It’s been nearly a decade since Oprah Winfrey was interviewed by Andy Cohen on “Watch What Happens Live,” but in hindsight, the host would like to walk back one of his questions.
Appearing at the “Ask Andy” panel at BravoCon 2022 last week, Cohen said he regrets asking Winfrey about her sexuality during her 2013 “WWHL” appearance, admitting that the question didn’t go quite as planned.
“I asked it so poorly,” he explained to moderators Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, according to People. “I decided, ‘Why don’t I throw this out? Maybe I’ll throw a bomb out.’ And I asked Oprah, ‘Have you ever swum in the lady pond?’ And she was like, ‘No.’”
The Bravo TV personality said he never got any feedback directly from Winfrey regarding the inquiry. CBS journalist Gayle King, a longtime pal of Winfrey’s, reached out to him the day after the interview aired.
“She didn’t say anything, but I heard from Gayle the next day,” he recalled. “And Gayle goes: ‘Oprah didn’t know what the lady pond was.’ And I was like, ‘Well then I need to re-ask the question!’ But [Oprah] hasn’t come back.”
Later in the interview, Cohen said his aim is always to make his guests “leave happy,” hinting that may not have been the case following Winfrey’s appearance.
“They’re schlepping all the way down to [New York’s SoHo neighborhood] and I want them to be glad they came,” he said.
It isn’t the first time that Cohen has shared that he now finds his question to Winfrey to have been ill-advised.
“The second after I said it, I kind of regretted it,” he told Access in 2018 when asked about any misgivings he’d had regarding Winfrey’s appearance.
Watch a clip from Andy Cohen’s 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey below.