10:53

And also, the shows that you’ve made yes on Bravo are are getting people to cross lines that they may or may not want to actually cross.

 

Andy Cohen  11:01

Absolutely, I think also some of my attitude about interviewing or my fearlessness came from the fact that, well, first of all, I spent 10 years as a producer at CBS News, and I was interviewing people behind the camera for 10 years. But also then, when I got in front of the camera, I was interviewing real housewives who were putting their lives up for judgment and display, and basically it was a green light to ask them anything. Hey, did you have your boobs done? What did you do with your face? Why did you leave your husband? What you know, the most personal stuff. And then when I started having legitimate celebrities on I certainly, well, well, the first group of celebrities I was having on my talk show were celebrities who were doing it as a favor because they were friends of mine. So suddenly I had Sarah Jessica Parker, and she was on my talk show. And I was like, you know, I’ve never really talked to you when you dated JFK Jr, and she’s like, Oh, my God, are we doing this? And it’s like, but I know there’s a lot I know that she could I have a sense of how far I could go, even with that with her, because she’s my friend. So then I just extend it with people like you who come on. You know, I think that I was pushing you somehow to talk about nudity that you’ve done in films and all this other stuff. And I mean, I think it wound up being kind of a dynamic conversation. But me, it’s for me, interviewing is also something of a fishing expedition, and you just have to be interested in fishing in order for it to be fun for the listener. And if not, then it’s just going to be a slog.

 

David Duchovny  12:45

Yeah, well, I mean, it’s always transactional, isn’t it, when we do something like this. So you know, the celebrity or the the, what are you calling the Bravo liberties? What’s your.

 

Andy Cohen  12:54

Bravo liberties? Yes,

 

David Duchovny  12:55

I’m so pleased with myself that I said Bravo […]. Fun to say bravo. Bravo, Liberty. Um, you know, there’s the transaction is, you know, I’m gonna get some kind of air time here, and you’re going to push me to say something or not say something, and it’s going to be kind of a, kind of a dance, but you don’t want it to be adversarial either, you know, right?

 

Andy Cohen  13:17

No, you don’t want it to be adversarial. I mean, these people are guests in your home or on your show, and so, yes, you don’t.

 

David Duchovny  13:29

But when you started, like you mentioned you started, you were, you were interviewing people off camera on the news, there was a different vibe, right? That was a completely different vibe. And was there another ambition that you had at that point?

 

Andy Cohen  13:46

I always wanted to work in TV and I really wanted to work in TV news, and I wanted to be in front of the camera, but I was, when I got out of college, I immediately got a job at CBS News in New York, and all of a sudden I was kind of, I thought it was really just the big time. And so I thought, why am I gonna go try to be on camera in like, small markets when I’m living in New York City, working, you know, for the mothership of new like, I saw Dan Rather, in the hallway. I thought it was very cool. I was, yeah, you know, I felt like this was where I belonged, and I was making a name for myself. So I just the fact that it happened for me later in life was such a gift, and I would have been okay if it didn’t, I was quite happy in my career, as much of a showboater as I am, I was very happy in my in my, my doing what I was doing. But it is, I guess, a good lesson. We’re talking about failure to I dreamed of being. In front of the camera, but I didn’t view it as a failure that I wasn’t for those first 15 years of my career, because I was working in a medium that I loved and and I was having great success in it.

 

David Duchovny  15:17

So you’re at the party that you wanted to be at.

 

Andy Cohen  15:20

Yeah, exactly.

 

David Duchovny  15:21

The host yet, but.

 

Andy Cohen  15:22

That’s right.

 

David Duchovny  15:22

Party, and.

 

Andy Cohen  15:23

That’s right.

 

David Duchovny  15:24

I felt the same just when I was, you know, getting work as an actor, like, right, that I was able to pay the rent and eat. That was the dream, you know, that I that I could do what I wanted to do and live well.

