“Our long national nightmare is over,” Kelly Ripa joked in an equal parts awkward and emotional return to Live With Kelly and Michael this morning. Unless you’ve been far off the grid, you know that it was Ripa’s first morning back on the air in a week, after Disney and ABC executives reportedly blindsided her with the news that her cohost, Michael Strahan, was departing for a full-time gig on Good Morning America. Ripa walked onstage hand in hand with Strahan, flashing a requisite daytime-TV smile, but in an address to the audience, standing apart from Strahan and their shared desk, Ripa didn’t apologize for her absence. “I needed a couple of days to gather my thoughts,” she said. “After 26 years with this company, I earned the right.”
Ripa softened the point with a joke—“Let’s be honest. I know half of you called in sick to be here, so we get each other”—but she did not sweep the saga under the rug. It was the second time Ripa had been boxed out of the news that her cohost was stepping down: Regis Philbin’s departure was reportedly handled similarly. In her slightly scripted speech, Ripa suggested it wouldn’t be happening again. What transpired “has been extraordinary in the sense that it started a much greater conversation about communication and consideration and, most importantly, respect in the workplace,” she said through pursed lips. “Apologies have been made,” she added, and “our parent company has assured me that Live is a priority.”
Ripa didn’t have to say it plainly, but make no mistake, she is using her much-watched, highly anticipated moment in the spotlight to call out a notable trend of blocking women at work from high-level conversations. As pointed out by Time, Ripa isn’t the first female television host to be caught off guard by a network game of musical anchor chairs, but the latest in a “long history of disrespected female hosts and anchors,” including Ann Curry, Katie Couric, and Christiane Amanpour. For as much backlash as Ripa caught—for “diva” behavior for skipping a day at Live—her allusion to that “greater conversation” about “communication, consideration, and respect” was gripping TV, putting networks and studio executives on blast—on their own airwaves.
The same principle holds for the rest of us non–television hosts: Women who have been historically boxed out deserve to be included in inner-circle conversations. Communication is everything at work. What employee wants to be blindsided by the news of a promotion or demotion or restructuring? What boss wants to be the last to know that an employee is leaving for another job? Avoiding awkwardness in the short term only leads to a blowout in the long term. Ripa hadn’t been given a (well-deserved) seat at the table during Philbin’s or Strahan’s departure. Demanding one doesn’t make her a diva; it makes her a formidable employee.
