The Bravo boss is speaking from experience.
Andy Cohen is the king of reunions, but he doesn’t do them live for a reason.
The Bravo boss threw shade at Netflix after their failed attempt to stream its Love Is Blind season 4 reunion live on Sunday, April 16, calling it a "very bad idea."
Fans of the reality show faithfully tuned in on Sunday for the live reunion, but they were met with error messages and live stream issues. The special, which was the streaming service's second live event after Chris Rock's Selective Outrage standup show last month, was delayed from its scheduled 8 p.m. ET start time for hours. Several subscribers were able to stream the reunion through a glitch in the system, while others remained unable to access the footage.
Eventually, Netflix announced that the reunion would be available globally at 12 p.m. PT on Monday, April 17, in a tweet late Sunday night.
Aside from hosting reunions, Cohen has a lot of experience with live taping, as the host of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen every weeknight.
On SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live on Monday, he explained why a cast reunion should be taped and edited.
"There is a lot of grist to go through before you get to the prime beef. And there is a reason they're edited down. We could talk about a topic on a reunion taping for 25 minutes, for 45 minutes before really getting to the heart of something," he explained.
"At the last [Real Housewives of New] Jersey reunion, I very, as a, a side almost, I brought up the fact that Melissa [Gorga] wasn’t a bridesmaid. Like it wasn’t on the question card, it just came up. It wound up creating like an hour of strife and drama and stuff that was really important. So I, you know, reunion shows are almost like a fishing expedition. So, you know, you’re going around, you're talking about different topics, you don’t know what’s gonna land, what’s gonna hit," Cohen continued.
"And by the way, a lot of times, you know, people will have incredible one-liners that no one in the room really heard because someone on the other side is talking or something. So we go through the footage, we hone it, we edit it, we, it is finely shaped. So, that’s why, that’s one of the reasons I think it’s a bad, you know, bad idea to do a live reunion."
When Bravo films a Real Housewives reunion, it usually tapes from morning until evening and is edited into two or three hour-long episodes.
"Live reunions are a very bad idea. See season one Miami. There is a reason we don’t do reunions live," Cohen said.
Back in 2011, Bravo tried to film the Real Housewives of Miami reunion live and it was a disaster as the housewives all talked over each other and needed to be bleeped by editors after yelling so many profanities.
On Sunday, the official Bravo Twitter account chimed in on Netflix’s failure, posting, "We would never keep you waiting for a Reunion" with a winking face.
The Love Is Blind season 4 reunion is now streaming on Netflix.
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