 

Andy Cohen  15:36

And actors, I don’t know how you guys do what you do, because the level of defeat that you come in contact with on a daily basis, it’s so hard not to take personally, because it is personal Almost. I mean, you’re being judged on your physicality, on your talent, whether you’re right for something, right? I had someone was making a movie earlier this year, a huge movie, and they like me, and they I barely know the person, and they reached out and had me audition for it.

 

David Duchovny  16:21

So you weren’t going to play yourself. You’re going to play.

 

Andy Cohen  16:24

I was not playing myself, and that’s a good question, because I’m pretty good at playing myself. I’ve played myself on Saturday night, live on all over the place, and I can play myself, but I am a terrible actor, like truly, just a bad actor.

 

David Duchovny  16:39

Why do you think that is?

 

Andy Cohen  16:40

Why do I think I’m a bad actor?

 

David Duchovny  16:42

Yeah.

 

Andy Cohen  16:42

Because I what? I didn’t go to school. Acting is hard. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t study it. I don’t think everyone is I think I’m a good talk show host, but I don’t think I’m a good actor. And I think I’m good at pretending on me, because I’ve done that before, but acting is just a whole other universe. And I did audition for that part, and I then, I, you know, the director explained the part to me, and then I worked with the casting director for she said, do you want to hop on? She goes, I know this isn’t what you do. Do you want to get on Zoom for 10 minutes. I go, yeah. So we got on and it was the day before, I mean, I, like, had four days to get ready for this thing, right? I got on with her. I go, Okay, let’s run through it, and I did it. And at the end she was like, oh God. She was like, that was she’s like, you need to bring it way down. This is too much. I mean, she was kind of horrified, and then I was horrified because I was like, Oh, I think I’ve got it, I think. And it was so bad. And so that night, I had dinner with Amy Sedaris, who’s a good friend of mine, and she and I, we probably took edibles, and we were talking about it. I was like, I guess I need to really bring it down. And she’s like, Andy, what are you gonna do? And so she I go, come over and just read it with me. I go, let, let me read it the most kind of low deadpan I possibly can. And we did that several times as like a conversation. And I said, okay, I think I get what what she meant. And I went in and I auditioned, and the casting director was so happy I had taken her note, first of all, right. And second of all, you know, I left the audition feeling like, oh, wow, I could really get this, you know, which, as I think the what every actor probably thinks after they do well on an audition, and also they were so complimentary and whatever. And I was just thinking, but I did, and I have to say, the the thought of getting this part completely panicked me, and it brought out every I am not someone who lives walking around with tons of insecurities and thinking, Where do I belong in the world, and how do they people see me? Whatever I mean, I’m a pretty easy, breezy guy when it comes to that stuff. But I was freaking out at the idea of getting this part and but I was thinking to myself, You know what I was telling my friends, I am so happy because I feel like I did the best I possibly could. I took myself out of my box. I did something that was uncomfortable for me, and even if I don’t get it, at least I know I gave it my best shot. That’s right, um, I didn’t get the part. And the reason I’m telling this long story is that I cannot believe what actors do to themselves on a daily basis. That is part of your life. I just and I respect the fact that early in your career, you thought, This is great. I’m a working actor. I’ve made it. And I think that if you have that attitude in life, and if you have that attitude about, well, you know what, I’m working. In a place that I love. You know, maybe you know everyone wants to be you know, Jay Z at this point, or just a mogul or famous or whatever, and we’re all living by these standards that it’s really good to be able to settle into whatever your passion is and be comfortable there. I think riches will follow that.

 

David Duchovny  22:58

You know, in your book, you talk about coming out to your mom, and she’s got the great line where she says, no, that’s fine or something. I was just scared you were an airhead.

 

Andy Cohen  25:18

And usually, not only did she say I was scared you were an airhead, but she said I probably would have hated your wife anyway, which is brilliant. And she probably would have hated my wife, by the way, I maybe, I maybe dodged a huge bullet there.

 

David Duchovny  25:34

Yeah, so what? What did she mean by airhead?

