Andy Cohen: The Real Housewives Isn't Staged

With seemingly never-ending drama and the occasional catfight, it’s easy to understand how some fans might think the Real Housewives might have some staging behind them.

But in an interview with Attitude Magazine (on newstands now), producer Andy Cohen opens up about its authenticity. “It’s real,” he shares. “We cast very highly volatile, emotional, driven, opinionated women, and because of that, they go to town! And you sit down with them at the end of the season and they all have it out with each other…It’s really fun.”

It all started in SoCal after Andy was approached while he was the head of programming for the network. “[They] said, ‘I have these neighbors and their boobs are bigger and their hair is blonder and they have these huge houses, and they’re unlike anything you’ve ever seen before,’” he says. “It was the beginning of the Real Housewives of Orange County, and in my mind I thought, ‘Well this could be like a modern soap opera,’ and that’s really what it’s become.”

And he freely admits that when the women hit below the belt, the claws can come out. “You know sometimes it just gets really personal about their family,” he says. “The show works so well because it’s all people who have long histories with each other. So it’s not just throwing people together in a Big Brother house and seeing what happens.”

[Source: Attitude Magazine]