Mercy James is reportedly working behind the scenes on Watch What Happens Live, giving Madonna's 20-year-old daughter an unexpected role on the Bravo late-night show hosted by Andy Cohen.
The detail surfaced on July 22, when Rosie O'Donnell said in an interview with People that she spotted Mercy James on the set and realized Madonna's daughter was not just visiting. O'Donnell said Mercy works there and has been part of the show for “like a year or so,” which suggests the job is not a one-off appearance but a steady backstage role.
That matters because Watch What Happens Live has long been part of the odd, very public back-and-forth between Madonna and Cohen. He has complained that Madonna still had not done the show, and she has answered him in the middle of her Celebration Tour with jokes of her own, including, “If you say one more bad thing about me on your show, you're gonna get in so much trouble,” followed by, “You little troublemaking queen!”
The reported connection also adds an unusual family thread to the story. Madonna adopted Mercy in 2009, and Mercy is the fourth of her six children. The family already stretches across several well-known chapters in Madonna's life, from Lourdes with Carlos Leon to Rocco and David with Guy Ritchie, and Stella and Estere, whom she adopted as a single mother.
What Rosie described leaves one thing unanswered: what, exactly, Mercy does behind the scenes. In a show built around a host, guests and quick-fire conversation, that could mean anything from production support to day-to-day set work, but no specific duty has been identified. Cohen has said he once kept a running list of questions for Madonna in his Notes app, only to learn that she was already answering many of them elsewhere. Now her daughter is in the building, and the one question still hanging over the story is whether Madonna will ever walk onto the show herself.