 

Andy Cohen  25:40

I watched a lot of TV growing up, and I think she kept saying, you’re going to be an airhead. You’re going to be an airhead. What are you going to do with yourself? What are you going to do with yourself? Well, look at this. All those hours watching all my children. I’m sitting on top of the greatest reality soap opera, you know, on television. So you were, you were studying. It worked out, okay. I mean, I guess, you know, I guess I was multitasking in my mind the whole time, yeah, yeah, you know. And by the way, there was a time in college where I thought, oh, I want to be a writer on a daytime soap opera. I was so there were so many jobs in television that I thought, well, that would be fun. It would be so fun to write, be a writer for all my children. I sent, I sent, like, a spec script in. I can’t even remember what happened with that, but anyway, yeah, she was very concerned that all the TV was going to turn me into an airhead.

 

David Duchovny  26:41

And then, you know that that seemed like a kind of a, you know, pretty smooth coming out as these things go, right? And then you describe one, I think the most painful moment you describe in the book is, is going to the Eddie Murphy concert, yeah. And that was to me, you know, for somebody who’s as buoyant as you are, you know, and you don’t, you don’t trade on your trauma, you know, you don’t trade on your dings and nicks or whatever. That struck me as, as a point where you kind of dug in and and and felt a certain kind of betrayal and a pain. And I wonder, I wonder, if that’s right.

 

Andy Cohen  27:23

That is right. I went with my high school friends. I was in, you know, I was really popular. I was, I was president of the student body my senior year. I was, I was a popular kid. I was not a athlete, very bad. I hand coordination. But I, you know, I was, I was like a popular kid, and I was kind of friends with everybody, but I was gay at the time without kind of ever dealing with it. And I really it was, not only was everyone in the gay community dying at the time of AIDS, because this was I graduated high school in 1986 but there was not a heck of a lot of acceptance in the way that there is now, and certainly in St Louis, Missouri, and I just didn’t think that this was going to be a plausible life for me. So it was a trauma in the back of my head that I knew I was going to have to deal with at some point soon. And I went with high school friends to see Eddie Murphy, and every other joke was fag at this, fag at that, fag at this, fag at that and I freaked out. I was in my mind. I was like, oh, everyone’s laughing at me. And my friends were laughing. And I was like, how could they laugh at this? And I loved Eddie Murphy. I mean, it felt like, yes, it felt like a betrayal on several levels. I was like, Oh, this is bad.

 

David Duchovny  28:51

And what, what was the fallout from that for you, in terms of, did you make a decision, you know, to get out of there? Did you make a decision was that.

 

Andy Cohen  29:00

I already knew what I was gonna do. I was gonna go to a college that was a college in a city that did not was not a college that was all about like a fraternity system, which I felt like was the wrong place for me. Now, funnily enough, I now have all these friends who were in France and frats are, like, all the guys were sleeping with each other. Sorry, frat guys who are listening to this, but like, I know more gay people that were like, you know, doing it with all these football players. And I’m like, oh my god, anyway. But no.

 

David Duchovny  29:37

You missed out.

 

Andy Cohen  29:39

I missed out, my plan was I’m gonna go to a city and I will be able to figure out who I am, and maybe it’ll be easier there. And I went to Boston University, and the campus is very much a city campus. And I, you know, I occasionally would go, I would. Treat myself if I kind of did well on an exam or something, and I would skulk out to a gay bar on a Friday night and lie to everyone about where I was going, and I really look at what was happening. And then I went and studied abroad. I my junior year, and that was when I really started to come out of the closet.

 

David Duchovny  30:17

So it was like a, it was a, it was a gift you gave yourself for doing good work. Yes, well, that’s interesting. Let’s take it to your Bravo family now, because I, you know, it’s funny to hear you talk about fraternities that way, because when you, when you were saying those things, I was thinking, the way you describe your life and your books in New York is very much like the fraternity of New York. For you, it’s very much like my door’s open and people walk it’s like being in college. Yeah, I I’ve never left my door open in New York or anywhere for that matter. So it’s like you got people walking into your apartment, friends, I actually do at all. And it’s like you’ve created the dorm of Manhattan, yourself, which, kind of wonderful in a way, isn’t it?

