Kelly Ripa explains how she and Richard Gere once ‘saved somebody’s life’

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Presenter Kelly Ripa has revealed a bizarre encounter with Richard Gere in her upcoming new book of personal essays entitled Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories.

The Live with Kelly and Ryan star reportedly devotes an entire chapter to the anecdote, which involved her and actor Richard Gere helping a woman at a dinner party who had passed out after eating a “pot brownie”.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Ripa recalled the story. “I am beside myself,” Ripa said. “Just seeing him [Gere] there and then having this poor woman pass out and everybody sort of like scattered away, like nobody wanted any part of it.

“And Richard Gere bent down... [and] in fairness to us, we were not like these heroes, she just sort of passed out at our end of the table.”

Ripa continued: 'I'm not going to lie, I wasn't even really paying that much attention. I mean, she was breathing and I was like, this is my alone time with Richard Gere.”

She said her husband, Riverdale star Mark Conseulos, told her she was making a “way bigger deal” out of the story than it deserved, to which she’d say: “Are you kidding me? How many times have you saved somebody’s life with Richard Gere? Zero times.”

Unfortunately for Ripa, the moment clearly did not mean as much to Gere as it did to her. When she later saw the American Gigolo actor, he had forgotten that she was there.

“Then to have him not recall that moment at all? No recollection at all. I mean, zero,” she said. “He said to me, ‘Oh, you were there?’ And I was like, ‘I was there! I was! I was there, I was with you, just the two of us, you know?’”

Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories is published Tuesday 27 September.