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Kelly Ripa was just as shocked as the rest of the world when Regis Philbin announced he was leaving Live back in 2011. The former talk show host, who died in 2020, had been hosting the show since the early 1980s, so when he told the world he was retiring on-air, Ripa remembered it as an “out-of-body experience.”
Philbin began hosting The Morning Show in 1983, which became a huge success with the addition of Kathie Lee Gifford in 1985. Three years later, it was renamed as Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, where it remained until Gifford left in 2000 and it simply became Live with Regis.
Ripa, who currently hosts Live! alongside Ryan Seacrest, first joined the talk show in 2001, making it Live with Regis and Kelly.
In an interview with The Cut to promote her new book of personal essays, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, Ripa remembered what was going through her head when Philbin announced he would be leaving the show after 10 years of working together.
“It’s still an out-of-body experience thinking back to it,” she described. “I remember looking at Lori Schulweis — one of our producers, and I would consider her the closest person to Regis — because I thought, ‘This is one of those scenarios where everyone knew except for me.’ I looked at her, and she was sobbing. And that’s when I knew that nobody knew.”
She noted that she had been told backstage three minutes before going on the air that her co-host was going to make a “big announcement,” and despite him telling her what it was, she “thought he was kidding.”
“When it came out of his mouth, it was a total out-of-body experience and a terrifying one,” Ripa recalled.
Even after Philbin left and her name came first in the title, Ripa said “nothing changed” as she opened up about her notions that “seniority is a masculine word.”
“I wanted an office, and I was told that they were holding the office that had been vacated for the new guy. And I just said, ‘That’s not acceptable. That’s not okay,'” she told The Cut. “Meanwhile, they didn’t have a new guy! I was the new guy. I fought for and got an office.”
Ripa’s book, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, is out now and you can catch up with her every weekday at 9 a.m. ET when Live with Kelly and Ryan airs on ABC.
