An Intimate Night With Anderson Cooper, Andy Cohen At Oakdale

Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen are bringing their long-running tour, AC2, to the Toyota Oakdale Theater in Wallingford on Nov. 4. The uninitiated might ask: What do they do on the stage?

AC2’s official site has very little content beyond ticketing links and a five-minute video, which doesn’t reveal much. The lack of sneak peeks is intentional, Cooper and Cohen say in a phone interview.

“It’s kind of leap of faith,” says Cooper, the veteran CNN newsman.

“We kind of want audiences to just come,” adds Cohen, most famous for the “Real Housewives” shows. “We say, please don’t videotape this and put it online.”

Cooper and Cohen, who have been friends for more than 20 years, offer a few vague glimpses regarding what the evening is and what the evening is not.

It’s not political. It’s not an occasion to talk about hard news or serious issues.

It is two men sitting across from each other, reminiscing, telling tales about their lives and careers, maybe showing some videos from their professional and private lives.

To maintain the spontaneity, they don’t want to say what they’ve talked about at previous stops on the tour.

“We freshen it up and base it on what we’ve been doing,” says Cohen, who also is host of the Fox show “Love Connection” and of Bravo’s nightly series “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.”

“All the time people come to us and say they wish they could go out to drinks or dinner with us,” Cooper says. “That’s what the night is, an intimate night of conversation and funny stories from both of our lives and behind the scenes of our work.”

Cohen and Cooper first met over the phone. Mutual friends had set them up on a blind date.

“They figured, we were both gay and in the news business,” Cooper says. The phone call, a preliminary to the date, was a non-starter and the date never happened.

“He broke the cardinal rule. He asked about my mom within the first 30 seconds of talking to me,” Cooper says. (Cooper’s mother is Gloria Vanderbilt.)

“I thought he was very charming and nice and I was interested in meeting the Vanderbilt,” Cohen says, laughing.

They later met in person and became platonic friends. Over the years, both became celebrities: Cooper in hard news and Cohen in reality TV (most famous for the “Real Housewives” shows).

Some might say that their careers — other than the fact that they’re both on live TV every day — have little in common. Cohen disagrees.

“Andy believes his and my world are basically interchangeable,” Cooper says.

“The housewives sometimes go a little rogue on Twitter,” Cohen says. “So does the president. He tweets live while the newscasts are on the air to say what he likes and hates. So do the housewives.”

The evening at Oakdale will close with a Q&A, when audience members can ask Cooper and Cohen anything they want. But both men would prefer no questions about serious news topics. They say that audience members have tended to feel the same way.

“Most people really are there to enjoy themselves. By that point, there’s a bar open during the show. People have gone out for a liquid meal beforehand. We don’t get that many serious inquiries,” Cooper says. “I’ll answer any question, obviously, but most of them are in the mood of the moment.”

AC2: DEEP TALK AND SHALLOW TALES is at Toyota Oakdale Theatre, 95 South Turnpike Road in Wallingford, on Saturday, Nov. 4, at 8 p.m. Admission ranges from $60 to $100. ac2live.com