Culture

“Watch What Happens Live” Offers a Break from the Drudgery of Late-Night TV


I don’t watch late-night TV very often, and whenever I do I recall the reason for my aversion. Each time I sit through an episode, usually while eating some ill-advised snack (I’ve had a long day and I deserve some jouissance, goddammit!), I find myself wondering, Why can’t these shows be just a bit more unexpected, a bit more fun, a bit more . . . joyful? There are occasional exceptions, of course. (Keanu Reeves’s recent appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” for instance, or Rihanna’s segment, in June, on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”) But, generally speaking, most late-night talk shows seem rote affairs in which celebrities dutifully promote their latest projects, and hosts dutifully facilitate the promotion. Every cute on-set anecdote feels canned—likely talked through during a show’s pre-interview process—and surprises and high jinks are nil. Affable but largely mirthless, the faces of both host and guest seem to suggest: We came here to work, not to party.

In this landscape, “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” is refreshing. The half-hour show, which airs from Sunday to Thursday, at 11 P.M., on Bravo, is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Despite—or, perhaps, because of—its somewhat slapdash idiosyncrasy, and its airing on a niche network now chiefly known for its reality-television fare, it seems to me exactly what the late-night genre needs. It’s not that Cohen didn’t come here to work: with his role as an executive producer of Bravo’s long-standing “Real Housewives” franchise, his Sirius radio program, his touring two-man show with Anderson Cooper, and his three memoirs, he is a tireless soldier of entertainment. This doesn’t mean, however, that he didn’t also come here to party. There is no pre-interview on “W.W.H.L.,” so guests have no idea what will be discussed on the show. Alcohol is served on-air (often in the form of “shotskis,” sometimes served by a changing cast of amateur bartenders tangentially linked to the Bravo universe; in a taping of the show that I attended a couple of years ago, the drinks were poured by the two young assistants of “Real Housewives of New York” ’s Sonja Morgan.) And the show is recorded live in a small downtown studio referred to as the Clubhouse, which looks like a mid-sixties living room of an executive who has just started experimenting with psychedelics, all Pop-y memorabilia and orange, brown, and purple tones.

All of this makes the show unpredictable in the best way. Cohen, who is fifty-one, is a handsome, salt-and-pepper-haired gay man who is exceedingly gregarious, almost gladhandy, in a way that might turn some off. (“But he’s like a smile on a stick!” an acquaintance said once, when I mentioned my love for the host.) But, for me, watching his show is pure joy. “W.W.H.L.” began, in 2009, as an online-only, once-a-week after-show, and it retains some of the Wild West feel of the Internet’s slightly younger days. You never know whose tongue might be loosened, what questions will be asked, or how they’ll be answered. Cohen often plays parlor games with his guests. In “Plead the Fifth,” for instance, guests can refuse to answer only one question, and must otherwise respond to the tricky rest. The revelations are minor but have a don’t-give-a-fuck spirit. In one memorable moment, Shaquille O’Neal shared his penis size; in others, Ray Liotta said that his worst onscreen kiss was Sigourney Weaver, and Susan Sarandon confessed that she almost always attends awards shows stoned.

There are usually two guests, and their pairing is often quirky: the actor Maggie Gyllenhaal and the rapper 50 Cent; the comedian Amy Sedaris and the spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra; the Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence and “Real Housewives of New York” ’s Bethenny Frankel and Luann de Lesseps. This mixing has a levelling effect. It suggests that in Andy’s Clubhouse, A-listers and reality stars will be treated the same, with amiable but shameless nosiness. Occasionally, guests turn the tables on Cohen by asking him invasive questions—as when the model Amber Rose wondered if he and Anderson Cooper were sleeping together, or when the musician John Mayer asked him whether he’d rather live without oral sex, cheese, or marijuana—and he is always game to answer. All this makes the show feel a little sexy, a little vulgar, and, more often than not, authentic. I sometimes recall that, at the taping I attended, in which the guests were Morgan and her fellow-Housewife Kyle Richards, the two women and Cohen got up and danced during the commercial breaks, bumping and grinding exuberantly. At that moment, they seemed, really and truly, to be having the time of their lives.



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