Kelly Ripa has surprising reaction to Kathie Lee Gifford dissing her book
Kelly Ripa is unfazed by Kathie Lee Gifford’s diss.
The current “Live” host showed gratitude to her predecessor one week after the “Today” show alum said she was not going to read Ripa’s new book, “Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories.”
“I am a person that tends to take a negative and turn it into a positive,” Ripa, 52, said in Tuesday’s episode of the “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast, noting that Gifford’s comments only gave her latest release more “attention.”
She continued, “It’s really hard to sell a book, right? … So my ultimate comment is, ‘Thank you.'”
The former soap star noted that when readers check out her book, particularly the sections covering her and late “Live” co-host Regis Philbin’s power dynamic, she thinks they will “have a very different take” than Gifford.
“The comments I’ve gotten about those chapters have been overwhelmingly positive, and the people who read the book took away a lot of positivity from it,” she said.
Gifford, 69, slammed Ripa’s memoir two weeks after its Sept. 27 publication.
“I was very sorry to see the headlines [about Philbin],” Gifford, who co-hosted “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee” for a decade before Ripa took over in 2001, told Fox 5’s Rosanna Scotto.
“You never know what’s true and what’s not true,” she continued. “I went, ‘I hope this isn’t true. I just hope it isn’t.’ Because what’s the point? I don’t get it. I don’t get it.”
In the book, Ripa alleges that Philbin referred to her as “it” and cleared up the “basic misconception” that the duo were friends outside of work.
“I wish I had set the record straight in real time,” she recently explained on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,” adding that she was previously told to “take the high road.”
The “Hope & Faith” alum joked, “As a woman, we are often told to take the high road, and that is woman speak for ‘Shut the f–k up.'”
As for Gifford, she called Philbin, who died in July 2020 at age 88, the “best partner” earlier this month.
The Daytime Emmy winner gushed, “He was my friend. We were dear friends, and after I left the show … for the next 20 years, we became better friends, dearer friends.”
