Kelly Ripa Admits She 'Wouldn't Have Done' 'Live With Regis And Kelly' If She Knew About Behind-The-Scenes Dynamics

Ripa’s reflections! TV maven Kelly Ripa got candid this week about her decades-spanning career, revealing that her time on television may have looked very different in hindsight.

During a recent appearance on the "Not Skinny But Not Fat" podcast, the star shared that she would have thought twice about joining her eponymous aughts morning program, Live with Regis and Kelly, if she had known about the behind-the-scenes tension that would ensue with her beloved cohost, the late Regis Philbin.

"When you're a new person joining a well-established show and a well-oiled machine, and if you read the book, you know this,” Ripa recalled during the podcast’s most recent installment, referencing her new memoir, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories.

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“I take his side in this entire argument," she continued, stating that Philbin, who passed away in 2020 at age 88, “should not have had to have a host assigned to him.”

“That's not fair,” she quipped. “He paid his dues and he established this show, and I really advocate for him in this book."

Beyond Philbin’s strong reputation, Ripa, 52, shared that her age difference with her former costar made their dynamic “hard,” especially as "two strangers from two completely different generations.”

"It's like very, very divergent people coming together into this workplace,” the producer recalled. “I felt for him because he was so famous and was so well-established.”

Though the LIVE with Kelly and Ryan host revealed that she “can’t answer” whether Philbin would have preferred to anchor the morning program on his own, Ripa quipped that while she noticed how audiences “related” to her, she "didn't feel like [she] added anything to him at the beginning,"

"He certainly didn't need me there,” she admitted.

As such, Ripa said she’d rethink joining the series if she had known how her time on the show would play out.

"I wouldn't have done it. No," the blonde beauty confessed. "If I had known going in, I wouldn't have done it,” describing the revelation as “sad.”

“Luckily, ignorance is bliss ... that saying is true,” the morning television staple continued. “Ignorance is bliss. I didn't know that there was so much in fighting between these two factions and that I was considered like, a network girl, which is so ridiculous. I was one of a 40-member ensemble cast on a soap opera. So I didn't consider myself an anything of anything. I considered myself just an actor."

Ripa’s latest comments come just weeks after the soap star sparked headlines for speaking about her “forced” friendship with the late TV legend.

"I had and still have enormous respect, admiration and reverence for Regis," Ripa explained shortly after her memoir hit shelves in September.

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"I, like most of the viewing public, felt like I knew him, but to expect two people from such different generations to have some sort of weird, forced friendship when they never knew each other is a very strange thing to put on one person,” the star continued. “It was only put on one person and that is how I describe it [in the book]."