The Andy Cohen Diaries (15 page)

At my show Magic Johnson's son came with Kyle Richards and he's, like, a six-foot-eight flamboyant gay dude in high heels, which is incredible. Abigail Breslin was on and though she is so lovely, I now think that seventeen-year-olds should not be allowed on the show. I was censoring myself.

I got booked on
Letterman
for Wednesday and I have nothing to talk about and I'm completely freaked out.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2013

It was snowing, to which Wacha seemed indifferent. I interviewed P!nk at this Billboard Awards luncheon. Tamron Hall was onstage before me, interviewing Janelle Monáe, and she said that she had emailed Prince to find out what he thought of Janelle and then she pulled out her phone and read the email to Janelle. So when I was onstage with P!nk I said I texted Madonna to see what she thought of P!nk and I just got a text back. Then I picked up my phone and fake-read, “Never fucking text me again.” It was pretty funny. (I actually
do
have Madonna's cell phone number but she is too much of an idol to me to fuck it up by over-texting her.) We played “Plead the Fifth” and for someone with an exclamation point in their name, it turns out P!nk is indeed really cool. And even cooler, Debbie Harry was at my table. I wasn't prepared to see Debbie Harry at a lunch, though. I don't even think about Debbie Harry
existing
during the day, much less sitting down to lunch. Debbie eating lunch? One of these things is not like the other.…

I'm really anxious about
Letterman
. I feel like I'm talk-showed out. I am searching my brain for a witty anecdote and there's nothing there.

I had dinner with Bruce, Grac, and Amanda at Añejo. Angelo Sosa sent over a ton of stuff and on the way to the show I was stuffed and tired. I'd had tequila at dinner, and even though I was so excited about the
Downton Abbey
cast (Mrs. Patmore, Branson, Thomas, and Lady Edith), I was spent and wanted to go home. I got there and I was sitting in my dressing room reading the research at 10:53 and all of a sudden I thought, “I'm gonna puke,” and I ran into bathroom and puked. It was a fluke puke. Out of nowhere! I walked back into the control room at 10:56 and said, “I need makeup. I just threw up my guts.” No one believed me. They thought I was kidding or lying or I don't know what. They didn't really react, like I was the boy who cried wolf. Meanwhile my eyes were watering and I was pukey.

We got all these tweets during the show saying my eyes looked glassy, and asking if I was I stoned. I wanted to say, “I just
puked
, people!” And the disgusting thing was that indeed I was sipping a Fresquila during the show. I didn't want to freak people out by not imbibing. (I am making up for my imminent long month of sobriety now.)

The show, barfing aside, was great. My favorite thing of the night was the actress who plays Mrs. Patmore being impressed by my promo for Susan Sarandon and Ralph Fiennes (they're on tomorrow) and then watching her find out that Meryl Streep had done the show. She turned to one of her co-stars and said,”He's really going low with us lowly cast members. Those high-and-mightys who wouldn't do it probably regret it now. Bloody Susan Sarandon.” I guess Lady Mary and Lord Grantham weren't into doing the show.

It was a classic win for the help.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2013

Went to the doggy hospital for Wacha's pre-surgery follow-up. Saw the same loud annoying woman in the waiting room who made such a spectacle of herself last time. She was back because her dachshund gets a weekly EKG, and she literally was acting like
she's
the one getting the EKG. Two weeks straight I moved seats.

Then a nurse brought a blind man over and seated him next to me. The nurse said to him, “I'm
so sorry
.” After she left, he made a phone call, voice-activated, to someone to explain that his guide dog had just died and he needed a ride. I was just sitting there, frozen. It was a situation that I had never considered, and so overwhelmingly sad that tears were streaming down my face. I told him how sorry I was. He said this was his guide dog of twelve years and that he got a tumor out of nowhere. They'd just put him down. He said it could be June before he gets another dog. The place he called for a ride phoned him back and said they couldn't get to him until 1 p.m. (this was 10 a.m.), and he kindly asked if they could please try to get him sooner, that he had just lost his dog. The whole situation was heartbreaking, and through it all this man was so calm. He was Indian, in his forties. What a gentle man. They called back and said they could be there in a half hour. He asked me to help get him to the elevator and I did and said goodbye.

