Kelly Ripa is finally breaking her silence about Michael Strahan’s sudden exit from “Live!” explaining how colleagues were concerned about their own future after also being blindsided by Strahan‘s departure from the show.
“In that moment there were people looking at me, saying, ‘Tell us this is going to be okay. Are we going to be okay?’” Ripa told People magazine in an exclusive interview, which hits newsstands on Friday, the same day as Strahan’s last day on the show.
“I think [it] requires a certain amount of empathy on a level. When you’re dealing with big business, it’s easy to forget that you’re dealing with people and that people have feelings. It’s easy to just look at it like a business unit,” she said.
Adding, “I’m not dealing with monsters. I don’t think of anybody as a monster or out to get me. Sometimes stability and dependability can be misinterpreted as passive. Like, ‘Oh, we don’t have to worry about her, she’s fine. She’s fine,’” Ripa said. “And I am fine, but I need reassurances that we’re all going to be fine.”
Strahan announced on April 19 that he would be leaving “Live!” to join the “Good Morning America” team. He has been appearing twice a week on the morning show since 2014 and will begin his full-time duties in September.
“We’re excited for Michael. He wanted that job, and it’s great for him. I think it’s a perfect match, I really do,” Ripa told the magazine. “However, what nobody considered is there’s a whole other group of people that it really impacts, because we now have to find another great person.”
Ripa will be joined by a variety of guest hosts this summer, many of whom will be undergoing an extensive audition process.
“People make mistakes, and we’re all human,” she concluded. “They’re human and I’m human. We all have these moments, and it’s about how you move forward and how you begin again.”
Guest hosts for next week include Jimmy Kimmel, Empire’s Jussie Smollet, Cedric the Entertainer, World News Tonight anchor David Muir and Hawaii Five-O’s Daniel Dae Kim.
