Kelly Ripa Admits She Was Never Wearing Pants While Hosting ‘Live’ from Home During the Pandemic

Kelly Ripa says she hosted ‘Live’ from home without pants during the pandemic and snacked on Grape-Nuts between commercial breaks.

Disney/ Lorenzo Bevilaqua

NEED TO KNOW

Kelly Ripa revealed she hosted Live from home during the pandemic wearing a blouse but no pants

She admitted to secretly eating Grape-Nuts cereal off-camera while broadcasting remotely from her home

Ripa joked about preferring dark, low-lit restaurants to avoid getting ready again after early mornings on set

Kelly Ripa is revealing just how comfortable she got while hosting Live from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the Thursday, Aug. 20 episode of Live with Kelly and Mark, the longtime host, 55, and husband Mark Consuelos were discussing how the pandemic turned more people into homebodies as working, shopping and other everyday activities increasingly moved online.

For Ripa, however, staying home was never a hard sell. “Some of us have been homebodies all of our lives,” she said, proudly declaring herself one.

When Consuelos, 55, pointed out that the pandemic led many people to begin working from home for the first time, Ripa recalled one particularly freeing aspect of broadcasting remotely.

“I loved doing the show without pants on,” she admitted. “Guess what? While you were watching the show and we were shooting from a computer screen, I had a blouse on top and nothing on the bottom.”

And that wasn’t all she had just out of view of the camera. She went on to explain that she was sneaking cereal, too, with “a bowl of Grape-Nuts clutched in between my thighs.”

“We would go to commercial break and I would be Grape-Nutting it, and then, back to air,” she said. “It was great!”

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Ripa began broadcasting Live with Kelly and Ryan remotely alongside then-cohost Ryan Seacrest in March 2020, with the pair hosting the daytime show from their respective homes amid the pandemic.

While she kept her pants-free routine secret at the time, Ripa was open with viewers about another behind-the-scenes reality. Throughout the early months of the pandemic, she kept up a running commentary about trying to maintain her signature blonde hair without access to her usual salon appointments.

The Emmy winner dubbed the saga “root watch,” regularly documenting her growing gray roots on social media as the weeks in quarantine ticked by. By May 2020, she had reached “#rootwatch week 8” and told viewers that she had resorted to using hair clips — which she sprayed brown — to keep the more wiry gray strands under control while appearing on camera.

“Gray hair has a different texture. Anyone with gray hair can tell you, it’s very wired. It tends to stand up,” she explained on Live at the time, adding of her makeshift solution, “These little clips, and you can see I’ve sprayed them brown too, these little clips really, like, hold the gray.”

Eventually, Ripa turned the progression of her roots into her own version of the viral “2020 calendar” meme, sharing photos of her hair month by month.

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More than six years later, Ripa may have access to professional hair care again, but her enthusiasm for leaving the house hasn’t exactly returned.

During a discussion on Thursday’s Live about the importance of getting out of the house and interacting with others, Ripa admitted she when she leaves the house to eat, she wants the restaurant can match her dream conditions.

“I want it dark,” she said, explaining that after waking up at 5 a.m. and wearing “harsh” studio makeup for work, she has little interest in getting ready all over again for a night out.“As long as the restaurant has no lighting. I want it dark like a bat cave. I want to go in there, I want people to really struggle to see. A candle. I want to be able to wear comfortable clothes.”

Then she summed up her ideal night out: “In other words, I want to stay at home and eat in my bedroom.”

Live with Kelly and Mark airs weekdays in syndication (check local listings). The show is currently on its summer hiatus, with new “host chat” segments airing alongside repackaged interviews. New episodes return on Tuesday, Sept. 8.

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