Kelly Ripa is returning to prime-time TV on Friday, the popular television host announced Friday morning on Instagram in a teaser video for her appearance on ABC comedy American Housewife.
According to IMDB , Ripa played “Whitney” on the ABC comedy, which premiered in 2016. Since 2018, she has beein a total of four episodes but the first three credits of Ripa’s “Whitney” were voice credits. Friday night’s episode will be the first time fans get to see Ripa’s likeness on the show.
Per Variety , Ripa was first cast on American Housewife last year as “Whitney,” the boss Katy Mixon’s “Katie” at the event planning company the show’s main character works. It seems like the characters will finally come face-to-face for the first time on the Friday night episode, a year after it was announced that Ripa would guest star on the show.
“This job is crushing my soul,” Mixton, as “Katie,” says in the trailer Ripa posted to her Instagram Friday before a narrator announced that “Katie” will finally meet her boss, portrayed by Ripa. It doesn’t look like the face-to-face meeting between “Katie” and “Whitney” will alleviate any tension between them, as Ripa’s over-the-top character makes jabs about Mixton’s appearance, even suggesting at one point in the episode trailer that she should get botox and that her face showed “too much expression.”
Ripa invited fans to watch the episode to see what the buzz surrounding the popular comedy was about.
Fans of the daytime television talkshow host, who has hosted the nationally syndicated Live! talkshow in its many various formats since 2001, were excited to see Ripa back on prime-time television.
“Best show!,” one user wrote. “Kelly will kill it!”
“You should have you own sitcom,” another user said. “I loved Hope and Faith.”
Prior to her current well-known role as a daytime television host, Ripa was known for her other role on daytime television, on ABC’s long-running soap All My Children. Per IMDB, Ripa portrayed Hayley Vaughan from 1990 to 2001, and the television personality briefly reprised her role as the soap neared its end on ABC in 2010. Ripa met the husband and father to her four children, actor Mark Consuelos, while they starred opposite each other on the since-cancelled ABC daytime drama.
Although fans might be used to seeing her in the morning alongside Live co-host Ryan Seacreast (and formerly Michael Strahan and Regis Philbin), Ripa hasn’t quite hung up her acting hat. From 2003 to 2006, Ripa starred on Hope & Faith as titular character Faith. Since that show ended, Ripa has primarily played fictitious versions of herself on various programs from Hannah Montana to 30 Rock and Broad City.
As The Inquisitr previously reported, Ripa revealed on Friday’s episode of Live with Kelly and Ryan a funny situation between her and her co-host in which Seacrest seemed to accidentally send a message about a gift he was sending to her instead of to his own office as he had intended.
American Housewife airs Friday at 8 on ABC.