Andy Cohen

It's the little late-night talk show that could. Next week, Watch What Happens Live — the kooky, wildly unpredictable chat-fest hosted by Andy Cohen — marks its fifth year on the air. That's no small feat, considering its very humble beginning as a shoestring web series anchored by a largely unknown Bravo network executive. Since then, plenty has changed. For starters, Cohen has become a celebrity in his own right, with one bestselling book down and a second due in the fall. And the ratings have grown. About 334,000 people tuned in for the first televised episode in 2009; this spring, WWHL hit an all-time high of 3.9 million viewers, and it's up 7 percent over Conan this season. The star power is also higher wattage. Jennifer Lopez , Lady Gaga , Meryl Streep , Lindsay Lohan and Oprah Winfrey are among the guests who have partaken in the mélange of parlor games, free-flowing cocktails and general pop-culture revelry that's made the pint-size "Bravo Clubhouse" ground zero for countless watercooler moments. We sat down with Cohen in his Manhattan studio to relive the wild ride.

TV Guide Magazine: Five years! When you look back on that first televised show — The Real Housewives of New Jersey 's Danielle Staub was the guest — what goes through your mind?
Cohen: I rewatched that a few months ago. It felt quiet . There was no audience then — even though we only have 22 people now watching in a teeny studio, weirdly, they count.

TV Guide Magazine: In the early days, your guests were primarily Bravo reality stars. How did you graduate to A-listers?
Cohen: I started booking friends, like Kelly Ripa , Jerry Seinfeld , Sarah Jessica Parker . That helped with making it about something more than just Bravolebrities.

TV Guide Magazine: Do you still get involved in booking big names?
Cohen: With some. I emailed Meryl Streep and made a case. She had a movie coming out [ Hope Springs ], and I basically said that a s--tload of women watch my show — and that's the truth.

TV Guide Magazine: People do and say shocking things in the Clubhouse. Has that always been your goal?
Cohen: It's just who I am. I'm nosy and very curious and not afraid. The show I most identify with is Howard Stern's show. I think people expect questions here that are a little more risqué and on the edge. Also, we view these interviews more as a career retrospective than just "Let's talk about [your latest project]." Mariah Carey hadn't talked about Glitter publicly in, like, 10 years, and I really got her going about it and it was great.

TV Guide Magazine: If the guest is a personal pal, are you more brazen or less?
Cohen: I feel I can go to places that nobody else would. But I'm very protective. I can talk to Kelly Ripa about her sex life with her husband [ Mark Consuelos ] more than David Letterman would, because I happen to know that those two do it like bunnies. I remember with Sarah Jessica, I started asking her about dating John Kennedy — which I had talked to her about privately — and she looked at me like, "What are you doing?" But usually I get it right.

TV Guide Magazine: What are some of your favorite "only on this show" memories?
Cohen: There are so many. I think we opened up a different side of Martha Stewart — like her saying that she's had a three-way and sexted. I've been slapped and spanked so much — by Martha, Oprah, Cher, Susan Lucci, Lucy Liu. The "Plead the Fifth" game [in which celebrities are asked three questions and may pass on only one] has been a gift: everything from Nick Lachey trashing his ex-father-in-law to Cameron Diaz admitting she's gone swimming in the lady pond.

TV Guide Magazine: And if someone doesn't go with the flow?
Cohen: Well, typically, it means they just shouldn't be here. You don't want to turn on a guest, but sometimes people's energy is off. Abby Lee Miller , the Dance Moms lady, made me feel like a little girl trying out for dance auditions, and I wasn't a good dancer.

TV Guide Magazine: When things go off the rails — like Shemar Moore getting frisky with YouTube sensation Sweet Brown — what goes through your head?
Cohen: That one with Shemar Moore was just fun. But sometimes I don't realize something [uncomfortable] is actually amazing. When Jackée and Regina King were on for the 227 reunion and they were so drunk, I was thinking it was terrible because I couldn't control them. Then, during our first commercial break, I saw we were trending worldwide on Twitter. It's one of our most famous episodes.

TV Guide Magazine: Does the party continue when the cameras stop rolling?
Cohen: The night John Mayer was on, we partied till 3:30am. We went deep! Oprah had another drink. Gaga stayed and didn't want to walk through our offices to go to the bathroom, so she peed in a trash can.

TV Guide Magazine: This is an unconventional place: You have a tiny staff, a studio in the back of a production office that's smaller than some of your Housewives ' closets, a bartender rather than a sidekick. Do stars ever get caught off guard?
Cohen: So many people are like, "Where am I? What am I doing here?" Oprah was really blown away by how small it was — for someone like her, where everything is perfect and the biggest, it's a completely different experience.

TV Guide Magazine: You're currently under a two-year contract for the show. How long do you think you can keep this up?
Cohen: Right now I can't see a moment where I wouldn't want to keep doing it. The 11 o'clock thing is challenging, but I love that it's live, so it's a catch-22 — and I've always been nocturnal. Like I always say, I didn't move to New York to sleep.

Watch What Happens Live airs Sunday-Thursday at 11/10c on Bravo.

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