Andy Cohen and Carlos King on 20 years of Housewives

Much to the surprise of Real Housewives fans everywhere, the white Andy Cohen joined the Black Andy Cohen, aka Carlos King, on his show, Reality with the King, to reflect on the series as this year marks the 20^th anniversary of its debut.

To contextualize just how big of a deal this is, it’s often been thought that these two had some sort of beef. With Carlos being a former Real Housewives producer and leaving the show to ultimately pursue his own podcast venture, there’s always the assumption that these sort of departures are anything but amicable. But right off the top of the show, Carlos praises Andy for the support he’s given him in his entrepreneurial journey and makes it clear that the two share a great deal of respect for each other.

Over the course of the conversation, the two discussed key moments over the past 20 years, such as Lisa Vanderpump’s absence from that season nine reunion of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills; the monumental showdown between Kandi Burruss and Phaedra Parks on season nine (something about season nine, I tell you) of Real Housewives of Atlanta; and how Andy has finally got the Real Housewives of New York reboot right.

But perhaps the juiciest thing to come out of this interview was the conversation about Andy and his numerous falling outs with the women – which include the likes of Carole Radziwill, Bethenny Frankel, and Nene Leakes. To start, Andy reflected on his very public break with former Real Housewives of New York star Carole Radziwill. He revealed that Carole messaged him instructing him not to speak to her again. Then, the tides turned. 

“She said ‘I realized I could do this in private instead of kind of on my Twitter. And there was something in her text that made me feel like, ‘Oh, there's something of an olive branch in here even though I knew that she felt strongly about, you know, certain things,” he recalled. “And then I just kind of met her halfway and told her where I was coming from and we wound up through these texts finding middle ground.”

Carole, a cast mate on the original Real Housewives, appears as a “friend of” in the current season of the show. And she’s got quite the storyline. For starters, her latest book is a New York Times bestseller, and perhaps more interestingly, the season was filming right around the release of Love Story, a show that chronicles the life of her close friend Carolyn Bessette. Carole’s husband, Anthony Radziwill, was JFK’s best man in their wedding. Plus, Carole is a literal princess.

But she’s not the only one with an interesting storyline this season. Sai da Silva has finally moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan and is now paying a boat load of money per month in rent – not ideal timing considering her husband (who doesn’t work, anyway) surprised her by filing for divorce right around spring break, leaving her to find out when the rest of the world did.

Erin Lichy has loose lips this season, airing out everyone’s business while her home in Sag Harbor has been devastated by a water pipe leak, damaging decades of family memories, furniture and recent renovations. Her relationships with just about everyone are shaky, setting the stage for some heated confrontations. And Jessel is…well, she’s Jessel.

There are two new cast mates, one of whom was none other than Jon Gosselin’s mistress amid his marriage to Kate Gosselin. She is super candid and vulnerable about how much that chapter of her life led her to some pretty dark days, despite now going on to make TikToks about just how many magazine covers she was on during the hoopla. Then we’ve got Daisy, who does makeup for Martha Stewart and, despite not being able to afford the lifestyle that comes with such proximity, certainly prefers it. And in a complete contrast, there’s Erika Hammond, the wife of billionaire Ankur Jain.

This is what Carlos if referring to when he lauds Andy for what we’re seeing this season. We’ve got light, we’ve got heavy, we’ve got politics. And I mean politics. Carole Radziwill’s name appeared in the Epstein files – and Sai wasted no time grilling her about her ties to Ghislaine Maxwell. This is unchartered territory for a franchise that specializes in table flips and drink throws. It might have taken a while, but it looks like Andy has finally found his footing with this cast mix.

Carlos points out that the reason for his determination in getting this right could be that New York is Andy’s turf. Therefore, there’s almost an extra sense of pressure placed on him to have this franchise be at its best. Carlos tells Andy he relates because that’s exactly how he felt about the Real Housewives of Atlanta, where he hails from, and where he got his credentials as a producer.

Andy says that he has a soft spot for both franchises, because they’ve always been the ‘funniest’, but I’d argue that the soft spot hasn’t been translating to effort, or at least not results. Not when it comes to casting and not when it comes to production, because since the departure of OG Nene Leakes, the quality of Real Housewives Atlanta has really gone to sh-t. For years, it was undoubtedly a series that really held its own when it came to everything from casting to storylines, but lately it’s almost been unwatchable.

That’s why it was so interesting to see the white and Black Andy Cohen together in conversation. Because in a way, Andy is a representation of the ‘white’ Real Housewives franchises like Salt Lake City, New York, Orange County and Beverly Hills. Meanwhile, much of Carlos King’s work has centred around the development of franchises like Potomac and Atlanta. That’s why he was able to carve out such a large space for himself in the reality TV podcast niche. There really aren’t a ton of former producers with his insights and expertise speaking about the Black franchises of these series. Meanwhile, everyone and their mother talks about the white franchises. The discrepancy in interest and conversation – and audience - has always been striking to me.

I think that has contributed to the fact that very rarely do we see ‘mixed’ franchises with both Black and white and other ethnic backgrounds mixed together in one. Miami was mostly Latin American women. Other franchises may have one token cast member. But for the most part, it’s all or nothing. Dubai may have been the closest thing to a mixed cast where we had women with Middle Eastern, British, Caribbean and African backgrounds. But as we know, the show has been canned over low ratings. So there goes that idea.

Going back to the legend that is Nene Leakes, Carlos asked Andy if there was any other Housewife with whom he might be able to have a reconciliation similar to his and Carole’s. Andy immediately called Carlos out for inadvertently asking about Nene, but Carlos says it was an open-ended question. In response to this, Andy reflected on how happy he was for being able to celebrate Nene in the show’s 20^th anniversary Ultimate Girls Trip spinoff.

“I was so happy that we were able to celebrate her on Ultimate Girls Trip and that she came back. And I think that was such a I think the fans wanted it and I think it would have been really hard to uh do that show without her, especially going to Atlanta. And so I was really happy to be able to have her meet that moment,” he said.

For anyone that hasn’t tuned into the spinoff, it’s…a the spectacle. OGs from each franchise appear and do a bit of a road show, stopping in all the major cities, visiting with cast members from past and present. All you need to know is that Vicky Gunvalson is boring, Luann de Lesseps will spontaneously combust if she’s not the centre of attention, and everyone else is actually pretty tame after all these years having been in the spotlight.

When it comes to the troubled Atlanta franchise, though, both Andy and Carlos think it's anything but troubled, Andy revealed that he has been exploring the idea of a Nene return, which I and many others are convinced is the only thing that can save the show at this point. But, he says, she does not want a peach. That would render her a Carole Radziwill of Atlanta – which isn’t the worst idea. We will take her in any capacity we can have her.

The rest of the interview focused on other highlights from the show’s history and Andy’s Bravo Scrapbook, which features over 600 images of him and the women over the years, plus his own anecdotes about his time as the man behind this legendary series that truly changed the landscape of reality TV forever. And though part of me wonders if this 20^th anniversary marking is some sort of soft launch to his retirement, I highly doubt Andy, like Luann and so many other Housewives, is anywhere near being remotely willing to step out of the spotlight.