 

Andy Cohen  31:05

I love it. I I’ve lived in the West Village for, um, 30, over 30 years, and I have so many friends that live in the neighborhood. And so it’s so there’s always a possibility of not only running into someone on the street, but someone dropping by, and I’m very big on nightcaps. I’m very big on texting friends and saying nightcap and then they just appear at my door.

 

David Duchovny  31:34

Is that because you think the the guardrails are down at the nightcap time today.

 

Andy Cohen  31:39

It’s just fun. I just love enough, you know, it’s just fun, you know, I didn’t, I definitely did not move to New York City to sleep. And so I like to take advantage of the community there. And I like to take advantage of the idea that, you know, the night doesn’t have to be over. You know, when conventionally, if you go out to dinner with Person A, you could still see Person B, you know, at 11, they could pop by for half an hour, and I think while they’re walking their dog or whatever else.

 

David Duchovny  32:14

Oh, I’m so I’m just the exact opposite. Yeah, I’m always like, when can this night be? Oh, that’s when can it be? When can it be over?

 

Andy Cohen  32:23

I mean, I’m less so with kids. I mean, now that I’ve been kids, I mean, it’s like.

 

David Duchovny  32:27

No, I don’t blame my kids. I was always like, right, right. I think I kind of wanted to talk to you about, you know, one of the thinking about talking to you, I was like, Well, I don’t watch those shows on Bravo, but I’m not against, I’m not against reality TV. I’ll watch some real Yeah, right, but I’m, I guess, I take myself seriously. And I thought maybe I can learn, like maybe, how not to take myself quite as seriously. And I started thinking about Susan Sontag on Camp, yeah? And I think, and I have you read that essay, yeah, it’s kind of a and I just started thinking about camp as a sensibility, and almost as, like a queer critique of heteronormative shit. You know, which I’m due for, right? I mean, I got to be due for it. I mean, I’m like, I check all those boxes, and I take myself seriously. And I want, when I’m working on something, I want it to last, and I don’t want it to be disposable.

 

Andy Cohen  33:30

Right.

 

David Duchovny  33:30

And I don’t want it to be real. I want it to be art. And I’m looking at your stuff and I’m thinking, I could, instead of, like, getting angry or offended or scared of this stuff, right? Maybe, maybe I’m missing the point. You know, maybe I’m missing, is it? Is it a queer critique of heteronormative?

 

