Andrew Mukamal works for People's Revolution PR firm as Kelly Cutrone's assistant, for him a job that can sometimes be "Kell on Earth"—which, incidentally, is the name of the Bravo show that features him and Cutrone.
Windy City Times: Hi, Andrew. I have been watching you on television.
Andrew Mukamal: Cool. Thank you for that.
WCT: When are you getting your own reality show?
Andrew Mukamal: That's my what my question is. You need to call all those people at Bravo that you know.
WCT: I do. So take us back before the show happened and you worked for Kelly.
Andrew Mukamal: I was working as a style assistant. I was assisting pretty much seven days a week. I literally walked into People's Revolution to do a pick up for some samples on a shoot that I was working on. Kelly spotted me across the room, ran over and asked me a bunch of questions and—boom—said, "We're hiring and would you be my assistant?"
WCT: Wow.
Andrew Mukamal: Everyone in the room looked over and was like, "Oh, really?" A week and a half later I was starting here.
WCT: She just really took to you.
Andrew Mukamal: It was like the right place at the right time moment to the maximum in the most extreme of circumstances.
WCT; How long have you worked for her now?
Andrew Mukamal: That was the first week of August. It has been eight months now. That was right before they started shooting anything. My second week was the filming. It all happened really quick.
WCT: How has the reality-show experience been for you? Do you get recognized now?
Andrew Mukamal: No, not really. When I go to a gay party everyone knows who I am. I am at a twentysomething gay party in New York, of course, but on the street or anything like that not really.
WCT: I thought Kelly's company would have a big office but you are on top of each other!
Andrew Mukamal: Oh yeah we are. It really amplifies the whole family environment of it all because we are physically on top of each other and involved so much in each other's lives. We are a close-knit office to say the least.
WCT: Doesn't Kelly want her own office with a door she can close?
Andrew Mukamal: She used to have one. She has room that used to be her office and it is still set up that way. I think when our office grew smaller with the recession we wanted our office to be more centralized.
WCT: I think it would hard to hear when you are talking on the phone.
Andrew Mukamal: There is no privacy. I am doing this interview surrounded by my entire office. That is just the way it is around here.
WCT: Have you had to go outside to cry about anything yet?
Andrew Mukamal: No. I am not really a big cryer. I know the rules but I get away with a lot around here. I am not in trouble very often.
WCT: What is your day-to-day workload like?
Andrew Mukamal: It is crazy sometimes. It is keeping Kelly happy and making things easier for her. Depending on her day and what the whole world is like kind of changes what my day is going to be like. It is the kind of busy that you get used to it. When I first started it seemed overwhelming but you do it for seven months and adapt to it.
WCT: Do you have time to do outside things, find a boyfriend, etc?
Andrew Mukamal: Yeah. I have learned how to juggle it pretty well. Things have stabilized a little bit. When you guys are watching the show, it seems like we never leave the office. There was a moment when we had a week off between Christmas and New Year's, and I was over in Thailand with my family. I had a lot of time to think. I realized this job is not going away.
It's easy to be hard on yourself because you can't see your friends, meeting anybody or experiencing New York, which is so important when you are our age. It took me a little while to get in the habit of doing things after work.
WCT: The episode where you hire and fire someone in a matter of hours because they were tweeting and Facebooking about a possible job with People's Revolution...
Andrew Mukamal: It was like 20 or 30 minutes; it was not even an hour.
WCT: I think people can learn about putting their information out there from that episode.
Andrew Mukamal: With all this new media and information it is so accessible and easy to find someone. We are in a new age where discretion does not even exist for this whole generation. It is strange to me. Even when you are just tweeting about what you are doing, you are not thinking about it but we can't tolerate this in our office. I am glad that made it onto the show because there are repercussions.
WCT: Will there be a second season of Kell on Earth?
Andrew Mukamal: I don't know yet. I hope people are enjoying it. I think it is a fresh breathe of air of real reality. It is not like everything else. People are stressed out when they are watching it. They are panicked sometimes when they are watching it because they have been there. People ask me how can I not think about the camera being there but when you are under that much stress and pressure that you don't have time to think about it. We are looking back on it thinking I can't believe I did that or said that. It's real, it happened.
"Watch what happens" with Kell on Earth every Monday on the Bravo Channel with the finale March 29. Check bravotv.com for details.
