One likes his cocktails, the other is not a big drinker. One is out on the town every night, the other's a homebody. One earned his rep reporting live for CNN from dangerous war zones, the other herding battling housewives on Bravo. One grew up wealthy under the disco lights of Studio 54 as the son of famous heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, the other in a St. Louis suburb he calls "Pleasantville."
Newsman Anderson Cooper and reality TV producer/talk-show host Andy Cohen might seem an unlikely pair of fast friends, but separate chats with them reveal they're more simpatico duo than odd couple. Cooper, 48, and Cohen, 47, will take the State Theatre stage Saturday night as "AC2" in a loosey-goosey, semi-scripted, audience-interactive show in which they poke fun at themselves and each other. Both "deep talk" and shallow tales" are on the bill, presumably more of the latter. Gotta give the fans what they want.
Q: You two "met" years ago through a phone call that was supposed to turn into a blind date that never happened. Who realized first it wasn't going to work?
Cooper: Me, right away. I just imagined him gesticulating a lot while he talked and thought, no.
Cohen: Oh, he's so nasty about that. He acts like I was flailing around wildly. I'm an enthusiastic person and he's very low-key. I thought we had a delightful talk and were going to go out. One of the reasons our show is so fun is that with me what you see is what you get and I bring out the party in Anderson. I force him to do a shot of tequila before we go on stage. People say they'd love to go out for drinks with us, and that's what this basically is.
Q: So then how did you get to be such close pals?
Cooper: You mean after I didn't return his calls? We had friends in common and would run into each other and just became friends. I forgot about the phone call. Andy apparently remembered it quite vividly and I thought, maybe I didn't make myself clear.
Q: How often do you see each other and what do you do together?