I met with the surgeon and they had sedated Wacha a little bit and he was so cute when he was high that I considered asking for sedation juice for home use. We scheduled his surgery and I led Wacha outside, where I ran into the blind man waiting for his ride. He was standing in front of the hospital and his bus was there idling but the driver wasn't inside. It was confusing. I told him the bus was there and waited with him. It was a weird few minutes of limbo. His driver returned and off he went. I hope someone nice was waiting for him at home.

In the cab downtown I had my
Letterman
pre-interview and I felt better about the segment. I tucked Wacha in and went to the cleaners, where the people who killed that old couple now have a tip jar. Why is there a
tip jar
at a cleaners?

I went to work and had my last EP and development meeting, which should have been weird but was uneventful. I spent half an hour looking for my car to
Letterman
at Rock Center amidst the tree gridlock, couldn't find it, asked Daryn to yell at the car company, and ultimately walked in the tundra, which took only seven minutes, so that was all a huge waste of time. The
Letterman
producer told me that Dave had said, “Why has it been so long since he was here? We loved him.” I tried to point out that I had been attempting to get back on the show for the last two and a half years but they had been saying no, but since Dave “loved me” I guess we're pretending that didn't happen.

Before I went on I ran into Josh Groban in the hallway and thought he was a PA I worked with once. I totally didn't place him. I have to address this problem I have of not placing people's faces. He's been on my show.

My segment was completely surreal. Even though I'd been on once before, I felt out-of-body sitting with
him
. I'd been briefed a few times about everything Dave was going to say and then he went out of order and off script, which I liked. We talked about me taking pitches, yawning at Charlize Theron, and then we started talking about my show and he opened up about his alcoholism and what a bad drunk he was and I made the parallel between him and Carson in that regard. Then I made a comment that I was going to give him a chip when I left, referencing his years of sobriety. It wasn't a joke, just a comment. A comment that landed with a thud. His response was, “Are we done? Is the interview over?”
Very awkward
. Then he asked Paul if
he
had anything else to say. He kind of threw it to Paul, vamped, and I was out. After the segment I tried to save face, thanking him and asking him what he thought of the Carson book, and he said it was horrible that that guy wrote it.

From the moment I got out of the chair, the segment producer started talking me off the ledge about the thud that ended the segment. I'd been
kind of
freaked out, but this guy's urgency made me totally paranoid. He kept repeating, “I know you think that was weird but it wasn't. I think Dave loved it.” And all I heard was the word “think.” On the walk back to 30 Rock, I called a friend of mine in AA to see if I had said something wrong. He said it was fine to mention the chip but that he didn't think Letterman was in AA. What the hell did I say that for?

Next it was straight to the NBC Christmas party, where I was starstruck by Chuck Scarborough and had a nice chat with Matt Lauer. I think I made a comment about his goatee, but he pointed out that he actually has a full beard. So I think he thought I was making fun of his gray facial hair or the growth pattern or something. I wasn't. All the NBC News stars were there, but I gravitated to the local news stars, as I always do, and it turns out Shiba Russell is a huge
Housewives
fan. I kissed Savannah Guthrie and ran out to meet Bruce at the Waverly. The flirty “straight” waiter wasn't there again. I wonder if he flirted too much and got canned.

On my show Susan Sarandon compared me on air to Jerry Lewis at a telethon, which I have to assume was a read. She and Ralph were hilarious and perfect together. It was a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of night. Ralph said he was flying off his martinis.

Wacha was really hyper when I got home and I'm terrified that I'm gonna give him new hips and he's going to turn into a wild dog. What if I prefer him as a cripple?

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2013

I watched the
Letterman
interview and it looked to me that he was dissing me at the end. And I looked fat and fifty. Random people on Instagram (the People's Court) thought he was mean to me and I think I am assuredly, permanently off his list.

I was also upset all day because I'm giving Wacha to the dog walker for the weekend because of my Christmas party, and I was carrying on to Bruce about it and he reminded me that he is, after all, a dog. That reframed it for me.

