Kelly Ripa Can't Be Trusted in Serious Situations as She Gets the 'Tragedy Giggles': 'Please Don't Suffer Any Ailment in Front of Me'

On the Tuesday, May 12, episode of Live With Kelly and Mark, Kelly Ripa admitted she’s not exactly the person you want around during a crisis.

While discussing reports that Broadway audiences have been laughing at inappropriate moments during serious productions, Ripa confessed she suffers from what she called the “tragedy giggles.”

“Maybe it’s nervous laughter,” Ripa suggested after Mark Consuelos brought up complaints about theatergoers laughing during dramatic plays.

Consuelos noted he hadn’t experienced the issue himself despite recently seeing Death of a Salesman, which stars the couple's son Joaquin, 23. “No one’s laughing during the pretty serious moments,” he said.

Ripa then revealed the awkward trait runs in the family.

“Well, I have the tragedy giggles, and we have a child that inherited that from me,” she explained. “So you don’t want to sit in between us at a funeral because we truly find the absurd.”

The daytime star elaborated that emotional speeches can sometimes trigger uncontrollable laughter.

“Sometimes people will speak poetically about the departed, and it always leads to tragedy giggles,” she admitted. “It’s bad.”

Ripa even recalled being separated from Live producer Alyssa Shapiro at funerals because the two couldn’t keep it together.

“She and I sat next to each other at a couple of funerals, and people were like, ‘Okay, you two can’t sit next to each other,’” she joked.

Consuelos later referenced an article about audience behavior during Death of a Salesman, in which one theatergoer complained a woman “kept laughing at odd moments.”

Ripa quickly reassured her husband his own stage production of Fallen Angels on Broadway shouldn't have the same issue.

“Well, your show is a 90-minute laugh,” she told him.

“Please laugh,” Consuelos replied. “We’re depending on you guys to laugh.”

“You don’t have to ask,” Ripa responded. “It’s really funny.”

Elsewhere in the episode, the couple hilariously circled back to Ripa’s “tragedy giggles” while discussing a CPR instructor who suffered a real cardiac arrest during class.

Consuelos explained that instructor Karl Harps had been pretending to experience chest pain while testing his EMT students when he unexpectedly went into cardiac arrest for real. The students reportedly sprang into action, performing chest compressions, retrieving a defibrillator and calling 911 — ultimately saving his life.

Ripa admitted she likely would have initially assumed the entire ordeal was part of the lesson.

“I would have thought he was joking,” she confessed, before spiraling into hypothetical scenarios about where the instructor was in his lesson plan when the emergency happened.

Consuelos teased his wife about her tendency to laugh during tense situations. “You would have gotten the tragedy giggles,” he told her.

“I would have gotten the tragedy giggle,” Ripa agreed. “Please don’t suffer any ailment in front of me.”