Just as shark can sense a single droplet of blood in the water from miles away, Andy Cohen is particularly attuned to the faintest scent of a celebrity feud. So, in his latest book, Superficial: More Adventures From the Andy Cohen Diaries, it’s no surprise that he swims straight for the great case of Bad Blood between Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. In the book, Cohen talks about an encounter at this year’s Met Gala, where he ran into Swift at the bar while she was complaining about trying to find a spot to hang out and watch Lady Gaga — celebrities, they all know each other! “Why I felt I needed to get involved I will never know,†Cohen says, “but I innocently said exactly the wrong thing to her, which was: ‘Your friend Katy is sitting in the corner and there’s plenty of room around her.’†What follows is a bit of dialogue that sounds like it could have been cut from Empire for being too obvious:
She asked, ‘Katy who?’ and I said, ‘Perry,’ at which point she clearly let me know that she’s the exact opposite of her friend. I kind of gasped, realizing she was in the most famous of all the feuds, one that I’d talked about endlessly on WWHL. I said that at least now she knows where not to go, which I thought was a nice button on the conversation and made it all a laugh. She didn’t agree.
Cohen insists, “I wasn’t even trying to be shady, I was just sticking my nose where it didn’t belong,†a statement you are free to interpret in whatever way you like. For our money, the best part of the story comes a little after, when Taylor reveals that her tragic flaw might be that she always needs to have the last word:
As she was walking away, she turned back to me, commanding me not to say a word about this on my show, and said that she’s watching. She’s watching? Is that a threat? And is she watching? That made me feel momentarily good until I realized there might’ve been a “fucking†thrown in there before “your show,†or was that my scared imagination?
Cohen goes on to say that he promised not to mention the incident on his show and “silently vowed to stop playing into the hype that she created around her song ‘Bad Blood.’†Then he adds, “She didn’t threaten me about putting it in my book, so here we are.†Anyway, no matter what Cohen thinks, Taylor Swift definitely isn’t watching his show herself. That’s a squad member job if we’ve ever heard one — for a Hadid, maybe, or an expendable Haim.