The Biggest ‘Live’ Controversies Ever, as Kelly Ripa’s Tenure Hits 25 Years

“She’s here, and she ain’t leavin’!” Regis Philbin exclaimed 25 years ago, as he welcomed Kelly Ripa as his new Live cohost on February 5, 2001.

Ripa, then 30 and still a star of All My Children, won the job with her guest-cohosting gigs on the morning talk show. “It became obvious to everyone that Kelly Ripa should be the one here on a permanent basis,” Philbin said.

And thus the show once known as Live with Regis and Kathie Lee and then Live With Regis became Live With Regis and Kelly… with “Kelly” printed in a smaller typeface as a demand from higher-ups, Ripa later said in her memoir.

The negotiation over Ripa’s contract was just one contentious moment from the show, one that remained under wraps for years, even as debacles like the abrupt departure of Ripa’s onetime Live cohost Michael Strahan made headlines.

Ripa is celebrating a quarter-century as a Live cohost, but we’re going back even further with this timeline of our selections for the show’s biggest controversies.

1996: Kathie Lee Gifford is named in a sweatshop investigation

Charles Kernaghan, then the director of the National Labor Committee, testified before U.S. Congress in 1996 that girls as young as 15 were working 75 hours a week for 31 cents an hour in Honduras to make clothing for Kathie Lee Gifford, then Philbin’s Live cohost, per The New York Times. On air, Gifford called Kernaghan’s testimony “a vicious attack.”

Nevertheless, Gifford vowed to help end abusive labor practices in the clothing industry. Three years later, though, the National Labor Committee said Gifford’s clothing line was still being produced under sweatshop conditions after employees in El Salvador stepped forward, according to the Associated Press. On Live, Gifford said it was difficult to monitor every subcontractor behind her clothing line. “This is an issue that just doesn’t go away because sweatshops, unfortunately, haven’t gone away,” she said.

1997: Gifford’s husband is caught cheating in a tabloid sting

In 1997, Frank Gifford’s affair with former flight attendant Suzen Johnson became public knowledge after the tabloid Globe hired her to entice him into a hotel room with a hidden video camera, as The Washington Post reported at the time. Frank’s infidelity might have been a humiliating chapter for the Gifford family, but Kathie Lee chose to forgive and stay with him until his 2015 death. “If I had run when Frank had his temporary insanity, which he was set up for, let’s face it, then our children wouldn’t have their father,” she told Entertainment Tonight in 2000.

2016: Handling of Michael Strahan’s exit angers Kelly Ripa

Strahan’s move to Good Morning America in 2016 took his then-Live cohost by surprise, and Ripa took a few days off to gather her thoughts, as she told the talk show’s audience upon her return.

“There’s a part of me that can say, ‘OK, I understand. This may have been an oversight,’” she later explained to People. “After 26 years, at this point, we are like a family. And sometimes when you are so comfortable with somebody, you may not give them the same consideration as somebody you’re not as comfortable with – a certain formality falls away.”

In a 2020 interview with The New York Times, Strahan expressed regret for the way his exit was handled but not for his exit itself. “When it was time to go, it was time to go,” he said. “Certain things that were going on behind the scenes just caught up.”

(Even so, the former NFL star expressed respect for Ripa. “If people think, ‘Oh, he hates her’ — I don’t hate her,” he said. “I do respect her for what she can do at her job. I cannot say enough about how good she is at her job.”)

2017: Regis Philbin says Ripa was offended by his departure

In a 2017 interview on Larry King Now, Philbin said he and Ripa weren’t in touch at the time and that she “got very offended” when he left the show in 2011. “She thought I was leaving because of her,” he said. “I was leaving because I was getting older and that wasn’t right for me anymore.”

Philbin also said that “never once” did producers invite him back on Live since his exit. But the president of WABC, which produces the show, refuted his recollection, telling CNN that Philbin had been invited to guest on Live multiple times.

2022: Ripa recalls tenuous Live negotiations in memoir

Ripa recounted her career so far in her 2022 memoir, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories (via Business Insider), including observations of working with Philbin that upset Gifford, and the “petty” list of dealbreakers that came with her Live job offer.

She said wasn’t permitted to use her own hair and makeup people — that point being “the number one dealbreaker and the most consequential flash point of my entire contract,” in her words — and she wasn’t given a wardrobe budget, maternity leave, or even an office.

Plus, Ripa’s name on Live’s title card and branding had to be smaller than Philbin’s, Ripa said. “A game of inches, which speaks for itself,” she added. “But on that we agreed.”

2023: Viewers complain about Mark Consuelos joining Live as cohost

Mark Consuelos, Ripa’s husband, replaced Ryan Seacrest as Live cohost in 2023, and many viewers revolted on social media. In tweets, viewers complained about the couple’s “PDA” and “pillow talk” and their “horrible, painful” banter, while several others called Ripa out for not letting her husband finish his sentences, as BuzzFeed recapped at the time.

The criticism extended to Reddit, too, where one viewer cried nepotism. “Their dynamic seems awful for the show’s setup,” that viewer wrote. “[Ripa] talks over [Consuelos] constantly, and it just seems more like an uncomfortable window into a household, and more attention will be on them instead of their guests. … Out of all of the potential people who could be Kelly’s cohost, her husband was selected? Like, really?”

Ripa told Variety the following month that it was the network’s idea, not hers, to make Consuelo her cohost and that she thought him joining the show full-time was a terrible idea.

2023: Ripa exposes unfair treatment behind the scenes

In that same Variety interview, Ripa said it took her four seasons on Live to get the network to even empty a janitor’s closet for her to use as an office. “It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, especially because there were empty offices that I could have easily occupied,” she said.

Ripa also revealed that she had to force her way into an office for herself after Philbin’s departure: “They said, ‘Oh, no, we’re saving that.’ And I said, ‘Saving it for what?’ And they go, ‘Well, for when the new guy comes.’ And I looked at them, and I said, ‘I am the new guy.’ I just moved my things.”

Furthermore, Ripa said she had to share a bathroom with Live audience members during the Philbin years — even during her pregnancy — while her cohost had his own private toilet. “I have to host the show, and I’m still waiting in line to use the bathroom,” she recalled. “It just seemed a very needlessly difficult situation.”

One of many, from the sound of it.