Over 10 years since their hit show What Not To Wear stopped airing on TLC, hosts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly reunited on-screen for the very first time today with some big news.
The duo met with Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager to discuss their public feud and what it took for them to finally reconcile after years of brewing tensions behind the scenes. As Kelly and London put it, they were ultimately “chained” to each other for the 10 years they spent working 16-hour days on the show.
“We both grew up on What Not To Wear, [but] we handled fame a little bit differently,” London recalled. “Clinton was maybe a bit more mature about it than I was, I really found it very nerve-wracking.”
After the show ended, their feud made headlines when Kelly announced that London had blocked him on Twitter, for no apparent reason. But according to London, she chose to block him after reading news coverage about what he wrote about her in his memoir I Hate Everyone, Except You. In one instance, Kelly wrote, “There’s a part of me that will love Stacy London forever, and a part of me that would be just fine if I never saw her again for the rest of my life.” In another, he wrote, “I either adored her or despised her, and never anything in between.”
“I read the clickbait, I didn’t read the book,” London admitted, referring to the amount of coverage the surprising passages received at the time. “So when I saw the clickbait, I was definitely hurt and it was hard to reconcile that.”
Kelly was the first to reach out near the end of the pandemic.
“I can’t take this anymore because we don’t really hate each other, we love each other as a matter of fact, we have very strong feelings toward each other. So I reached out to Stacy… and we had a really emotional conversation,” Kelly recalled.
But he maintained that what he wrote in his book “was the truth.” He said, “Stacy knows it, I know it, everyone who worked on What Not To Wear knows we had a love-hate relationship. So it was my personal truth that I wanted to put out in the world.” Kelly also expressed that the passages were taken out of context and didn’t account for how difficult working on the show was, a topic he spoke about at length in his book and on Today.
London recalled experiencing “a really tough time” after Season 5 that led to a moment of clarity for her. She explained that she was thinking about returning to work for the new season and kept thinking about the colleagues she didn’t want to see again.
“I was like, wait, what was the common denominator here? I’m the one who’s saying I don’t want to see anybody, could I potentially be the problem?” she recalled. “It was a moment of real clarity and real shame.” She said she wrote letters to Kelly and other colleagues of theirs on What Not To Wear, “apologizing for my behavior and recognizing my part in creating that environment.”
But Kelly said reconciling with London has “been amazing,” explaining, “It feels like a giant weight has been lifted off my shoulders.” He later said they were in a great place now in their relationship. “Now we have this great chemistry. We make each other laugh, we finish each other’s sentences. Why don’t we share this with everyone?”
Kelly and London are now taking their infamous partnership on the road with The Stacy & Clinton Show, a live show series in which they’ll dish on “lots of goss,” share stories from their TLC days, and share “updated style advice” with their audiences.
But there might be another television show in their future. “You want to do a TV show with me someday?” Kelly asked London on Today, to which she responded with a high-five.
Today with Jenna and Hoda airs on weekdays at 10/9c on NBC.