Russell's & Brother's Suicide

Anderson Cooper talks candidly with the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills about Russell Armstrong's suicide and opens up about his own brother's death

By Rachel Quigley

Last updated at 6:50 PM on 10th September 2011

Anderson Cooper's new daytime show is set to get off to an emotional start as he talks to the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills both about Russell Armstrong's suicide and the suicide of his own brother.

The self-titled show, Anderson, will premiere on Monday and the reality show stars are among his first guests.

Speaking before the show is aired, Cooper said he did not book them as a ratings-grabber but revealed they had been asked before the tragic death of Mr Armstrong - husband of Housewives' star Taylor. With his suicide so fresh on their minds Cooper said he was surprised they didn't cancel, adding that they spend half the show talking about Mr Armstrong.

He said: 'It was something we had booked months ago... I thought frankly they were going to cancel, and they didn’t.'

According to Radar Online, the silver-haired news anchor said that he and the cast spent 'probably half the show talking about Russell’s suicide and whether or not the show should be on the air at all, and whether they bear any responsibility or that reality TV bears any responsibility in what happened to him'.

He then opens up about his brother Carter's suicide, who jumped to his death from the 14th-floor of a New York city penthouse when he was just 23. Cooper was 21 at the time.




Speaking about the emotional time in his life he said: 'I had a brother that committed suicide and that was more than twenty years ago and I’m still trying to figure out why he committed suicide.

'I think anyone who survives suicide, that’s one of the horrible things about it, you can’t pinpoint one thing necessarily always that did it.

'You can’t put yourself in someone else’s mind, a mind that is not acting rationally or not thinking rationally.' Though the CNN journalist did not know Russell personally, he speculated as to what might have made him take his own life.