It’s been a rough couple of months for Bravo and Andy Cohen, as the network has seen swirling allegations and lawsuits alleging discrimination, retaliation, racism, sexual harassment, and more. However, in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cohen — the executive producer of The Real Housewives franchise — says he has “no regrets” about how he has handled things.
In the interview, Cohen was asked about a number of recent controversies, including Eboni Williams’s claims of racism on the set of RHONY. Last summer, Williams — the first Black New York Housewife — told Vanity Fair that while working on the show, her co-star Ramona Singer trafficked in stereotypes about Black people, including saying that many Black people don’t have fathers and that Black people would ruin the show. (Singer said she was referencing a statistic she saw in an article about single-parent households and denied the latter allegation.) Asked about the allegations of racism, Cohen declined to address Williams’s experience directly but said that although he’s no longer in charge of the show’s programming, he is “proud of all the work that Bravo has put into making their shows more representative of the country’s demographics.” He added: “George Floyd was an important cultural shift that forced us to look at all of our programming. Bravo made it a mandate to diversify its shows.”
He was also asked about formed RHONY star Leah McSweeney’s claim that that producers plied her with alcohol while knowing she was struggling with her sobriety in order to create more drama for ratings. McSweeney sued Bravo in March, accusing the network and producers of sabotaging her sobriety. “What I’ll say about the alcohol is that we have so many sober people and people who have gotten sober on the show, like Countess Luann de Lesseps,” Cohen said. “We have people who’ve never had a drink during the entire run of the show. Jill Zarin. Kandi Burrus. Heather Dubrow will just have an occasional glass of Champagne. So sure, there are people who drink. There are many people who never drink. We don’t force anyone to do anything. But no one is secretly hiding liquor bottles on set. That’s ridiculous. We’ve been very supportive of people’s sobriety.” He dodged a question about the sexual-harassment allegations made by Brandi Glanville and Caroline Manzo, saying, “Unfortunately, I can’t talk about some of these things.”
Cohen also weighed in on what former Housewife Bethenny Frankel has dubbed the “reality reckoning.” Asked what he thinks about calls for reality TV stars to unionize, Cohen seemed unconvinced that was necessary. He said that most reality stars have other jobs and are only on a season or two of a reality show. “You either want to be on the show or not, and you either see it as having some greater benefit for you or not. You have a business you’re trying to launch; you have a music career you’re trying to launch; you want exposure. And so you say, ‘Okay, I’m going to look at this for the long game and maybe parlay my exposure on the show into other lucrative opportunities.’ And many of them do just that.”
When asked if he felt “hurt” by all the criticism, Cohen said, “I’m super proud of what we’ve built and of everybody who’s been a part of it. I think most people involved with these shows have been very grateful for the platform, but there will always be a few with complaints.” He continued, “Obviously, it’s no fun to be a target. So, yes, it’s hurtful. But I have no regrets about the way I’ve handled anything.”
On Thursday, the results of an alleged Bravo investigation backed up Cohen’s attitude — the network announced that, following an “outside investigation” into the allegations made by Glanville and McSweeney, Cohen had been cleared of any wrongdoing. McSweeney’s lawyer expressed skepticism about how the investigation had been conducted, telling “Page Six” that “no one ever contacted our firm” and that the attorneys planned to review “all of the interviews, evidence and final reports” during the “discovery phase of the lawsuit.”