Andy Cohen  33:57

You know? I think, yeah, it. I think in some ways, you mean, like the housewives, it could. I think in some ways it is. I mean, there was a big, we’ve had a big wink on that show for the first big chunk of it, there was, I mean, the entire name, The Real Housewives. What does that mean? It’s kind of, we were trying to turn the notion of being a housewife upside down. I mean, it was like it was kind of, you know, it was kind of almost a joke, because what is certainly and also for us to say The Real Housewives with these women who had augmented their bodies and their faces, so, yeah, it was kind of, I think it was always meant to be kind of something of a wink. And I remember Tom shales in his first review of The Real Housewives of Orange County, it was a bad review. And he said, Someday you. Could put this in like a sociological time capsule, and you will see how the nouveau riche in Southern California lived in 2006 and this could be a sociological time capsule. And I love that because I love archeology and I love or sociology, and I love human behavior, and so I think one of the reasons the show is still such a success the housewives is that people absolutely love judging human behavior. And you love saying, Well, that was atrocious, or that was wonderful. But I think that it is very easy to look at these shows and make a value judgment and say, This isn’t for me, and it’s a turn off. And I think if it was just kind of throwing wine in someone’s face or a table flip or whatever, it still wouldn’t be on the air at, you know, for so long. But these are people with real relationships, a lot of them, and it’s about being a wife and a mother and a sister and a daughter and a friend and an enemy and all that stuff. And they’re really funny. But I would say for you, if you had, if you had an aversion to kind of reality TV in general, I wouldn’t get you started on the housewives. First of all, I would say, like below deck, or southern charm or Vanderpump Rules, which are more, I think, kind of hetero shows. And they’re not necessarily like about women for women, but I think those would be, below deck is a below deck is a, it’s the perfect reality show. It’s like it is a workplace drama about people who work on a boat, but they also happen to kind of fight and fuck. So it’s like, Oh, I’m getting everything here. And I just wanted to say, since we are talking about failure, we were shooting season one of Orange County housewives in 2006 or something like that. And when I tell you that we came this close to canceling the show, and I remember the meeting I was in with my bosses at the time where, you know, because we we didn’t think we were getting what we thought we were getting in the field. And it was, it just seemed like, Oh, this is bad. And I remember we had to come to the meeting with we came to my boss and said, Okay, well, we’re gonna lose $400,000 if we cancel it right now. And she said, I remember where I was sitting in this meeting, and when I think about it now, the meeting changed my life, obviously, yeah. But she said, you know what? Let’s keep going. And then when it premiered, it was supposed to be called The Real Housewives. She said, let’s call it The Real Housewives of Orange County, in case we ever do it in another city. And I was like, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. We are never doing this show in another city like the Real Housewives of Orange County. That sounds ridiculous, like, what does that even mean anyway? Thank God you didn’t cancel it.

 

David Duchovny  38:11

One of the things that I have for, I’m gonna call it anxiety around around shows like this, is as an actor, you know, because I feel like it’s changed acting. I feel like it’s changed being, and I feel like that’s not the shit that I grew up wanting to do, in a way, you know, that’s not well, it’s not something, yeah, it’s not but what I mean by that is, I think the phone changed behavior, because every everybody got comfortable with the camera. You know, you look at the old pictures of people posing for for their whatever, yeah, you know, the daguerreotypes or whatever. Everything is very stiff. People don’t know how to present themselves.

 

David Duchovny  39:00

And now there’s a pose for the camera. There’s an awareness of the camera, and and reality show has a kind of a check on acting in that way, because you go, oh shit, that’s how a person responds, in a way. But I also think that the camera does change behavior. And I think we can’t say that it’s reality. And you, I don’t think you’d say that either, but as soon as you put the camera in front of these people’s faces, they’re going to change a little bit.

 

Andy Cohen  39:00

Yes.

 

Andy Cohen  39:32

Without question. And there’s and especially the longer the show has gone on, people now realize, oh, my God, I’m on the housewives. I’m a housewife, you know, so I mean, and they think they have to act a certain way. There were times in early seasons where the show was not really a thing, where people didn’t it wasn’t the institution that it is now, where people, you know. In their second season, would start showing up, made up to things, and it’s like, wait a minute, you’re going to the grocery store looking like that. Or, you know, and we could tell in the early episodes, oh my god, this person is putting it on so bad, like, well.

 

David Duchovny  40:16

How do you deal with?

 

Andy Cohen  40:17

We would cut around. We cut around a lot of it.

 

David Duchovny  40:20

Would […] Talk to them?

 

Andy Cohen  40:21

Yes? Oh, absolutely. But it’s the moments listen, the moments that people remember are the moments of these people being their true selves, and it’s the moments that they can’t hide from the camera and they can’t put on it’s, I mean, yes, some things get through, but, I mean, Teresa Judyce In Season, one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, didn’t go to that meal thinking, I’m gonna flip the table like, I mean, she was the reason she did. It is someone insulted her intelligence, and she is a old school Italian with a hot temper, and she went, you know, I mean, so a lot of it is in the casting. And we cast people who are have very strong personalities, who that’s, this is how they kind of are.

 

David Duchovny  41:13

Yeah, and that’s maybe she never flipped a table before. She had it in her obviously, but she’s probably not a habitual table flipper.

