Andy Cohen Honors 15 Years of Real Housewives, Blames Franchise for Making His Hair 'Entirely' Gray
Sharing a throwback photo, Andy Cohen said he had "no idea the series would change the course of pop culture — and my life — forever"
Andy Cohen is tracing his gray hair back to the start of the Real Housewives franchise.
The O.G. iteration of the popular Bravo reality series, The Real Housewives of Orange County, premiered March 21, 2006, and to honor the 15-year anniversary, executive producer Cohen, now 52, shared a throwback photo on Instagram of himself around that time.
"#RHOC premiered 15 years ago today. When I posed for this picture a week later, I had no idea the series would change the course of pop culture — and my life — forever," the Watch What Happens Live host wrote. "Thanks to each and every Real Housewife, and the incredible production teams from Evolution, Shed Media, Truly Original, Sirens, GoodBye Pictures, & Purveyors of Pop for keeping the series humming!"
"(SIDENOTE: I'm not saying the Housewives turned my hair entirely Grey, but they did)," he quipped alongside the photo of himself with a head of dark hair.
Want to get the biggest stories from PEOPLE every weekday? Subscribe to our new podcast, PEOPLE Every Day, to get the essential celebrity, entertainment and human interest news stories Monday through Friday.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly back in 2015, Cohen said RHOC was nearly canceled before it finally took off and caught the attention of fans.
"We almost killed that show," he said at the time. "It was so plagued in season 1 with trouble in the edit room. We wound up getting rid of the original producers, we brought someone else in — it was a nightmare to produce. We contemplated for a moment, 'Should we just scrap this?' Thank God we didn't do that."
"When we were first creating the show at Bravo," Cohen added later in the conversation, "it was interesting that they all lived in this cul-de-sac. They lived in the same gated community down the street from each other, and there was something very exciting to me as a producer about that."