Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (40 page)

On the air, we presented her with a dozen long-stemmed roses, which was thoughtful enough. But unbeknownst to us, she’d just come from
Good Morning America
, where they’d given her
nineteen
dozen roses, one for each year she’d been nominated and lost. And here we were, handing her a dozen roses that would be dead in hours from the Korean deli on Tenth Avenue. Does that not sum it all up perfectly? Susan, amazing actress that she was, acted as if our roses meant more to her than anything. She even wiped a “tear” from the corner of her eye!

On her way out, we hugged one last time and triumphantly posed for pictures holding up that day’s newspapers. (
The Daily News
blared
AT LONG LAST, LUCCI.)
And after so many encounters crammed with so much awkwardness on my end, it felt like the best possible ending to the Lucci-Cohen story arc.

Or so it would have been. But, like characters in our own daytime drama, Susan Lucci and I weren’t done.

It was “winter” in Los Angeles, and Lucci’s daughter, Liza, was Miss Golden Globe. Miss GG is a yearly fixture at the Golden Globes award show where the (pretty) daughter of a (pretty) celebrity (and sometimes even a pretty celebrity couple) puts on a gown and presents the trophies to the winner. This particular year it was Lucci’s daughter, Liza Huber, who would be doing the honors, and the Friday before the Globes, I ran into her, her mother, and their whole family in the lobby of the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where, it turned out, we were all staying. (This was a one hundred percent coincidence, I promise.)

Of course, my heroine was as radiant as ever, but I wasn’t the same Andrew Cohen. By that time, I’d worked with Dan Rather and met more huge stars than I could count. I’d traveled the world, left CBS, and was running programming at TRIO. I was a man, not a kid, and comfortable in my own skin (and with my own eyes). But one slightly cross-eyed look at Erica Kane reduced me right back to a sweaty-palmed nineteen-year-old. No, actually, I was way more nervous than when I’d met her at age nineteen, because over the years I’d lost some innocence and naïveté while gaining plenty of experience in things going terribly.

Of course, no matter how anxious I was, there was no way I wasn’t going to talk to her. I tried to make up for my nerves by raising my decibel level, as though I were in my parents’ kitchen in St. Louis. “SUSAN, IT’S ANDREW COHEN. I’M THE KID FROM BU WHO YOU TOOK TO LUNCH!?!?!” I screamed in her face. Again with that? Why didn’t I just have it printed on some business cards to hand to her every time our paths crossed?

She was, naturally, lovely and introduced me to her family. I made a huge deal out of her daughter being Miss Golden Globe, then I scampered away as fast as I could before I got the sweats. Later that day, I was on the phone with Lynn, the producer who’d turned down my request to be friends years earlier when I was an intern and who I’d predicted would one day relent. And because we were friends, just like I said we’d be, I knew Lynn was almost as big an
AMC
fan as me. I told her about meeting Lucci in the hotel lobby.

Suddenly, I said, “Hey. If we’re both in the same hotel, that means I could
call her room
.” Being struck with this idea was so much like being possessed by the spirit of Graciela that I now felt kind of guilty for not immediately hanging up to make certain that my mischievous old friend hadn’t died and flown into my body.

Lynn paused, then said, “Yeah, you could call her room. For what, though? What would you even say?” See, this is exactly why I needed Lynn as a friend. To bring up logical points that I won’t listen to.

“Just to hear her voice. I’ll hang up!” And that was it. Before Lynn could talk any sense into me, I said, “I’m putting you on hold while I do it.” And I did it. I put the call on hold, called downstairs, and asked for Susan Lucci.

“Hold on, Mr. Cohen,” the operator said. “We’ll tell Miss Lucci you’re on the line.”

Oh NO! She was having the front desk screen her calls! I know what you’re thinking: Of
course
she was. She’s Susan Lucci! You can’t just
call up
the front desk of a hotel and have them ring you through to Susan Lucci’s room, no questions asked! I felt like such an idiot. When the operator put me on hold, I quickly hung up. Then I realized something even more horrible. The operator had said, “Hold on,
Mr. Cohen
…” He had been able to refer to me by name, so the operator wasn’t just telling Susan Lucci that someone was on the phone for her, he was telling her that “Andrew Cohen in Room 222” was calling for her. The only way it could have been worse is if the operator had somehow been able to add, “You know, the guy who interviewed you for the BU paper?” Panicked, I picked up my other line.