I co-hosted the NY Women in TV and Film lunch with Wendy Williams. I loved that Frances was one of the honorees (easy for me to honor my boss). The others were Barkin (another easy one), Connie Britton, Robin Wright, and Sonia Manzano from
Sesame Street
. I loved gossiping with Wendy and the lunch was concurrently incredibly unorganized, long, and fun.

I was on the red carpet doing interviews with Wendy and behind me these two women were getting their picture taken. One of them, I thought, was either Sharon Gless or Candice Bergen. If it
was
Candice Bergen, I didn't think she would be happy that I was thinking that she was Sharon Gless. It turned out to be none other than Cagney
and
Lacey. That story was not good for anybody.

Sharon Osbourne and Tyler Perry were on my show and we may as well have had two heads of state with the amount of security they had. It was Orange Alert in the Clubhouse. Tyler had like twenty people in front of his green room and then I went in and it was just him alone, which was fascinating. He's a really nice guy.

I got home and I had one of those endless massages and I lay there thinking and churning and at the end I felt like I'd solved all my problems. The first revelation was that I remembered reading recently that dogs essentially have the comprehension of a two-year-old human. As much as I want this dog to understand me, I have to think of him as a two-year-old. For some reason that struck me as a big relief. I also decided to buy a MacBook Air, which during the massage seemed revolutionary.

My screeners have started coming for Oscar movies but I'm only getting bad ones so far. Oh, and I almost forgot, Cynthia Rowley's jean jumpsuit arrived and it's kinda like a denim Mao suit, very cool!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2013

I texted Madonna inviting her to my Christmas party and she texted back, “Yes. I need to have fun,” and now that Madonna is coming to my apartment I am a complete and total wreck. I worked out and was a total pain in the ass at the gym. If I were my trainer, I would have kicked me out. Wacha left for the weekend and he was quite fine about it. He didn't look back.

I ran around doing errands for the party. After all these years of throwing what I boastfully view as one of the great annual apartment parties in NYC, I have the prep down to a science. I stayed home to chill out, and at 11:30 p.m. Harry Smith and Andrea Joyce showed up, thinking the party was tonight. I forced them to stay to have a drink, which turned into several, and we hung out till one-thirty. Andrea told me about this charity where you take your dog to visit terminally ill kids. I want to do it.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2013

It was a huge snowstorm, and I did everything for my party yesterday, so I just mellowed out all day. Madonna texted me saying the music better not be as bad as it was at Anderson's and my joint birthday party in June, which sent me into a tailspin. I asked her what she wanted to drink and she said either Krug Rosé Champagne (“Everything else is for losers”) or a cosmo.

The party was a smash. It's essentially the same list every year, with old friends and new, and no work people allowed. (I think I'm actually self-conscious about getting wasted in front of them.) The quadruple killer was that Bruce was sick, Bryan in LA, Amanda out of town, and Jeanne doing something with her kid, but a great hodgepodge collage did show up in the snowstorm. Troy Roberts, Grac, John Hill, Liza, Jackie, Anderson and Ben, Hickey, Mark and Kelly, Sean Avery, Amy Sedaris, Shea, Jason and Lauren, Susan Sarandon, Barkin, Monica Lewinsky, Ralph, Scott Wittman, Ricky and Allison, and on and on. Jessica Seinfeld brought Cameron Diaz. Madonna came and stayed for at least ninety minutes. I ejected Billy Eichner from his prime seat (there aren't that many seats btw, it's more of a standing affair) on the red loungy thing in the corner, saying, “You don't mind making room for Madonna,
right
?” Given that he had a Madonna-themed bar mitzvah, he absolutely did not mind making room for the Lady. I was predominantly too freaked out to talk to her most of the night, and just happy she was there. When I finally did go in for a quick chat, she asked me when my birthday was and said to get myself a better sound system as a gift to myself. Thoughtful! I handed her my phone and told her she could DJ on Spotify. She didn't care to. She wanted the password for my Wi-Fi. Which is “Andrew Cohen,” in case I ever forget. She was mouthing the words to “Hung Up” when it came on. That moment alone was enough to last me till the next party. The last guests—Fred, Ralph, Bridget Everett, Hickey, Chris and Bill—left sometime after 4 a.m. I used to take pictures at my Christmas party and now I don't. Nothing's special anymore?