If it sounds ridiculous that the face of Bravo seriously aspires to one day host a presidential debate, consider Mr. Cohen’s uncanny ability to shape-shift. Some people find him pernicious and manipulative; others think he’s hopelessly corny. He’s like the Macarena in that way.
Another way in which he is like the Macarena is that he’s just a lot of fun.
Mr. Cohen quarantined in New York while he was sick in March. Of course Mr. Cohen got Covid. If it happened in 2020, it happened to Andy Cohen. “It was lonely,” he said of being isolated in his apartment, “hearing my son down the hall but not being able to see him. I don’t want to overdramatize it, because I didn’t think I was going to die, but there were a few moments at the beginning of feeling like, ‘OK, well, this is incredibly isolating, this is scary.’”
He stayed even after recovering. “It was important for me to stay. Everyone else — ” Mr. Cohen stopped himself — “I mean, not everyone — a lot of people that I know, you know, went to the Hamptons.”
He talked about walking Ben, who loves to clap, through the West Village to applaud frontline workers every night at 7 p.m.; about the 9/11-feeling of it all; about handing out sandwiches to homeless people because “it became a way for me to kind of feel useful.” And just when his storytelling veered into treacly self-aggrandizement, here comes Mr. Cohen with his big “Hey, macarena!” energy, doing a bit about how an empty New York City made for desperate paparazzi.
“There were paparazzi every time I walked outside. I kept saying to them, ‘Well, you guys must be really — I mean, honestly — there must be no one here.’ And they were like, ‘There’s no one here.’ At one point they told me a list. They go, ‘It’s you, and Amy Schumer, and like two other people.’ I was like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, guys. Listen, this is bleak. This is really bleak.’”
After the long New York spring, Memorial Day weekend arrived and an exhausted and thin Mr. Cohen (“I was, like, my high school weight. Which I didn’t hate!”), decamped for his home on Long Island where he and Ben frolicked, and where Mr. Cohen indulged. He grew his hair out. He hit the rosé and the carbs. He said, quite proudly actually, “I got lazy.” Mr. Cooper disapproved of this period of post-Covid sloth. “Why would you ever do that?”