“She’s screening her calls,” I screamed to Lynn. “The dude is telling her I’m
on the line
! But I’m not on the line. I hung up!”

“Oh NO!!!!” Lynn was mortified on my behalf. Suddenly, my other line rang. Lynn and I panicked.

“I have Susan Lucci for you now,
Mr. Cohen
.” The operator sounded displeased—bitchy, actually. “You were … disconnected.”

“Ummm…” There was no way I could possibly take that call. I was humiliated. “Uh … I just got an urgent work call from … work,” I stammered. “Please … please, tell her I … I’ll call her back!” I hung up.

I spent the next two days paralyzed with the fear that I was going to run into Susan Lucci at the hotel. Just in case I did, though, I had concocted an elaborate explanation: My photographer friend had taken an amazing picture of Lucci and her daughter at some point and I had been calling to tell her that I would send it to her if she was interested. The only issue with that story was that there
was
no photograph. So if I went with that excuse, I would then somehow have to find an existing photo of her and her daughter to send over. And then, to be on the safe side, I would have to somehow befriend the photographer who’d taken it, should Susan Lucci ever meet the photographer, recognize his name, and then bring up my name. It seemed kind of like a long shot, but I literally could not think of anything else to say that sounded
less
crazy. Thank God I never ran into her again that weekend, but I spent a lot of time in my room thinking about how I now had a canceled shoot and crank call on my permanent record with Susan Lucci.

And now, at last, the final encounter—or near encounter, I should say. In 2010 Lucci was booked to appear on my show,
Watch What Happens Live
, to promote her new book. She’d even agreed to a joint appearance with a New York Housewife. It was going to be the ultimate full-circle moment: the queen of the daytime drama with one of our Bravo queens of reality. Then, shortly before her appearance, the announcement came that after forty-one years,
All My Children
had been canceled. We soon got word from the publicist that Susan Lucci might cancel her appearance on my show, which in publicist-speak meant “Susan Lucci is canceling.”

I could have gotten involved and said, “Susan! It’s me, Andrew Cohen. I’m the kid from BU who you took to lunch!” But it was then and there that I put two and two together. Why would Susan Lucci want to sit next to a woman who was part of the kind of show that might have helped lead to her own show’s demise? And though it pained me to do so, I quietly allowed my dream guest booking to slip away. But I was stuck with a haunting question: Was I, in some way, partly to blame for this? Had I helped kill soaps? With
The Real Housewives of Orange County
, we’d begun making real-life soap operas with nonactors, and it had snowballed into something huger than we ever imagined. The media had certainly done their share of speculating as to whether reality programming had chimed the death knell for soap operas. And now my old sweetheart
AMC
would be no more.

But here’s the thing: I’m now (sort of) a grown-up and I know that, first and foremost in this world, things change. Many things occurred that led to the end of several daytime dramas, of which
All My Children
was one. The viewing audience had been evolving over the years, abandoning soaps for daytime talk, game shows, and courtroom shows; as soap audiences aged, they failed to gain essential new, young viewers; and the cost of producing a daily show with a large cast of highly paid talent is enormous.

With the
Housewives,
we’re doing a real-life version of the format I fell in love with as a kid, running with the baton passed on to us from a television tradition that simply may not be sustainable anymore. By featuring these powerful, outsized, outspoken women in their wildly dramatic everyday lives, we’re playing off the idea of
and
paying tribute to indelible characters like Erica Kane.

*   *   *

It’s September 23, 2011. I’m in St. Louis for a visit with my parents, and I happen to arrive on the day ABC will broadcast the series finale of
All My Children
. And, as if it is 1984 again, I gather in front of the TV with Em and my mom to watch the show, while my dad and Blouse wander in and out of the room. After more than four decades, this is it for Pine Valley and its residents.

