Kathie Lee Gifford 'Not Going To Read' Kelly Ripa's New Memoir

While many people have been reading Kelly Ripa's new memoir "Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories," Ripa's "Live!" predecessor, Kathie Lee Gifford said she won't be. During a recent interview with Fox 5's Rosanna Scotto, Gifford, 69, said, "I was very sorry to see the headlines. You know, you never know what’s true and what’s not true. I went, ‘I hope this isn’t true. I just hope it isn’t.’ Cause what’s the point? I don’t get it. I don’t get it."

In the new book, Ripa, 52, opened up about her relationship with Regis Philbin, who she co-hosted the show with from 2001 through 2011. Philbin passed away at the age of 88 in July 2020. Ripa revealed in the book that there was a power struggle between the two and said they weren't really close in real life. "My name had to be smaller than Regis' name on the 'Live!' title card and branding. A game of inches, which speaks for itself. But on that we agreed. Seniority, after all," she wrote in the book.

Gifford told Scotto that she doesn't plan to read the book and she just knows what her relationship with Philbin was like. "I'm not gonna read the book. I haven't read it. I don't even know if it's out yet," she said. "I just know what Regis was to me, Rosanna. He was 15 years the best partner I could ever have professionally. But he was my friend. We were dear friends and after I left the show...for the next 20 years we became better friends. Dearer friends." The last time Gifford saw Philbin was two weeks before his death. "That's the last time I heard Regis laugh," she said.

Gifford also explained that she never saw Philbin be "unkind" to anyone during the years she's known him. She said that the person in the book is not the person she knew. "In all the years I've known him, I never saw him unkind to anyone. I never did," she said. "I'm just saying my reality is something completely different from that."  She also said that she hopes that Philbin's widow, Joy, and his four children don't see any of the comments Ripa made in her book. "Lord, protect Joy and the girls from this," she said. When asked about Ripa, Gifford said, "I'm not going to say anything ugly about anybody.  I never have, and I'm not going to start now."

Ripa explained in the book that when she accepted the job as Philbin's cohost, she was informed that he was her "boss" and she wasn't allowed to bring "an entourage" to set with her. She wrote about the time she arrived with hair and makeup artists and Philbin allegedly told an executive producer, "Uh-oh...it's got an entourage." Ripa wrote, "I felt horrible. He was probably trying to be funny, but at the same time it felt like a pile-on." She also wrote about the possibility that Philbin didn't want a cohost. "I understand that probably he didn't want a cohost, but the network wanted me to be the cohost and I didn't think I should pass up that opportunity," she explained. "I don't think it was fair to him. But it was also not fair to me."