The Redesigned Greenrooms on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen Are Instagram Heaven
From Real Housewives to A-list actors to Grammy-winning musicians, the stars who fill the greenrooms backstage at Andy Cohen’s fan-favorite talk show Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen could probably have their own reality show. (We’re happy to produce it, AC!) And for the TV host, his guests come first, which is why he wanted to make things just as homey outside the clubhouse as they are inside. Cohen turned to interior designer Eric Hughes — the creative genius behind his recently redecorated New York City home — to make over the three VIP greenrooms at his Hudson Street studios in Manhattan. And the design facelifts are pretty jaw-dropping.
In Elle Décor‘s new September issue, Cohen and Hughes give fans a look inside the Instagram oases they created, three separate rooms filled with everything from colorful wacky wallpaper (available at Hughes’ own line Wallshoppe line), millennial pink furniture, funky mirrors (for selfies of course) and a wide of array of mixed prints, patterns and tchotchkes galore.
“Eric Hughes designed my apartment and did a brilliant job, so he knows my taste,” Cohen tells PEOPLE. “He had shown me the wallpaper and some mood boards, but with Eric there is so many details that are just surprising. You can look at the wallpaper, but when you see it in a room with everything that Eric created around it, it’s pretty spectacular. ”
Cohen cites the Martinique palm-print paper as “very Beverly Hills,” and the blue camo print paper as one of his favorites. All the papers were finished with a wax coating, for protection against any possible makeup mishaps or drink spillage (in other words, they’re Real Housewife-proof).
“There are a lot of people drinking on my show. There’s never been a drink throw backstage, but people certainly get turnt up at my shows so I think it’s [the wax coating] probably more for that,” Cohen notes, adding that he still hopes to book guests like Christina Aguilera, Madonna, Justin Timberlake and George Clooney to make their first WWHL appearances.
Over the course of only five days, Hughes transformed the greenrooms from stark white spaces to eye-catching, party-ready palaces. He furnished the rooms with brands including Jonathan Adler, Kartell and ModShop (sourced from furniture retailer Perigold).
“This is the magic of Eric,” Elle Décor‘s editor-in-chief Whitney Robinson tells PEOPLE. “I think when designer and client are in a total mind meld and when they trust one another and there’s that built in rapport, this creativity is the result. They didn’t have like a checklist. Andy was like, ‘Do your thing and let’s literally like watch what happens.'”
Robinson adds that featuring the WWHL green rooms in the September issue was a “no-brainer” for the publication.
“It’s Andy Cohen’s America and we’re just living in it,” Robinson tells PEOPLE. “When I took over the magazine, and we covered his house and the chance came to put him on the cover, it was a no-brainer for me. I knew in that moment that Andy was going to be on the cover. He’s been in all of our living rooms, whether it’s with the shows he’s produced or with his own talk show. The idea with his house and now with the green room is we want to be in his living room. It’s a chance to be there and get a taste of how he lives.”
