Kelly Ripa joined her friends Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper on Watch What Happens Live on Wednesday and talked about her search for a co-host for her show.
“Anderson re-signed with CNN, but he would have been your No. 1 pick, right Kelly?” asked Cohen. Ripa said, “He’s my life. He really is. He’s the one that got away and keeps getting away and gets away all the time.”
A caller asked Ripa when she thought Live! With Kelly would announce an official co-host.
“We really didn’t set a time frame for ourselves. We just wanted to wait until we found the right person,” said Ripa. “What we didn’t anticipate was that we would have such an outpouring of interest, so our list got very long very quickly. So we’ve been trying to keep it as narrow as possible, but then people pop up.” Later on, Ripa was asked whether she’d consider a female co-host, and she said she would.
Since Michael Strahan’s exit, Ripa has had numerous celebrities guest-host alongside her. She played a game with Cohen called “Hosty or Not Hosty” in which he asked her to judge potential co-hosts. She approved of Kathie Lee Gifford, Lindsay Lohan, Andy’s dog and Billy Bush.
Bush, who left NBC’s Today following the Access Hollywood/Donald Trump scandal, was brought up a second time on the show. A caller asked Anderson Cooper whether Bush was being unfairly penalized for the controversy, considering Trump won the presidency.
“We work in an industry where it’s up to viewers who they want to watch,” said Cooper. “I understand why the show made the decision they did.” He said that journalism is a “tough industry,” and he thinks Bush understands that. “I’m sure he’ll bounce back in one way or another.”
