Andy Cohen said he will never allow a “Real Housewives” franchise to film in the city he grew up in—and where most of his family still lives.
In May 2026, the Bravo TV host and producer opened up on Missouri news station KMOV, where he revealed that St. Louis, the city where he was born and raised, is off the table for the Housewives.
“I think it is a hard no,” Cohen, 57, said when asked about the possibility of producing a hometown Housewives series. “It’s like, I can’t imagine how annoying it would be for my mom, dad, sister, everyone I know to be like, ‘Oh, so-and-so auditioned or so-and-so is on it and is mad at the edit.’ I don’t need this!”
Andy Cohen Said He Has Enough Issues with the Current ‘Real Housewives’ Cities
BravoThe “Real Housewives” debuted in 2006 in Orange County, California. Since that time, there have been spinoffs set in New York City, Atlanta, New Jersey, Beverly Hills, Miami, Potomac, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Washington D.C., Dubai, and Rhode Island.
Cohen told KMOV that St. Louis wouldn’t be a good fit because he’d get pulled into the “drama” by people he knows in the city.
“I have enough drama with the ‘Real Housewives of Orange County,’ Rhode Island, New York, Atlanta, Potomac, you know,” he said. “It would be multiplied if it was in my hometown because it would be multiplying with everyone that I know having something to say to me.”
“I just have so much noise in my life,” Cohen added. “I have two little children also, like, trust me: It’s good. We’re good.”
Cohen previously told a caller on the “Watch What Happens Aftershow” that he’d never do a show in St. Louis because he wants a quiet life when he goes home to his family. “I don’t need a mess when I come back to St. Louis,” he explained. “I just want to be quiet and under the radar and be chilled out. If we do that, then it’s just going to be really messy for me to go to my hometown, and I don’t need that.”
Andy Cohen Revealed Other Cities That ‘Didn’t Work Out’ for Real Housewives
BravoCohen once revealed what producers look for in a “Real Housewives” city. At a 2019 For Your Consideration Emmys event in New York, he said they look for “aspirational” cities that “have their own identity.”
“You know, it’s funny, they’re the same kind of format, if you want to call it a ‘format,’ but they all feel completely different, like really different ecosystems in every city,” Cohen shared, per BravoTV.com.
“We’ve cast in some cities that we haven’t wound up pursuing, like Greenwich, Connecticut, and Chicago, San Francisco, and Houston,” he added. “So there have been a lot of places that we’ve tried, but just didn’t work.”
Speaking with The New Yorker, Cohen said he thought of the Housewives cities as airplanes he has to maneuver.“I refer to them in my head as airplanes in the sky, and now I have 10 planes in the sky, and the goal is to keep the planes in the sky,” the Bravo host explained.
