Bravo's Andy Cohen: Thoughts on Airing Five Nights a Week, Plus His Cristiano Ronaldo Wish

Andy Cohen on panel at the 2012 Winter TCA Tour

If you ever heard yourself say ‘I can’t get enough of that cute Andy Cohen,’ then you’re probably over the moon that the Bravo talkfest Watch What Happens Live expanded to five nights a week beginning with this week. From Sunday to Thursday, Cohen will be having a nightly party in ‘The Clubhouse’ playing games, taking viewers’ Twitter questions, throwing back cocktails and dishing with some of the hottest celebs out there.

This weekend at the Television Critics Association (TCA) Winter Press Tour, Bravo announced the roster for the first two weeks of shows, the addition of out comic icon Sandra Bernhard as a regular correspondent, as well as a pajama party episode with some unlikely movie stars.

At the NBC/TCA party held Friday night at the Athenaeum in Pasadena, AfterElton grabbed a few minutes with Cohen to get the scoop on how this changes his day job at Bravo, as well as who his dream list of guests are for the show.

AfterElton: So, Andy, a little backstory first. When did the five-days-a-week idea come about and was it because the show was just doing so well?
Andy Cohen: Frances Berwick (President, Bravo and Style Media) first came to me…the conversation started in August. She said ‘Would you be interested in this?’ I said ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ We agreed that I could not continue in my day job in the same way. Concurrently, Michael Davies, my Executive Producer, and I came up with…if we did this five nights a week what would the show look like? Then they thought about that and then Frances and I began discussing if I did do this what would we do with the structure of my department and of programming? Those two conversations were happening concurrently and that’s how this conversation started.

Sandra Bernhard is joining Cohen as a regular correspondent on the show.

AE: How is your day job changing?
AC: I’m going to be EVP of Development and Talent now. I will remain EP of all the Top Chef and Housewives [shows] and I’ll still be doing talent and development. What I won’t be doing is…I’m releasing 20-something other series that I have day-to-day responsibilities on. There’s no way I’ll be able to totally step away. I’ve been on the phone today about several series that aren’t Top Chef or Housewives but I’m so invested in the success of Bravo and so, look, as we’ve learned on every story of late night, lead-in is important and I want my lead-in to be good.

AE: When you expand to five nights, what are the new segments?
AC: Sandra Bernhard is going to be a weekly correspondent on the show. She’s going to come on and do a rant once a week. The format is going to stay the same. It’s the only live, interactive talk show in TV. Five nights a week, interactive, and what’s going to happen is the guests are going to expand. On the second night [Monday night] we have Anderson Cooper and Camille Grammar and Sandra doing her rant. On the third night we have Tori Spelling and Robin Thicke, Wednesday night we have Rosie Perez and Hugh Acheson, the new judge on Top Chef and super cute. Thursday night we have Rosie O’Donnell. That’s our first week. Second week we’ve got NeNe Leakes, Kyle [Richards] and Mauricio [Umansky, her husband] then we go into RuPaul and Tabatha. Then Jimmy Fallon, then Thursday night I am so excited about, on the 19th, we have our first annual Ralph Fiennes pajama party. It’s going to be me, Ralph Fiennes and Holly Hunter in our PJs in the clubhouse. This is going to be epic.

Cohen with recent guests, Glee stars Chris Colfer and Lea Michele.

AE: What part of you is a little boy going ‘I can’t believe I get to do this?’
AC: Every part of me. There are so many executives who, at one point in their lives, wanted to be in front of the camera. I made no secret that 22 years ago when I started my career this is what I wanted to do. My last internship was at CBS News. I tasted what it felt like to be in New York as a producer, just as an intern, and I said ‘Screw moving to a small market. I’m going to move to New York and work behind the scenes.’ The fact that from my blog and my online show and hosting one reunion and then more to then hosting the online show on Bravo. It’s a really weird, once in a lifetime, lighting in a bottle, amazing opportunity. Back to the [talent] bookings, I think that the bookings speak to the breathe that we’re going for. We’ll still have a game every night; it will be interactive every night. We’ll have a poll; we’ll have contributors. We’ll be announcing more than just Sandra. We want to nurture talent and develop talent on the show and see where it goes.