Welcome to They Did What, where we talk in too much detail about celebrity escapades.
Not everything about Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’s life appeals to me. For example, I would not like to work with my husband every day — as the couple will be doing this year as co-hosts on the morning show formerly known as Live with Kelly and Ryan. Especially when said role involves waking up at 5:30 a.m.
However, it does seem cool that Ripa is so into her husband that she invited him to be her first guest on her new podcast, Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa. (She introduced him as “Emmy-nominated actor, father of my children, as far as he knows.”) The first episode, out this week, made headlines thanks to a comment from Ripa that was both revealing and a bit of a head-scratching moment. “We had sexual rituals that were so ludicrous, over FaceTime,” she said of being apart early in the pandemic because he was filming on location. I wish she had said more, but she did not, leaving me with no option but to wonder if she meant, like, Satanic rituals or a couple of little pats on the butt.
Otherwise, the podcast is pretty tame, though it’s very charming. Ripa and Consuelos discuss marriage counseling (their actual counselor makes an appearance) and deal-breakers (Consuelos agrees that if she “cut [him] off sexually” that might be the last straw).
Ripa actually talks pretty often about her sex life, so this is par for the course. Once, on Watch What Happens Live, she told Andy Cohen she and Consuelos had sex in his Fire Island rental — as well as in a public bathroom, on a boat, and on the set of All My Children, where they met. In Ripa’s 2022 book, Live Wire, she writes that she passed out while having sex with Consuelos (due to two large cysts, yikes). During one episode of Live with Kelly and Ryan, she referred to their sex life as “freaky.” It speaks to one of the reasons Ripa is so popular — her frank comments and obvious affection for her husband are relatable and small-a aspirational. It is a wholesome kind of horniness, almost family-friendly in its quotidian nature. May they bone forever. ●
