After Mark Consuelos skipped several episodes of Live With Kelly and Mark last week, Kelly Ripa is enjoying some time off of her own.
Ripa was noticeably missing from the daytime talk show’s Monday, August 4, episode, which was prerecorded. In her absence, Nobody Wants This star Jackie Tohn joined Consuelos at the hosting desk.
“Tune in tomorrow 8/4 at 9am (check ur local listies)… but only if you’re into watching me have one of the best days of my life,” she captioned an Instagram clip of herself and Consuelos making their show entrance on Sunday, August 3.
She reposted the video via her Instagram Story, joking, “I’M KELLY RIPA NOW* *(for tomorrow. for one day. which is tomorrow.)”
Viewers weighed in on Tohn’s hosting performance via social media. “Jackie was a great co-host!! She’s amazing! Such a natural! You must have her co-host again!!!” one user wrote on the show’s Facebook page on Monday. Another added, “Great show, great co-host. I found it refreshing that she could talk fast and didn’t take forever to get a story out.”
Sharing a different opinion, a third user commented, “The guest co host she talked so fast I couldn’t keep up to what she was saying and really wasn’t giving Mark a chance to talk.” A separate user shared, “Didn’t care for her too over zealous!”
Consuelos did not address the reason for his wife’s absence, though he missed the majority of Live‘s episodes last week to work on a new TV show in Los Angeles. Jerry O’Connell filled in for him on the show’s Tuesday, July 29, episode, followed by David Muir on Wednesday, July 30, Carson Kressley on Thursday, July 31, and Steve Patterson on Friday, August 1.
Around this time last year, Ripa missed Live for her “annual summer vacation,” per Decider, and she traveled to California to receive the title of Disney Legend at the D23 Expo. “Congrats to the newest @Disney legend, Kelly!” Live’s official X page captioned photos of Ripa posing with Mickey Mouse, Consuelos, and their daughter, Lola, at the event.
Ahead of her current absence, Ripa recalled how Consuelos was hesitant to join Live as her permanent cohost on the Thursday episode of Kylie Kelce’s Not Gonna Lie podcast. “He’s like, ‘No, it’s fun to do [it] once in a while, because it’s only once in a while,’” she shared. “But then, I sort of said, ‘It’s so great. It’s so much easier than doing a soap. It’s such a finite amount of time, and you can still go off and have a full life.’ And so, I think that has made it really easy.”
She continued, “The best thing about hosting a talk show together is people are like, ‘You guys, what happens, aren’t you worried about if you have an argument and then you have to go on the air?’ And I’m like, ‘We have arguments on the air.’ And it’s great to have an argument on the air because your audience becomes your counselors and they will let you know who is wrong and who is right. Spoiler alert, I’m usually right.”
After guest hosting several times over the years, Consuelos joined the series full-time in 2023 following the departure of Ripa’s former cohost, Ryan Seacrest.
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