Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture, Andy Cohen [the best books to read txt] 📗

I especially enjoy the flowers in the shape of New Jersey.

“Danielle is sequestered on the other side of the building, far from the others. They won’t run into each other. She’s ready to go and in a great mood. You need to go talk Caroline off the ledge—there’s something that’s been going on between Dina’s family and Danielle since we wrapped and Caroline is furious and freaked out.

“She wants to speak with you. Neither she nor Jacqueline nor Dina will mention what’s going on, and Dina is threatening to walk off the set if anything gets ugly and if this thing gets brought up. We don’t know what it is. Jacqueline looks ready to give birth—we have a nurse on the set—but she, Caroline, and Teresa say there’s more about the book surrounding Danielle’s past they want to expose. They’re nervous but fired up. Teresa’s in there, making jokes and in a great mood. Go say hi to Danielle first.”

Good morning to you, too, Christian.

I sat down in my heavenly throne knowing that we had all the ingredients, or “ingredientses” as Teresa might say, for a bang-up show. I do remember it well, but mainly for the long, painful silences. Nothing happened. Dina and Jacqueline froze and totally clammed up. I pushed and prodded, but the more I tried to get them to reveal their feelings, to admit how they really felt about each other, the further in the other direction they went. As their castmates looked on in shock, they essentially said they were willing to give Danielle another chance. If you’d seen the season that preceded this discussion, the sentiment seemed completely unreal, unbelievable, and of suspicious motivation. Then, Teresa and Caroline, obviously frustrated with their costars but not willing to climb out onto any limbs themselves, basically let Danielle off the hook. It was only in the last five minutes that Caroline confronted Danielle with a cryptic, “You are garbage. What you did to my family was so terrible…” For years people have asked me what the hell Danielle had done to that family. Well, finally, here is what I know: The allegation was that Danielle had somehow gotten involved in a matter involving Dina’s custody of her daughter, Lexi. Danielle, of course, denied it, and, to my knowledge, the matter went no further.

The next day, Sirens Media, our producers of RHNJ, called to say Jacqueline and Caroline felt like they had more to say and were even suggesting that they do a “do-over” to get out their feelings for Danielle. The truth was, they didn’t want us to use the footage of Caroline crying about Danielle and the secret issue.

Another shot? A do-over? There are no do-over reunion shows! In happier news, Jacqueline’s baby, Christopher, was indeed born two days later. And as far as I know, nobody welcomed him to this world with a New Jersey–shaped flower arrangement.

Another highly anticipated reunion turned into a snore with Season 2 of RHA, which had been a fever-pitch rage-fest all season long, full of wig-pulls, controversy over Kim’s debut single “Tardy for the Party,” even warring fashion lines (there isn’t enough tape stock in Japan to satisfy my love for discussing She by Sheree). But when I got to the set that morning, I encountered five very shut-down Atlanta Housewives who had taken some sort of vow of silence. Two days before, I’d had my one and only cross conversation with NeNe Leakes. I actually don’t know that I’d call it a “conversation,” and “cross” may be too polite a word; she actually called, screamed at me for five minutes, and hung up. She was torrentially unhappy with the finale, which she’d just finished watching in preparation for the reunion show. It was the big She by Sheree fashion show and she didn’t like how she was portrayed, nor did she care for the epilogue cards about each of the women at the end.

The lack of agita during that reunion was causing me agita, with the women not playing along with the questions, not backing up things they’d said during the season, and refusing to call each other out regarding obvious issues. The only one on-set getting any shade from the women was me. At one point I turned to NeNe and asked, “What’d you do with NeNe?” During the break, I chastised them: “You know what, this is so BORING. I don’t want you to fight. I could give a shit whether you fight or not, just be yourselves. Don’t clam up.” But, with the exception of Kandi, the women never opened up, and the viewers were pissed. (“Why were the women so SHUT DOWN?! They decided to stop talking at the REUNION? What is with them?!!”) Again, those expectations that a huge, drama-filled season equals a huge, drama-filled reunion show will get you every time.

Of course, as you know, it’s not always stony silence—far from it. The New York reunions are unique for their frenetic, unwieldy energy. The RHNYC women have this uncanny ability to talk over each other at peak decibel level; it’s like being trapped in an Evelyn Cohen echo chamber. When they go at it, there’s no interrupting them. And yet, as loud and nasty as they got, there was something that always amused me about watching Jill and Ramona fight over almost anything, be it a tennis match, RSVPing to a party, or what happened in front of a step and repeat. Watching any Jill vs. Ramona kerfuffle is like indulging in a slushie—it’ll give you a headache, but that won’t stop you from enjoying it. There is something so primal about the atmosphere the New York women create that I remember breaking for lunch at Season 2’s reunion at Cipriani and feeling that it might be perfectly acceptable for me to strip off my clothes and eat raw meat with my bare hands. (Note: I quickly decided against this.)

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