Celebs Who Can't Stand Andy Cohen

Considering his status at the center of a drama-filled reality TV empire, it's a wonder that Andy Cohen doesn't have more enemies than he does. Cohen is best known as an executive producer and the overall kingpin of the Real Housewives franchises, seen as the man who pulls the behind-the-scenes strings and controls the cast's fates. Cohen has also served as host of Bravo's Watch What Happens Live late-night talk show since its premiere in 2009, on which he welcomes Bravo personalities and celebs alike to spill secrets and talk smack.

While the stars who don't get along with Cohen — at least the ones that fans know about — don't comprise a particularly long list, they certainly still exist. Buzz has circulated around the Internet for years that Cohen and the Real Housewives franchises he spearheaded are "sexist," and that Cohen has a "women problem" – claims that his Hollywood rivals have also held against him. Real Housewives fans also believe that Cohen, who served as executive VP of development and talent until 2013, still has a hand in the franchises' firings, which has also fueled complaints against him. 

Cohen clearly knows the kinds of feuds and storylines that make for engaging TV and generate headlines, even if those dramas involve him personally. And as fans have seen, he's willing to play along. Read on for the celebs Andy Cohen has tussled with over the years. 

One of Andy Cohen's most high-profile feuds was with Kathy Griffin, with the two TV personalities sharing a history of ongoing dramas. In 2017, CNN announced that Cohen would be replacing Griffin on the network's New Year's Eve telecast, after Griffin posed with a bloodied mask of President Donald Trump in 2017, leading to a public outcry. 

Despite the fact that Cohen and Griffin had worked together on her Bravo show Life on the D-List, Cohen joked to TMZ shortly after Griffin's hiring, saying, "I don't know her." Griffin quickly shot back on Twitter, writing, "Was my boss for 10 years. Treated me like a dog. Deeply misogynistic." 

Griffin and Cohen continued to trade barbs for years, including Griffin claiming Cohen invited her to use cocaine, which he denied. Griffin also told People in 2019 that Cohen was "one of the worst bosses [she] ever had." As for Cohen, he implied in a 2018 Howard Stern interview that Griffin was taking out her anger on him "I get it," he said. "So hate me, I'll be that guy for you. If it makes you happy and gives you peace. I'm just not going to take it on myself. I'm at peace."

NeNe Leakes, the shady titan of The Real Housewives of Atlanta cast, has been in Andy Cohen's orbit since the show's premiere in 2008. Throughout the series' lifetime, while many cast members have butt heads with Leakes and Cohen alike, the pair's relationship has been historically contentious. 

In May 2015, Cohen and Leakes sparred on an episode of Watch What Happens Live after Cohen addressed the social media controversy surrounding a donation Leakes promised, but never made, to Detroit's public schools. The day after, Cohen revealed on an Ask Andy segment (via Reality Tea) that he and Leakes "had a little fight the next day," and that her friends claimed he "was really shady to her on the show." He added, "I said, 'Well that's funny because everyone on Twitter says that you were nasty to me on the show.' So we went back and forth about that."

Fast forward to December 2019, and Leakes was up in arms again against Cohen after he poked fun at Leakes for repeating one of her looks on RHOA. Clapping back in an Instagram post, Leakes wrote, "It's enough that we #RHOA ladies come for each other and now we have to worry about executives coming for us." The drama continued in February 2020 when Radar Online reported that Leakes was potentially seeking legal action against Bravo for mistreating her, with a source claiming that her bad relationship with Cohen was partially to blame.  

Fitness guru Jillian Michaels has applied her tough-love coaching approach to her fair share of contestants on the reality TV show The Biggest Loser, which has led some to call her downright shady. But harsh doesn't begin to describe Michaels' disdain for Andy Cohen and the Real Housewives franchise, which she aired to Life & Style in 2018, telling the show's viewers, "shame on you." Reserving her harshest words for Cohen, Michaels claimed, "It's like [Real Housewives] was created by someone that hates women ...[Cohen] hates them. He's an a**hole."

Cohen and Michaels' relationship seemed to go south after Michaels appeared on an episode of Watch What Happens Live in 2013, an experience that Cohen trashed later that year in an Ask Andy video segment. "She was so mean, she freaked out after the show. She was so mean to my staff, she was yelling at them like they were on The Biggest Loser ... I never want to see her again." Michaels provided her take on the episode to Us Weekly in 2019, claiming Cohen was "truly hideous" and that he pressured her to take shots while she was recovering from a stomach flu. "I did his show once and it was a really awful experience," she said, calling Cohen "extremely rude ... condescending and unprofessional." 

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Tituss Burgess is yet another celebrity whose drama with Andy Cohen began on an episode of Cohen's Watch What Happens Live. In Burgess' case, the actor appeared on a 2019 episode of the Bravo talk show, on which Cohen asked Burgess about acting alongside Eddie Murphy in the film Dolemite Is My Name, and referenced Murphy's homophobic past, calling him "very problematic for the gays at one point, when I was coming up." Burgess wasn't having it, seemingly whispering while Cohen spoke to the audience and when asked, told the host in an uncomfortable moment, "Go ahead, girl, do your show." Afterward, Burgess took to Instagram to call Cohen a "messy queen" and accuse him of stirring up "negative press."

"Sunday was a display of ratchet behavior by a well connected man having blatant disregard for one of his guests," Burgess wrote about his WWHL appearance. "If only time were taken to know who I am and not assuming that I am the character I play on TV, he would know how to conduct a proper interview with at all!"  For his part, Cohen joked shortly after on an episode of his SiriusXM show Andy Cohen Live (via People) that his feud with Burgess "made an entertaining show, I'll tell you that. Sometimes it's fun to watch the show when the guest hates the host."

