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The Daily Dish

Andy Cohen's Awkward, Topless Cybil Shepherd Pitch Meeting

The Watch What Happens Live host tells all in candid CNN interview.

If you thought CNN was all politics and serious stuff, Andy Cohen sure shook things up a bit with his interview this weekend.

The Watch What Happens Live charmer and Bravo exec continued the press tour around his New York Times' best-selling book Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture on Sunday in an interview with Howard Kurtz on Reliable Sources, and nothing was off the table. In fact, it was actually Kurtz who pushed Cohen to tell some of the more salacious stories from his book -- and while we haven't dug too deep into the archives, chances are this is the first time anyone's dropped the term "freeballing" with such gusto on CNN. Bravo, Andy.

In the first segment of the interview, Kurtz walks through Cohen's career and some of his highlighted moments from the book, including a story about Cybil Shepherd pitching Andy a show for Bravo, and in the midst of the pitch, somehow shirts came off, but Andy's pants stayed on because, well, he was going commando that day.



As Andy tells it:

"Cybil Shepherd pitches me a show and the show is ... a docuseries about her and her best friend ... kind of like a reality Absolutely Fabulous. She says 'It's very hot in this room, I think we should take our shirts off.' I say 'That's interesting, alright I'll take my shirt off.' So now I'm there ... across from me is a shirtless Cybil Shepherd and her best friend both wearing very pretty black bras and there's a Mrs. Robinson thing happening, and I guess their gaydars weren't pinging at that moment ... but I did see what was exciting about the situation. The next suggestion was that we should take our pants off ... I don't know why, but I was freeballing that day -- I don't know if can use that term on CNN, so I was not comfortable taking my pants off. I didn't pick up the show."



In a later segment, Kurtz and Cohen continue to talk about how he got to his current status as programming pioneer who eventually became the talent with his own talk show.

 

"I think my time at CBS News informed everything I'm doing right now," Andy said. "I interviewed people for 10 years ... and also I spent a tremendous amount of time in editing rooms ... doing a lot of character-driven storytelling, which is in a way a lot of what we're doing right now with Housewives."

Watch part 2 of the interview below, and tell us in the comments: Who would you want to be shirtless with in a pitch meeting?

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