Kelly Ripa let rip after an Instagram user likened her to a “cardboard cutout,” clapping back at the user and maintaining that she’s “pretty exciting.”
The online back-and-forth played out in the comments of a Thursday, August 8, post by Jerry O’Connell, who hyped up the Live! With Kelly and Ryan host’s upcoming appearance on his new talk show, Jerry O.
“My friend @Kellyripa is my first guest! Submit your questions for Kelly in the comments and I may ask her your question on Monday, during the premiere of the @jerryoshow!” the Stand By Me actor, 45, wrote. (Other upcoming guests on the show include O’Connell’s wife, Rebecca Romijn, plus Parks and Recreation star Retta.)
That’s when the user chimed in, writing, “Why? There are so many interesting people out there who don’t already have way too much time on tv, why her (or any other cardboard cutout tv person like seacrest etc.) Even you can’t transcend the boringness of that kind of guest. Cruel disappointment.”
Ripa, 48, saw the disparaging comment and addressed the user directly. “Well Vanessa, it’s August, so non cardboard cutout tv people are in Italy,” she wrote. “And truth be told, I’m pretty exciting.”
But the user continued the critique: “I don’t even watch much TV anymore, and when I watch a talk show, I consider it in very bad form for the show to grind down the audience with ‘visiting hosts’ from other shows I purposely did not tune into. It’s not personal: you’re surely as delightful a person as you were when you started with Regis and I did like you very much then: you just appear too much, like Seacrest, and, like him, with no film or book or platform or talent other than standing in a spotlight, and you’re too professional not to know that. IMO.”
O’Connell’s friendship with Ripa goes way back: He joined her as a guest co-host in multiple episodes of Live! With Kelly during the talk show’s transition periods, and he interviewed her last year as he subbed in a guest host of The Wendy Williams Show.
Jerry O premieres Monday, August 12. Check local listings for airtimes.