The Real Housewives of New York star Carole Radziwill has had an on-again, off-again feud with Andy Cohen, whom she's known since she joined RHONY in 2012. Radziwill and Cohen's friendship woes began in 2018, when the starlet and fellow housewife Bethenny Frankel had a falling-out, with Cohen admitting that he was stuck in the middle of his two friends' drama. 

Later that year, during the show's season 10 reunion, Radziwill had enough of what she saw as Cohen siding with Frankel, calling him "full of sh*t." After Cohen called her out for acting "Trumpian" on an episode of Bravo's Play by Play following the contentious reunion, Radziwill stuck to her guns, tweeting that she stood by her insult of Cohen. "Trumpian is what @Andy did," she wrote. "Created a false equivalent. He said we both bashed each other 'all season.' Look at the clips."

Radziwill departed the show after season 10, but still had opinions against Cohen in 2020, when she told the Juicy Scoop w/Heather McDonald podcast that she hadn't seen Cohen recently, and joked about not being invited back to his Christmas party. Recalling her beginnings on RHONY, Radziwill threw major shade by claiming she didn't realize Housewives existed. "He mentioned, 'Would I [want to] do the show?' I didn't even know he had a show... I didn't watch any Housewives."

Since the 2006 debut of The Real Housewives of Orange County, Vicki Gunvalson has been a staple of the show. That's why fans were surprised when, in 2020, Gunvalson announced that the show's fourteenth season would be her last, and she would not be returning as a cast member. Gunvalson — aka the "OG of the OC" may be off the show, but she's remained vocal on episodes of her podcast Whoop It Up with Vicki, including about the fact that Andy Cohen fired her from the show. 

In a 2020 episode with fellow RHOC alum Tamra Judge — who Bravo also announced would be departing from the show following season 14 — Gunvalson accused the Real Housewives producers of ageism, claiming, "We got very expensive and I think [the producers] said that viewers were ready for younger blood" (via The Sun).

Cohen, who had previously disputed the idea that Gunvalson and Judge were fired because of their ages, was confronted directly by Gunvalson when he appeared on the March episode of her podcast (via TooFab). During their chat, Gunvalson repeatedly claimed that Cohen had "fired" her and that she was unhappy about the screen time she got during the season 14 reunion, confessing that it was painful that a new season of RHOC was filming without her. "I don't want to be forgotten," she said. "I'm super sad. I hope the legacy I started will carry on."

One of the tensest and unpleasant Watch What Happens Live interviews came when veteran Hollywood personality Debra Winger visited Andy Cohen on the show in 2018. Cohen told the audience at a 2019 Emmys event that his interview with Winger was one of his worst-ever WWHL moments, and that his feeling towards Winger appeared to be mutual, from how she treated him on the show. "Oh my god, it was bad," Cohen recalled about the episode. "I almost can't talk about it." 

On the WWHL episode in question, Winger clearly did not enjoy playing Cohen's "Plead the Fifth" game, a recurring segment during which he asks his guests revealing comments that they can choose not to answer. Winger snapped at Cohen when he asked her a question about fellow actress Shirley MacLaine, and then pushed back again when Cohen asked her to rate her onscreen kisses in order, snarking, "[Do you] remember who you kissed 30 years ago?"

Cohen said that Winger, to his confusion, was kind to him during the commercial breaks, only to turn on him when the cameras were rolling. "You know what's weird about Debra Winger? We really did connect, and during the commercial break, she kept saying, 'You know, you're like my Jewish little brother. I feel connected to you,'" he said. "But then when the camera came on, she wasn't having me."

Andy Cohen may be longtime friends with Flipping Out host Jeff Lewis, but their friendship seems to include a substantial love-hate dynamic. In 2014, Lewis stopped by to visit Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, which was celebrating its fifth birthday. In honor of the show's anniversary, Cohen let Lewis roast him on-air, with Lewis joking that the show was "stupid, mindless and cringeworthy," adding, "Sometimes I've lost brain cells watching the show, I get a headache, I feel them dying."

Cohen may have been laughing his way through Lewis' roast of him, yet when Lewis stopped by Cohen's Radio Andy SiriusXM show in 2019, the tone was markedly more somber, with Lewis airing his grievances of Cohen and Cohen returning the favor by unloading some of his own complaints. 

Lewis lashed out at Cohen for making jokes about dating Lewis' ex-partner Gage Edward, including hurtful jabs following their breakup. "You used to joke a lot about dating Gage...you actually did not [stop joking about it], you kept going with it, you said it recently... It was a tough breakup, so I just wanted to say that I prefer you not to say that." After apologizing, Cohen confronted Lewis about staying silent when Cohen welcomed his son Benjamin via surrogate earlier that year. "I thought it was odd that I never heard from you after the birth of my child," Cohen told Lewis, which prompted an apology from his friend. 

Along with Vicki Gunvalson, Tamra Judge was another star of The Real Housewives of Orange County to get canned after the show's season 14 in 2020. Gunvalson alleged (via The Sun) that the two fifty-something women were ousted by Real Housewives producers because of their ages. Andy Cohen may have claimed that their firings didn't have to do with their age, but that answer wasn't good enough for Judge, who chatted with Cohen on an Instagram Live video in January 2020 that verged on contentious when Judge confronted Cohen about her departure from the show.

"I'm not cheap, Andy, and that's why I got fired!" she said (via The Sun), which Cohen denied. Judge then went on to describe the toll her impending departure from RHOC had on her, telling Cohen, "It's kind of like a death. I've been in the Bravo family for 12 years. I'm a red-headed stepchild now. It is what it is. It's a very long run ... I've been crying for three days. I haven't slept or eaten. But I'll be all right." 

Despite the call's tense moments, Cohen ended it by telling Judge he loves her and inviting her on Watch What Happens Live.