 

Andy Cohen  41:21

True I would argue, I would I don’t question the the reality of that moment. I question, you know, six years later, a new housewife coming in and breaking a glass at a meal. It’s like, all right, you know you’re on the Jersey housewives. You know you have a sense of this.

 

David Duchovny  41:41

And do you think to watch Trump for the last 10 years has changed that as well as we’ve watched somebody’s bad behavior, you know, become excused again and again.

 

Andy Cohen  41:53

I’ve a lot of people have asked me about the connection between, you know, Trump and reality shows, and beyond the fact that, I think that he got very good at being on TV, on his own reality show, and playing a character. And the character was a tough, successful businessman who had not filed for bankruptcy and defrauded all these people out of a lot of money, and over and over, I think there’s beyond that. I don’t know, but I certainly in I always like to believe that people can watch a reality show and even if people are behaving badly. And it’s funny, I would like to believe in humanity that they will go to the restaurant that night and behave properly and not be beasts. But who am I to say?

 

David Duchovny  45:58

If it’s true, if it’s some kind of a critique of, you know, the normal, quote, unquote, normal American family, you know, the housewives.

 

Andy Cohen  47:11

Yeah.

 

David Duchovny  47:11

And you have chosen to create a family which is, is, is not heteronormative or whatever. You’re a single, forgive me, somewhat older.

 

Andy Cohen  47:22

Yes.

 

David Duchovny  47:24

Parent.

 

Andy Cohen  47:25

Yeah.

 

David Duchovny  47:28

I always see you as buoyant and as not being weighed down by things. But what is there anything keeping you up at night?

 

Andy Cohen  47:34

Oh, yeah. Oh, my god, yeah. I mean the I would say definitely, I told you earlier that I wasn’t someone that had a lot of self doubt. But I mean, this will, this will do it to you being a parent. I mean, you start to question everything, especially a single parent, everything from what kind of world am I bringing my child into to, you know, what’s going to happen to us? To me is some what happens if something happens to me? Are they gonna be okay? I mean, there’s, a whole world of worry that I never had, and.

 

David Duchovny  48:15

I think you said I spent my first 50 years worrying about things that I can’t even remember what I used to worry about, yeah, and now I really have something to worry.

 

Andy Cohen  48:23

Yes, it’s so true.

 

David Duchovny  48:27

But you are going into, you know, parenting with your own the shape of your family is, is yours, you know, yeah, you’re, you’re, you’re having to figure it out as you go along. So I think it’s even it’s even more. So you know the questions that you’re going to ask yourself, I think you said at one point that you know you want your your kids to be around, at least, to know that there are other single gay parents out there around kids like that, so that that’s important to you as well is it?

 

Andy Cohen  48:58

Big time.

 

David Duchovny  48:59

And why do you think that is so that they don’t feel like they’re unique?

 

Andy Cohen  49:03

Yeah, I mean, look, you don’t want to feel, you know, you don’t want to feel alone. You don’t want to feel like, Oh, I’m not, you know, I’m the only one without a mom, or I’m the only one without two dads or a dominant, you know, whatever. I mean, absolutely, and they don’t, I have to say they’ve got, there are other single parents that they know, and there’s a lot of gay dads in their lives. So they see it was so interesting to me. A year or two ago, my son said, My son said he was like, oh, I want another daddy. And I thought it was so interesting that he wanted that he knew not a mom, yeah, that he knew that if someone else came into this family, it was going to be a daddy. I was like, I read that gay to you.

 

David Duchovny  49:51

And you said, to him, no, I’m just an airhead. How do you approach dating? In this case, because you don’t, you don’t really want. Bring, you know, serious.

 

Andy Cohen  50:03

I don’t bring too many. I mean, I just, I it’s weird. I feel like there’s always an undercurrent of like, Oh, do you, you know, do you want two kids? I’ve dated, people who thought it was weirder that I was famous than that I was that I had, that I was a single dad, like for them, me being famous was more for them to swallow than me having two kids. And I thought, oh, well, that’s interesting, because that’s something that doesn’t affect me the way that I, you know, live my life, or anything.

