NEW YORK — CNN New Year’s Eve hosts Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen veered off script when near life-size puppets made in their likeness turned a planned comedy beat into a live, laugh-through-the-lines stumble during the network’s Times Square broadcast Wednesday night. The duo kept the countdown coverage moving while struggling to control the oversized props and riffing their way through the awkward setup, Dec. 31, 2025.
CNN New Year’s Eve puppet moment that viewers could not look away from
The segment hit just after 10 p.m. as the co-hosts’ early-evening shots gave way to looser banter. Cohen summed up the mood with a blunt assessment — “Anderson and I are transitioning as the night goes on into drunkards” — before both men lifted the puppets into frame, according to Mediaite’s recap of the exchange.
What followed was a small master class in live TV problem-solving: hands stuck in puppet heads, arms flailing, and Cooper laughing so hard he could barely get the next line out. When Cohen cracked that Cooper’s puppet looked “gummy,” Cooper fired back, still laughing, “I look like I’ve had a stroke?” Cooper later conceded the obvious, telling viewers, “These puppets are hard. It’s really hard being a puppeteer.”
How CNN New Year’s Eve set the stage for chaos
The puppet bit did not come out of nowhere. In a preview of the broadcast’s marketing, CNN leaned into “Puppets” as a way to highlight the co-hosts’ friendship and make the show feel “buzzy” and shareable, a behind-the-scenes write-up from GEMA said. Once the props showed up on the live set, the joke shifted from scripted gag to watching Cooper and Cohen try to make the puppets behave under bright lights.
More broadly, the special remains a hybrid: global celebrations and musical guests, plus a few moments designed to go a little sideways. A roundup of this year’s televised countdowns from People noted that Cooper and Cohen returned for their ninth consecutive year co-hosting from Times Square, with CNN also featuring additional coverage after midnight from other U.S. time zones.
That “anything can happen” edge is part of what viewers expect when they tune into CNN New Year’s Eve. Cohen has said he starts listening for the “slur” in Cooper’s voice around 10:45 p.m. and takes over as the “straight man” of the broadcast, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Continuity: the long-running CNN New Year’s Eve balancing act
Even before the puppets, the annual show had a history of unscripted chatter colliding with live television. After the 2021-22 broadcast, Cohen publicly called a jab at Ryan Seacrest “stupid and drunk” and said it was the only thing he regretted saying that night, as People reported in January 2022.
By early 2023, Seacrest and Cohen were dismissing feud rumors as overblown, a dynamic the Los Angeles Times described as an internet narrative that outpaced reality.
This year’s takeaway was lighter: two broadcasters, two giant puppets and a reminder that the most memorable CNN New Year’s Eve moments are often the ones no one can fully plan — even the puppets.
