Heavy/Getty Andy Cohen of 'Watch What happens Live."
A former supermodel had some choice words for Andy Cohen.
During a July 2023 appearance on the “Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef” podcast, modeling legend Janice Dickinson accused the Bravo host of taking her idea for a show and turning it into his own late-night chatfest, which turned out to be “Watch What Happens Live.”
“Andy Cohen doesn’t like me,” Dickinson told Yontef on the July 19 episode of his podcast. “I scare Andy Cohen for some reason. I once went up to Andy Cohen to pitch a late-night talk show. And as soon as I left he took the idea, he ran with it, and did late night with Andy Cohen. So Andy, I have a bone to pick with you. That was my idea.”
Heavy has reached out to a rep for Cohen for comment.
Janice Dickinson Claimed She Pitched a Talk Show Idea to Andy Cohen When He Was a Bravo Executive
GettyJanice Dickinson.
Dickinson, 68, made her claims about Cohen nearly 15 years after “Watch What Happens Live” made its debut on Bravo. The pop culture-themed talk show premiered on July 16, 2009.
While speaking with Yontef, Dickinson said she pitched an idea for a show to Cohen while he was working as an executive “at Bravo Studios in New York City.”
“I went in there pitching a lot,” the former “America’s Next Top Model” judge told Yontef. “I wanted my own late-night talk show and he was the head of the network. So he’s not letting ever anybody get in there. Even the tacky Housewives. Never, never, never.”
Dickinson alleged that it was not long after her pitch that Cohen debuted his own talk show on Bravo. “Right after I pitched the idea, it came on like six months later and I was like, you know what? That was my idea,” she claimed to Yontef. “He’s a tacky queen. Tacky. … Allegedly.”
Dickinson told Yontef that she is no longer a fan of Cohen, but she acknowledged that becoming a father of two has “softened” his personality. “It has softened him around the edges and he needed that,” she said.
Andy Cohen Has Been Accused of Stealing the Idea for WWHL in the Past
BravoAndy Cohen on WWHL.
“Watch What Happens Live” is unique compared to other late-night shows. It features games and late-night TV’s first-ever bar on set. “I think there’s been a traditional idea of what a late-night talk show is,” Cohen said on the iHeart podcast “Table for Two” in December 2022. “I would argue that ‘Watch What Happens Live’ has redefined what the late-night talk show is.”
Cohen also said that WWHL is “personal” to him. “This show could not be more an extension of me,” the Bravo host said in a 2014 interview with USA Today. “It’s so personal. It’s my format. It’s my set. It’s based on my den in my house.”
But Dickinson isn’t the first person to allege that Cohen swiped the idea for “Watch What Happens Live.” According to a report from Showbiz CheatSheet, YouTube personality Funky Dineva once claimed that the concept for the Bravo talk show was originally pitched to Cohen by former “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star NeNe Leakes. Dineva claimed that a Bravo source told him the story and alleged that Cohen promised Leakes that she would get multiple guest spots on the show as well as her own specials.
Leakes was a guest on WWHL 31 times between 2009 and 2020, with only “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Kyle Richards logging more appearances on the show, with 32 as of this writing, per IMDb.
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