Kelly Ripa has reportedly spent her lockdown alongside husband Mark Consuelos and their three children in the Caribbean, where she’s been filming new episodes of Live with Kelly and Ryan . Though many fans believed the former soap-opera-actress turned TV host has been riding out the coronavirus at her home in New York , a new report has claimed that the star is actually somewhere sunnier.
According to People , Kelly, Mark, and their kids were on a family vacation in the Caribbean when the social distancing measures and stay-at-home orders were put in place in many countries across the globe in March. Rather than heading back to New York, which is the U.S. state most heavily affected by the pandemic, she, Mark, 22-year-old Michael, 18-year-old Lola, and 17-year-old Joaquin instead sheltered in place at their vacation destination.
The site claimed that Kelly — who recently hit back at trolls who called out her makeup skills on the daytime talk show — confessed during a virtual town hall meeting with ABC employees on May 21.
“We had planned a trip for our family, and it was supposed to be our entire family of course, and we arrive and three days later, the entire world changed, really. I mean, everything shut down; the government shut down; our country shut down,” Kelly said, according to People ‘s source who attended the virtual chat.
“I hate to use the word stuck, but we were. We decided to stay where we were,” Kelly added, though it’s not clear if the family has been staying at their own vacation home or at a resort.
“Lucky for us, we had our three children,” Kelly continued. She noted that both her and Mark’s parents were supposed to join them in the vacation destination the week after the lockdown was ordered, which she described as “distressing.”
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Kelly also opened up about why she and her Live co-host, Ryan Seacrest, felt it was important to carry on with the show every weekday morning despite her being so far away. She said they both decided it “would be the best thing for us” to bring a little bit of normalcy into everyone’s lives. The show ordinarily films in front of a live studio audience in New York City .
She added that she believes carrying on with the ABC daytime show remotely has been “a great benefit” for everyone, including viewers, to allow people to be together even while they have to be physically apart.
She said that being able to hear her director’s voice every morning before, during, and after the show has helped her feel a little more normal at such an uncertain time.
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Kelly also added during the chat that she’s “been most grateful” that she’s been able to ride out the global pandemic alongside her children, and noted that the rest of her family have been staying at their home in New York.
“We’re here and it’s very unsettling. I think people are unsettled everywhere, everywhere, across the country and across the globe,” Kelly said.
But while Kelly has yet to publicly confirm on the show that she and her immediate family have been sheltering in place in the Caribbean as the new report has claimed, she has dropped a few hints over the past few weeks to suggest they may not have been at her home in the U.S. as many fans assumed.
Earlier this month, she told Live viewers that she’d had to borrow makeup and clothing from her teenage daughter Lola after she admitted that she’d started to run out of her own.