Kathie Lee Gifford said last week that she doesn’t plan to read Kelly Ripa’s new book. Ripa’s response? “Thank you.”
Gifford and Ripa separately co-hosted the morning show Live with Regis Philbin—Gifford for 15 years and Ripa for 10. Last month, Ripa released a memoir, Live Wire, which recounted both positive and negative experiences of her time working with the late Philbin.
Gifford said in a television interview that she wouldn’t be diving into her colleague’s book anytime soon.
“I’m not going to read the book,” she said. “I haven’t read it. I don’t even know if it’s out yet. I just know what Regis was to me. He was, for 15 years, the best partner a person could ever, ever have professionally, but he was my friend.”
Entertainment Weekly reports that Ripa said in a podcast interview that she’s actually grateful to Gifford for her remarks.
“It’s really hard to sell a book, right?” Ripa said. “And this is, like, week three of the book. I mean, honestly, I’m not going to lie, I was not reading any headlines anywhere. And suddenly all of these headlines pop up and there’s all of this attention on my book. So I am a person that tends to take a negative and turn it into a positive. And so my ultimate comment is, ‘Thank you.’”
Live Wire was published by Dey Street/HarperCollins on Sept. 27. “If you just want to hang out with Kelly, that’s exactly what you’ll get,” wrote a Kirkus reviewer about the book.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
