NEED TO KNOW
Anderson Cooper’s New Year’s isn’t as smooth as one would think after hosting with Andy Cohen.
On the Tuesday, Dec. 16 episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Cooper, 58, admitted that after his and Cohen’s New Year’s Eve Live broadcast on CNN — on which the two are infamous for sharing a couple of drinks — he often double checks to make sure they’re not in trouble.
“The problem for me is after New Year’s Eve, as soon as we get off, really in the last 30 minutes, I’m just looking at things online to see in what ways has he screwed us over,” he joked about his co-host, Cohen, 57.
“[What] did he say I’m gonna have to like, clean up after? Will the headline [of] the Drudge Report inevitably be the next morning, ‘This is CNN?,’ with a picture of this guy?,’ ” he added, pointing to the Watch What Happens Live host.
Scott Kowalchyk/CBS
The pair, who also shared a “shotski” with Colbert, 61, earlier in the segment, also discussed just how drunk the Anderson Cooper 360 host got after last year’s broadcast. Cohen recalled that he “dragged” Cooper to Patti LuPone’s afterparty after the broadcast and noted that his co-host remembered “none of it” because he was “so drunk.”
“What was his behavior like?” Colbert inquired of Cohen, to which he responded, “Let me say this. Around 10:45 on New Year’s Eve every year, I become the straight man of our broadcast, and I am driving the ship of CNN starting at 10:45. Yes, I am.”
Cooper attempted to “intervene” in the conversation, but the Watch What Happens Live host continued, “This is the truth. I hear the slur in his voice. I know his voice so well.”
“Last year, I really did get him a little drunk on New Year’s Eve. So by the time we went to Patti Lupone’s house, it was…,” Cohen added, before Cooper cut him off, saying, “I was fully in control. I don’t remember much, but it was fun.”
Cooper added of LuPone and her party, “I had never been to her anything, it was so lovely. She was fantastic.”
Colbert also asked the two what their drinking tradition was on New Year’s Eve, which Cohen explained was one shot “an hour.” But he noted they would often stray from that later on in the broadcast.
“It’s a blur for me,” Cooper joked.
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“After the first hour?” Colbert asked. “After the first one,” Cooper confirmed.
Cooper and Cohen will be co-hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live for their ninth consecutive year in Times Square on Dec. 31, according to a CNN press release. This year’s show will feature performances from Shakira, Brandy and Monica, Patti LaBelle, and feature talent including Michelle Williams, Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell, and more.
