In light of April Fool’s Day, Kelly Ripa took some time on this morning’s Live with Kelly and Mark to rehash some past pranks of hers.
“Hey! Good morning,” Mark Consuelos greeted viewers. “April 1, 2024. Or is it?”
While Ripa eventually told Consuelos that she’s “not a prank person,” she chuckled as she recalled an on-set “prank war” she engaged in with Ted McGinley, one of her co-stars from the 2000s sitcom Hope & Faith.
After Consuelos asked what they did to each other, Ripa exclaimed, “He started it, to be clear!”
She proceeded to share that McGinley was “convinced that any amount of refuse left on the set of Hope& Faith was [hers].”
“For some reason, he thought that I just left trash everywhere. Which I didn’t!” she insisted. “It’s a set with a lot of people on it. But he would find a coffee cup, and he was convinced it was my coffee cup. And so one day, he just put all of the trash he found on the set in my dressing room.”
Of course, Ripa wouldn’t back down without a fight.
“So, not to be outdone, I was working with live animals on the set, and there were like some goats and some sheep and stuff,” she said. “And I said to one of the prop guys, ‘Do me a favor’ — because they were cleaning up after the animals — and I go, ‘Put that in Ted’s dressing room.’ And he did.”
Consuelos asked, “And then?”
Ripa replied, “So then Ted put a bucket of slime in my dressing room, and a bucket that when I opened the door, it came crashing down on my head.”
She claimed she “smelled a rat” ahead of time, so she ultimately “sent somebody in” her place, “and they got drenched.”
Consuelos quipped, “And is that where it stopped?”
Ripa confirmed, “that’s when it stopped,” noting “that’s when [they] really got into trouble.”
“But I still wait for him to come to town,” she teased.
However, Consuelos, who appeared as Gary ‘The Gooch’ Suarez in 10 episodes of the series, clarified that the prank war took place during September, not anywhere close to April Fool’s. Ripa responded, “April Fool’s had nothing to do with this.” She then remembered one more prank of McGinley’s she fell victim to.
“Oh, I forgot, he put onions — raw onions in my purse!” she revealed.
Live with Kelly and Mark airs on weekdays. Check out their website for your local listing.