Kelly Ripa regrets not addressing the Regis Philbin rumors sooner

During her appearance on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,” Kelly opened up about her relationship with her late co-host and the drama that ensued after his exit, after saying the two never spoke after his departure and never did were invited again.

“I wish I had set the record straight in real time,” Kelly revealed, still getting hatred for her alleged behavior towards Regis.

She continued, “I really trusted the people around me, all my ‘advisers’ — I don’t even know what that means, but people kept telling me, ‘Take the main road, take the main road, truth it is doesn’t really matter… People say all kinds of things that aren’t true, why bother you at all? Who cares?

In her new book, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, Ripa describes her side of things with Philbin.

She told host Andy Cohen that since she’s hated by the Regis rumors, she expects people to boycott her book.

“By letting it hang out there,” she said of not addressing things at the time. “There are people who say, ‘I’ll never read this book because you’re only trashing Regis’ and it’s the opposite of that.”

“I don’t trash Regis… and I carefully wrote every single word of this book and it was tough and those chapters were the hardest in an overall tough process for me,” she added. “As a woman, we are often [told] to take the main road and that’s woman slang for ‘shut the f–k up’. That’s it and that’s what it means.”

In 2017, Philbin appeared on OraTV’s Larry King Now and spoke about why he believed the relationship between the two had gone sour after he eventually left the show and retired in 2011. When asked if he had kept in touch with Ripa at the time, he said, “Not really, no.”

“She was very offended when I left. She thought I was going because of her,” Philbin told King. “I left because I was getting older and it wasn’t right for me anymore.”

He also claimed the show “never” asked him back on the show after he left.

However, Ripa previously said she believes the show has “reached back many times” to have him show up – and he did in 2015.

Meanwhile, after working with a number of co-hosts during her reign on daytime television, Ripa also shared who she would have picked before Ryan Seacrest signed on for Live with Kelly and Ryan.

The 51-year-old TV personality revealed a few seconds she had in mind if given the opportunity to choose her co-host.

“I love my ACs, of course, but they have jobs,” Kelly said, referring to Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper, before mentioning her husband, Mark Consuelos. “My MC who I love but he also had a job. At that time he was working in California and then in Vancouver.”

According to Ripa, she has little say in the selection process: “It’s such a deep discussion and it actually has so little to do with me,” she confessed.

Cohen reminded her of her previous interest in working with a female co-host, which is an option Ripa says she immediately decided on.

“I would have had a wife immediately. Like I said, it’s a decision that’s not… I’m not making that decision,” she admitted. “But I’ve always found the idea of ​​two women hosting a show very appealing.”

“That way they can share the blame,” she joked.

Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories is available now.