 

David Duchovny  50:50

Well, it’s been a while now.

 

Andy Cohen  50:51

I guess so, yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I feel like, when you live in New York and you still take, you know, I take the subway to, I mean, it’s like you’re out on the streets, you’re dealing with the same shit. You got rained on, whatever.

 

David Duchovny  51:05

Yeah, you know, I also meant in the sense of, like, is there kind of a cutoff point, or is there a moment when you go, okay, I think this person can meet, meet my kids.

 

Andy Cohen  51:16

Yeah, I mean, I haven’t really gotten to that point. There have been a couple, there have been a couple of people that I’ve been on some dates with, who I’ve run into in the neighborhood with the kids or whatever. And it’s just nothing deep, you know, it’s nothing the there been no situation where I’m like, okay, Ben Todd is coming over now you know that I’ve had dinner with him a lot of times. You’re gonna meet Todd now tonight.

 

David Duchovny  51:47

Yeah.

 

Andy Cohen  51:48

Really good guy. I’m very big on things happening organically, and so I think that if there was someone serious, I would most likely integrate them in a really slow, organic way.

 

David Duchovny  52:04

Right.

 

Andy Cohen  52:04

Like, oh, my friend Todd coming over. Like, you know, whatever, and then, you know, dude, I have to wrap it up.

 

David Duchovny  52:14

Okay, great.

 

Andy Cohen  52:15

Is that okay?

 

David Duchovny  52:17

I think so.

 

Andy Cohen  52:17

I have to go to CVS before, before my day gets crazy.

 

David Duchovny  52:22

Yeah, please. I thank you for giving me the time that you gave.

 

Andy Cohen  52:26

But do you want to wrap it up with me properly?

 

David Duchovny  52:29

I don’t know how to do that?

 

Andy Cohen  52:31

We’ll say, well, Andy, that’s all the time we have for today.

 

David Duchovny  52:35

I say, well, Andy, that’s all the time you have for us today. That’s all the time you have.

 

Andy Cohen  52:39

Do what Carson did well, Andy, we have to let you go.

 

David Duchovny  52:45

All right, thanks, Andy, appreciate it.

 

Andy Cohen  52:47

Thank you.

 

David Duchovny  52:48

Take care.

 

David Duchovny  53:01

Okay, so these are my posts. Andy Cohen thoughts. I couldn’t help thinking, you know, the ascendance of reality TV in the past 15-20, years. I couldn’t help thinking of The Truman Show. And I, I wish that I would have asked him if that was a important movie from but how prescient, if that’s the way to pronounce that word that show is, was and will be. And also to ask, I wonder, if you know, if the housewives are these characters who were trapped in a in an ethos of late capitalism, much the way Truman was, if any of them have tried to escape, tried to escape the reality of reality TV in any significant way, or if any of them have a revelation, to get the fuck out of there, to quit, to quit the show, to quit that kind of life. I don’t know. You know, this is part of my arrogance, I guess, or or judgment, something I need to check within myself. But you know, I guess I’m threatened, as I said before, by, you know, the kind. It’s almost like being threatened by AI when you watch, you know, reality show being written by the players, by the people in the reality show, and by the editors, really, and that’s an unsung thing. So these are things I’m thinking about after Andy.

 

CREDITS  54:34

There’s more Fail Better with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like more of my behind the scenes thoughts on this episode. Subscribe now and Apple podcasts. Fail Better as a production of Lemonada media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Kegan Zema, Aria Bracci, and Dani Matias, Paula Kaplan . Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neil. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Karpinski and Kate D. Lewis, the show’s executive produced by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova, Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band. Lovely Colin Lee. Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan and Sebastian […]. You can find us online at @LemonadaMedia and you can find me @DavidDuchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.