Housewives head honcho Andy Cohen is the keeper of all the Real Housewives secrets. As the executive producer of the franchise, he knows the inner workings of every Housewives city – and all the behind-the-scenes tea.
Now the TV mogul is spilling all his secrets with the release of his new book, Superficial: More Adventures from the Andy Cohen Diaries.
The book is a must-read for every Housewives superfan and we were first in line to pick it up when it came out last week. After a power-read, we pulled out all the best Housewives stories from the book.
Here is all the best Housewives dirt from Superficial:
Andy always has a phone full Housewives texts
The Housewives are always texting Andy. Whether they’re complaining about one of the other women or trying to hold on to their place in the cast, the Housewives are in constant communication with Andy. In the book, he recounts dozens of uncomfortable Housewives text exchanges.
Tamra, for instance, texted him one day to complain he was talking negatively about her on TV, but he shut it down quick, replying she dishes it and needs to learn either to take it or ignore it.
In another chapter, Andy and the other RHONY producers were trying to keep Bethenny’s return to the show under wraps, but it leaked to the press. When word got out, his phone blew up with texts from the New York Housewives, who were all anxious to find out if the news was true – and what it meant for the rest of the cast.
Nene messed up a TV deal between Andy and Wendy Williams
Lifetime wanted Andy to produce a Judge Judy-style show starring Wendy Williams, but the deal fell through when Nene “dissed” the TV host during an interview with Andy.
The slight was hardly a diss – Nene chose a different celeb over Wendy during a sassy game segment – but Wendy and her manager husband stopped taking Andy’s calls after the incident. According to Andy, Lifetime was ready to buy the show, but it completely fell through when Wendy dropped out.
Teresa’s prison memoir was Andy’s idea
Before Teresa went away to prison, she met with Andy for lunch where he dropped the idea that she should document her time behind bars in a diary. This later became the basis for her best-selling book, Turning The Tables: From Housewife to Inmate and Back Again.
Think she gave Andy a cut?
Andy only socializes with a handful of the Housewives
Andy always insists he doesn’t play favourites with the Housewives, but the book reveals which of the women he spends social time with. The list in short: in the book, he only spends one-one-one time with Bethenny, Carole and Teresa.
Carole and Andy were friends before she joined RHONY and the show has definitely changed their relationship. Carole drops by to hang out with Andy at his house and spend time with his dog in the book, but Andy also recounts how he stopped inviting her to his annual holiday party. Carole was always a guest, but when she became a Housewife, the invitations stopped because he didn’t want the other women to think Carole got special treatment.
The dis-invitation hurt Carole’s feelings – her joining the show meant she was excluded from seeing her real friends.
Housewives always think Andy hates them
Housewives are a sensitive breed. They’re always suspicious that Andy hates them. In the book, Andy writes about both Jacqueline and Brandi accusing him of hating them. And both, Andy writes, were totally unfounded.
With Brandi, the accusation came around the time she was on the outs with the RHOBH cast, right before she was let go from the show. In the book, Andy also dishes on a fight he had with Brandi’s agent.
“He blames me for everything – the edit she’s getting, her lawsuit against Joana Krupa; basically he feels like everything that comes out of her mouth is my fault because I provoked it,” Andy writes. “He talked a lot about her brand and how hard they worked to build it.”
“I told him, with all due respect: part of her brand is getting drunk and tweeting insane sh-t.”
Touché.
Bethenny threw some killer shade at Jill Zarin
The book is a parade of celebrity and Real Housewives encounters – and one of the juiciest is with Lindsay Lohan. Andy was out at an event with Bethenny and Kyle Richards when they ran into Lindsay, who told them all about her community service.
As it turned out, Jill Zarin had accompanied Lindsay to community service that day (her mom and Jill are good friends). When Lindsay told the group she’d spent the day with Jill, Bethenny shot back, “That itself sounds like community service.”
What we wouldn’t give for that moment to have been caught on camera.
Jill wants back on RHONY, obviously
Speaking of Jill, the former Housewife landed in hot water when she admitted to secretly recording Andy, but now she desperately wants to get back on the show.
Her team even made a PowerPoint presentation for Andy about why Jill should return to RHONY that included screengrabs of text messages between her and the other cast members (she says she’s friends with all of the current New York Housewives).
She told Andy she’s playing “the best tennis of her life” and wants to play on the show again as a callback to the drama-filled matches she’d host at her house in the Hamptons during the first two seasons of the show.
And now that we’re thinking back on those matches – maybe Jill should return to the show.
