Andy Cohen, Anderson Cooper appear together on the Straz Center stage
It started with a failed attempt at a blind date.
Twenty-some years ago, before either of them was famous, somebody thought Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper would make a cute couple and set them up.
“The date never happened,” Cohen said Monday in a telephone interview from his Manhattan apartment. “We talked on the phone. If you hear him tell it, he didn’t think it would work.”
It wasn’t until a few years later that Cohen and Cooper met in person, introduced by a mutual friend, though not the same friend who had tried to arrange the blind date. They’ve been best friends pretty much ever since.
For the past couple of years, they’ve been appearing together all over the country with a show they’re calling “AC2 An Intimate Evening With Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen: Deep Talk and Shallow Tales.”
It’s an evening. It’s a conversation, It’s a lot of laughs. It’s two guys who have known each other for more than 20 years telling stories.
Andy Cohen
The show makes a stop Saturday at the Straz Center in Tampa, and even Cohen has a little trouble defining what audiences should expect.
“You can call it a show,” he said. “It’s an evening. It’s a conversation. It’s a lot of laughs and a lot of storytelling from two friends who have known each other for more than 20 years telling stories. We bring film clips.”
Cooper is best known as a long-time CNN news man. Cohen is, among many other things, the host of “Watch What Happens Live,” and the executive producer of the “Real Housewives” series on Bravo.
The show is billed as being “unscripted, uncensored.” But Cohen said that because he and Cooper have done the show so many times, it’s more like partially scripted.
The date never happened. We talked on the phone. If you hear him tell it, he didn’t think it would work.
Andy Cohen
on a planned blind date with Anderson Cooper“There are things we do that we’ve done in other cities,” he said.
But the show is always changing, he said, because both of the ACs have hectic schedules and lives that are full of travel and new experiences.
“(Cooper) is in Puerto Rico right now,” Cohen said. “Then he’s going to Las Vegas. And I know he was just in Tampa. So he’ll have some new things to talk about.”
Cohen seems more interested in talking about his friend than himself. All he’ll really say about what he has going on is “I’m working my (expletive) off.”
The “AC2” event is part of a mini-trend of pairs of celebrity friends appearing together in performing arts halls for informal chats. Perhaps the most well-known such pair is Steve Martin and Martin Short, who appeared together at Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall in Sarasota in February.
“They actually started after we did,” Cohen said. “We got the idea for ours from Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller. But there’s nothing political about our show. It’s just a lot of laughs.”
Details: 8 p.m. Oct. 7, Morsani Hall at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa. $59.50-$354.50, plus service charge. 813-229-7827, strazcenter.org.
Marty Clear: 941-708-7919, @martinclear
This story was originally published October 4, 2017 at 5:17 PM with the headline "Andy Cohen, Anderson Cooper appear together on the Straz Center stage."