Andy Cohen asked former NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal how big his genitals are during CNN’s countdown to the new year.
The topic came up when Anderson Cooper, who co-hosted the network’s New Year’s Eve coverage with Cohen on Tuesday night, asked the four-time NBA champion if he remembered going on Cohen’s show, Watch What Happens Live, and being asked about the size of his penis. At the time, O’Neal answered by taking off his size 23 shoe and putting it on his thigh.
“Repeat the question. It’s 2019. Go ahead. Ask me right now. What did you ask me, Andy?” O’Neal said.
“I said that you have — what size shoe do you wear, Shaq? It’s like size 22, right?” Cohen answered. “So, I said, you wear size 22 shoes. ‘How big are you?’ was my question that I asked on the show.”
During the 2014 interview referenced, Cohen had specifically asked O’Neal, “How big is your dick?”
“Oh, wow, wow,” reporter Stephanie Elam, who was with O’Neal at the party, said.
The former Las Angeles Lakers superstar chuckled and said, “Andy, I don’t think you should ask me that question on national [television] … I do not believe you just asked me that question.”
“So, who wants to know the answer to that question? That’s the other part I want to know,” Elam said.
Cohen then pivoted the conversation by asking the former athlete what his favorite song of last year was. However, it was not the only time genitalia were referenced on CNN’s New Year’s Eve coverage.
At another point in the broadcast, Cohen and Cooper retold a story about when Cohen interviewed Cooper’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, who died in June. According to Cooper, he warned his mother that some of Cohen’s questions may not be easy to answer.
Cooper went on to explain that she “turns to me out of the blue and goes, ‘He’s not going to ask me who has the biggest cock in Hollywood, is he?’ … I was like, ‘Who are you?! What?’ I was like, ‘How does that enter your 93-year-old mind? That’s the first thing you think he’s going to ask about? … Meanwhile, I was like, ‘Mom, your information is from like 1941.”
Cohen later explained that Vanderbilt answered the question off-air, telling him it was a “Jewish gentleman.”