Watching the opening is a montage of flashbacks; my eyes fill with tears. These people are like family that I’ve lost touch with. One by one they appear as they are today—and, on a certain street in St. Louis, the peanut gallery explodes.

“Is Tad FAT?! He used to be cute!”

“He looks like Mrs. Doubtfire!”

“I can’t see BROOKE through her FACEWORK!”

“Brooke
always
had high cheekbones, Mom. She hasn’t been touched.”

Our favorite characters now have kids, and grandkids. We feel old.

“How did I ever WATCH this DRECK!?”

Erica Kane’s last moments on
All My Children
feature her in sequins and a fur shawl and not quite a side ponytail but maybe a side chignon?

“Well, thank God Erica looks PERFECT.”

And she doesn’t disappoint. Tad is making a toast and he’s quoting from the
AMC
bible: “In joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, we are … all your children.”

I am getting choked up and Blouse enters the room wanting to talk about
Guiding Light.

My dad walks in: “Is that Adam and Brooke?”

“QUIET, Lou!” Evelyn barks.

Erica’s last words on the show as she storms after Jackson are “I won’t let it end this way.”

The show was over, but we left the TV on.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First I want to thank Gillian Blake who not only taught me how to write a book, she ultimately allowed me to include the word “boner” several times within these pages even though she does not find it one bit amusing. Stephen Rubin for reading my treatment a second time and going from hate to love, and for believing more than I that this book wouldn’t be stupid. Sara Bershtel for proving that smarties can love the Housewives. Maggie Richards, Pat Eisemann, and Allison Adler, Maggie Sivon, and Rick Pracher for taking the final product and running with it. Simon Green, who motivated me to write this in the first place and guided me through the process.

I would not be in a position to write this book if not for Lauren Zalaznick, who breaks rules and listens to her gut. I am eternally grateful to you, Lauren. Frances Berwick teaches me something every day, plus she’s fierce and a glam fairy. Michael Davies is m’producer and m’cheerleader and m’friend, and Deidre Connolly makes it all happen. My incredible colleagues at Bravo through the years with whom I have found myself in unusual, incredible, and hilarious situations—and who always make me look good—especially Dave Serwatka, Eli Lehrer, Shari Levine, Christian Barcellos, Cori Abraham, Daryn Carp, Anthony McCarthy, Amy Introcaso-Davis, David O’Connell, Ellen Stone, Jason Klarman, Lara Spotts, Lauren McCollester, Jen Levy, Jerry Leo, Cameron Blanchard, and Alana McElroy. I am in awe of every single Bravolebrity for being unforgettable and exactly yourselves. I also want to thank all the amazing production companies with whom I have the honor to work and my former colleagues at CBS News for ten amazing years of memories and fun.

Caissie St. Onge for guiding me to humor and heart, because she has so much of both. Tamara Jones for helping me think about my life thematically, which is difficult. Kari Morris Vincent who was really my first editor, and is a great one. Lorne Michaels and Marci Klein for letting me reprint Emily Spivey and Paula Pell’s hilarious words.

My friends give me unconditional love, support, and laughs. Thank you especially to Mike Goldman, Jackie Greenberg, Jeanne Messing Walsh, Dave Ansel, Amanda Baten, Graciela Braslavsky Meltzer, Lynn Redmond, and Bruce Bozzi Jr. for letting me tell our stories in this book. Thank you to Bill Persky for being a great sage and East Coast Parental Unit. Thank you to the very wise Emily Lazar for your thoughts on the treatment and manuscript. John Hill, thanks for being Fender.

My dear friend Liza Persky made an incredible short film with Mary Matthews about my letters from camp that not only served as the basis for the earlier selections, they also motivated me in more ways than you can know during the course of thinking about this book. Thank you!

My family is incredible and I love them very much. They let me play, prank, poke, and pry with them in this book and elsewhere, all the while cheering me on. Blouse, thank you for being amazing and fun. (Smile.)

Thanks to Susan Lucci for taking a strange kid out to lunch at Santa Fe. Sorry I prank called you that time. By the way, do you even remember me? I’m the guy that gave you that BU sweatshirt. Oh, forget it …