Kelly Ripa Still Has Absolutely no Idea Who Will Co-Host ‘Live!’
Nearly eight months after former Live! co-host Michael Strahan announced he was leaving the morning talk show to join Good Morning America, current host Kelly Ripa says she still has basically no idea who will replace him.
On last night's (November 30) Watch What Happens Live, Ripa told Andy Cohen that Live!'s production didn't set a hard and fast deadline for a replacement, and that the show has kept timelines loose to find "the right person." In hindsight, though, she admits keeping things casual has come at a certain cost.
"What we didn't anticipate was that we would have such an outpouring of interest, so our list got very long very quickly," she said. "We've been trying to keep it as narrow as possible, but then people pop up."
"I feel really lucky and really embarrassed at our good fortune," she added.
Ripa wasn't always so optimistic about Strahan's departure, though. Immediately after news broke in April that he was leaving — a movement Ripa discovered on the news — Ripa proceeded to skip several tapings of the show. Days later, upon her return, she chided ABC for its lack of transparency. And, in a May People interview, she expanded on her feelings of betrayal.
"…What nobody considered is there’s a whole other group of people that it really impacts, because we have to now find another great person,” she said. “In that moment there were people looking at me, saying, ‘Tell us this is going to be okay. Are we going to be okay?'"
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