(Photo Credits: Stacey Newman from Shutterstock)
We all have that someone who helped us realize that we are gay or bisexual. For Anderson Cooper, it’s Richard Gere. What about you, guys?
Anyway, Cooper sat down on Friday with his friend Andy Cohen and actor John Hill and got candid during the “Andy Cohen Live Pride Special” on SiriusXM’s “Radio Andy.” The 55-year-old American broadcast journalist and CNN anchor revealed that Richard Gere helped him realize he was gay.
Cooper shared that he watched the Broadway play “Bent” starring Richard Gere in the late 70s with his late mother’s—American artist, fashion designer, heiress, and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt’s—gay friends, photographer Paul Jasmin and Jasmin’s boyfriend. Bent, by the way, is a play about the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, and it was titled as such because “bent” refers to the slang word used in some European countries to describe or refer to gay men.
“Yeah. If anyone doesn’t know about the play, Bent it’s about two gay guys in the concentration camp. I mean the opening scene… It is the gayest thing you can imagine,” Cooper said. He added:
And this was Richard Gere in 1977, ‘Looking for Mr. Goodbar.’ He was so beautiful. And I’m there. My mom didn’t go. It was just me and my mom’s two gay friends. And I’m watching this thing and literally the opening scene of ‘Bent,’ like there’s a guy in bed who has picked up some guy the night before, and the guy he’s picked up gets out bed is completely naked and then puts on his SS stormtrooper uniform.
And I just remember being like, ‘Oh my God, I’m gay. Like, this is… I’m totally gay.’ And afterward, Paul Jasmin was friends with Richard Gere, cause Paul Jasmine took the pictures for ‘American Gigolo’, and we go backstage and Richard Gere is shirtless in his dressing room. And I couldn’t speak. I didn’t. And I had my Playbill and I wanted to get him to autograph it, but I was too… I just couldn’t stop staring at his chest. So fast forward to, I dunno, 10 years ago I was interviewing Richard Gere and I took out the Playbill, I had the Playbill still, and I told him the whole story and I had him sign it. Yeah. He was very tickled with it.
Cooper further shared that he only told his mother he was gay after he graduated from college. At the time, he had a boyfriend for three years “whom she knew and he used to sleep over and like nobody was making up a spare bed, but she never asked about it. You know?” He related, “So I said to her, finally, I stupidly said, ‘I think I’m gay.’ I wanted to kind of couch it. And she said, ‘huh?’ She said, ‘well, don’t make any definite decisions.’”
He added, “It was surprising … But she was cool about it. But she was just like, ‘well, don’t make any definite decisions.’ Which was not the response I was expecting. So, I was like, ‘let’s put a pin in it for now.’”
“Did you ever come back to it?” Cohen asked.
“Yeah, we did. We came back to it and really, it’s too long and boring a story. Her mother was probably bisexual. Her mother was revealed to have had a lesbian relationship during a court battle in 1932. That was a scandal in New York. It shut down the court. And my mom was taken away. My mother’s mother lost custody of her in part because of that, because she was accused of being a lesbian. So there was all this stuff in my mom’s head about that.”
Listen to the interview in full below:
Girl, you know the rule: pictures (or preferably video) or it didn’t happen, Anderson!
Do we detect abject pessimism?
“THE GIRL CAN’T HELP, THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT”!
Why no coverage of the Islamic Terrorist Mass Shooting that killed 2 Gay men and left dozens more injured, Adam4Adam? Is it just a bit “politically inconvenient” given your Far Left Slant??
He is “Gloria Vanderbilt’s” son. His mother was both “Famous” and “Infamous.” His last name, Cooper, is incidental. He has “Familia”; he is a Vanderbilt; he has wealth (110,000,000); he has pedigree and breeding; he is Homosexua; he is a “News Celebre” and he is reasonably attractive. Thus, he has power and influence. His assertion that he realized his “Gaiety” by watching “Richard Gere” in Bent, gives his “Coming Out” a certain “Celebritiness” by association and exclusion. At the-end-of-the-day, he is 55, aging (like-the-rest-of-us) and is on his way to neutrality and eventual, irrelevancy. Mommie is dead & history. Andy… Read more »
“He is trying to stay relevant”, just like Madona who does anything to stay in the limelight no matter how outrageous.
Your sentiments are not out of line!
It is the “Nature-of-the-Beast” that whatever attracts the masses is justifiable…regardless of logic and pertintence.
Feed-the-masses with “Nectar & Ambrosia” regardless of nutritional value and all will be abled!
Not unlike the “Manna” Routine from the Old Testament!
The Press loves it because it is “LIberal” and like, themselves, it serves no purpose – except to cause “Nationwide Dementia”
“…Gere helped..”?
They didn’t discuss being gay.
They didn’t get physical.
The Actor was simply shirtless, not naked, in his dressing room.
Fake, non-credible reporting. If A4A wants to re respected, it must do better.
As we have all asserted!
This is a “Gay, Sex Site” and the only head needed hangs between our legs not what sits atop of our shoulders!
You cannot expect to make a Silk Purse out of a Sow’s Ear! You must be realistic and be grateful for the “Crumbs” you get?
Thus, you will never get intellectualism or pertinence!
Do not invoke Patience!
Patience, here, is a wasted Virtue and wasted Virtuosity is “Wishful Thinking”!
It is the ultimate price paid for being on a “Free, Sex SIte” when Penury dictates choice!
I don’t want poor Anderson to feel alone so I’ll freely admit that I’d willingly skull fuck Richard Gere.
What a freaking looser. Now that Anderson Cooper has no viewers cause he’s freaking lied si many times he uses Gere to grab publicity for hos sorry ass. If only all the queers Cooper has hooked up with when traveling to PS would speak up about his private life: Cmon why write this story ? Cooper is classless
Initially years ago I enjoyed listening to his reporting. It was great! Intelligent. Great topics.
But then he went off one-sided politically and couldn’t do any report without criticism of the other side. He would turn the rising and setting of the sun or the Earth’s rotation into an “anti-them” event. At that point I had to walk away.
Undoubtedly, you hear nothing about his “Adopted” son or the “Conjoined Raising” of his “Adopted” son by Anderson and his former partner?
That “Adopted” son was created within a “Petri Dish” just as were Michael Jackson’s Creations with Rowe.
The aforementioned is a predictable “Contrivance” when a “Gay, Male Celebrity, wants to reinforce – to the General Public – that he has a penis and know how to use it in a masculine, “Heterosexual,” position.
That is, it was done in the “Missionary Position”?
” he has a penis and knows how to use it” lol. He knows how to jack off into a cup. Lol
Just trying to “Keep It Real”!
And, he understands the purpose and the virtue of a “Petri Dish”!
“It wasn’t love that created the child; It was science”!
Ugh! who cares.
Totally misrepresented. Gere did not do anything to help him.
Precisely!
Fodder-for-the-Morons!
I was on a flight from PHX to EWR in 1st class and used the restroom. As I was exiting he was by the door waiting to use it. I said hello and he turned his head and said nothing…..asshole.