The Schmooze

Debra Winger Wipes The Floor With Andy Cohen In Wildly Awkward Interview

Her Majesty Debra Winger Image by Forward/YouTube

By Jenny Singer November 1, 2018

Alternative titles for this article:

Watching Debra Winger Demolish Andy Cohen Is The Greatest Pleasure This Ever-Spinning Globe Can Afford

Curly-Haired Jewish Icon Deals Death Blow To Fake Feminist

Debra Winger Would Have Been Aces At High School Mock Trial

Debra Winger Has Ushered Me Into An Early Grave With Her Power Of Slay

Whoever scheduled 63-year-old Academy Award nominated titan of performance Debra Winger for an interview with reality TV shill Andy Cohen is probably stress-eating Halloween candy right now. In two minutes and 42 seconds, the accomplished actress managed to turn what should have been a low-stakes television segment into a cry heard throughout Hollywood: male nonsense shan’t be tolerated.

A current star of Netflix’s “The Ranch,” as well as an upcoming movie by Jewish genius Miranda July, Winger appeared on Cohen’s insufferable “Watch What Happens Live” for a game Cohen called “Plead The 5th.” Winger was given the opportunity to “plead the fifth” to only one out of three questions asked by Cohen. Did you know that Debra Winger’s life has been a wild ride, including being raised Orthodox, suffering an accident as a teen that left her temporarily blind and paralyzed, and cultivating a growing collection of doors? Well, neither did Andy Cohen.

Cohen was apparently unaware that Debra Winger did not come to play. In a sharp white suit and soft curls, Winger gave Cohen hell for every asinine question he asked. While he opened with a question purportedly aimed at revealing misogyny, he followed up by asking Winger to talk about her feud with Shirley MacLaine, and then asked her to rank former male co-stars.

Here’s Debra Winger recalling that she didn’t make it through four decades of Hollywood to deal with idiots in her spare time:

Then, with the elegant, precise cruelty of a predator stalking extremely slow prey, Winger begins to cross examine Cohen. She attacks. He responds, faintly. She interrupts. She asks him rhetorical questions. With venomous sarcasm she points out that she does not remember kisses from 30 years ago, she remembers being great at acting. She drops the psychoanalytic term “self-state.” She watches Cohen squirm. And then she says she dug kissing each and every one of them — John Travolta, Richard Gere, Anthony Hopkins, and Robert Redford.

Here is Amanda Peete’s face, as she watched this encounter:

Two Jewish pop-culture figures engaging in bloody battle? One emerging victorious, using the loser’s skin as a cape? Yes, a happy Challah-ween to us all.

Andy Cohen is dead. Long live Debra Winger.

Enjoy the full insanity here:

Jenny Singer is the deputy lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

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