Leah McSweeney Is Latest Bravo Alum to Sue Andy Cohen

By Emma Chance | TV | February 28, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | TV | February 28, 2024 |

2024 has been rough for Bravo’s Andy Cohen so far. While Bethenny Frankel’s “Reality Reckoning” is cooling down, the lawsuits against the network and its darling are piling up. Last week it was Brandi Glanville making sexual harassment claims while wrapped up in allegations against herself, and now Leah McSweeney is claiming that she was intentionally plied with alcohol by producers who knew of her struggles with alcoholism while on Real Housewives of New York City.

McSweeney’s story was first published in the Vanity Fair slam piece that came out last year—the one Frankel thought was going to be about her but ended up focusing more on McSweeney and her former costar, Eboni K. Williams. She was open about her history with addiction when on the show, and viewers watched her get sober and relapse more than once before ultimately leaving for good after a traumatic appearance on an Ultimate Girls Trip season set in Thailand, where she had to be hospitalized.

Now she and her lawyers are claiming that Bravo originally hired her with the malicious intention of raising ratings back to “Scary Island” levels—an infamous RHONY episode of yore in which Kelly Bensimon “appeared to be confused, irrational and losing touch with reality.” They claim Bravo and Cohen knew of McSweeney’s alcoholism and mental health struggles and saw those things as an opportunity for manipulation, which would result in unhinged behavior that would make good television. The lawsuit also alleges that she was coaxed and coerced to drink, that her schedule was purposefully made so that she wouldn’t have time to attend AA meetings, that she was retaliated against when she refused to drink, and when those retaliation methods didn’t work they “tried other ways to mentally destabilize her in hopes of getting the on-camera meltdown they so badly wanted.”

They got that meltdown, whether it was intentional or not. Before being rebooted, RHONY, for better or worse, was a show about rich women dealing with alcoholism. From Luann de Lesseps to Sonja Morgan to Dorinda Medley, alcohol and the abuse of it drove every conflict, so the argument that Bravo was so desperate for a breakdown that they pushed McSweeney toward one is weak since there were alcohol-related breakdowns on that show nearly every episode.

That said, McSweeney’s story always felt slightly more tragic. Someone like de Lesseps can get arrested for being drunk and disorderly and make a cabaret career out of it, but McSweeney’s experience on the show ruined her life, whether the producers wanted it to or not.

McSweeney also painted a picture of Cohen as a power-drunk mafia boss who parties and snorts cocaine with his favorite Housewives, and claims another senior producer is well-known for sending unsolicited nudes to lower-level employees. Honestly…that part tracks, and maybe if these lawsuits keep coming we can finally replace Cohen with someone a little more…in touch? I nominate Paige DeSorbo.