Kelly Ripa has found the silver lining to end all silver linings. The soap actor and talk show host recently released her memoir, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, and took the highest of roads when she found out fellow TV doyenne Kathie Lee Gifford won’t be reading it.
“I am a person that tends to take a negative and turn it into a positive,” Ripa said on a recent episode of the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, per People. Ripa replaced Gifford on Live! in 2001 as Regis Philbin’s cohost; in her memoir, per Page Six, Ripa said that Philbin referred to her as “it” on set. She added that they were not friends outside of work.
Reacting to headlines about Ripa’s characterization of her and Philbin’s relationship, Gifford said, “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."
As for Ripa, she sees any brouhaha as free publicity. “It's really hard to sell a book, right? And this is, like, week three of the book, right? And I mean, honestly, I’m not gonna 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,” she said of the dustup around Gifford. “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.”
“It’s like really hard to get attention on a book that’s been out for a couple of weeks, and now it’s week two, second week on The New York Times Best Sellers list. It’s like, thank you, because I think that people that read the book will have a very different take on the book,” she added.
Kelly Ripa also added an aphorism that, frankly, I think we should all use when people get snobby or uppity or otherwise precious about their reading materials: “You don't have to read every book. Nobody has to read every book on earth.” That’s true!
