Kelly Ripa hints relationship with Regis Philbin was unlike Kathie Lee Gifford's due to age gap

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Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos leave their Upper East Side Apartment

Kelly Ripa avoids question regarding her characterization of Regis Philbin in her new book. (Credit: 247PapsOfficial/Splash News for Fox News Digital)

Kelly Ripa says the reason she did not have a great relationship with the late Regis Philbin could have been due to their age gap.

Ripa wrote about her working relationship with Philbin in her book, "Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories."

The television actress wrote that she was not given the same benefits as the men she was surrounded by, and told People, "there were good days and bad days… it was not a cakewalk." 

Ripa hosted the show alongside Philbin from 2001 until he retired in 2011.

Former "Live!" host Kathie Lee Gifford said she will not be reading Ripa's book, and explained to Fox News Digital that she did not have the same experience working with the late morning show host.

During her 10-year stint with Regis on "Live! With Regis and Kelly," Kelly Ripa said "there were good and bad days." (James Devaney/WireImage)

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Kathie Lee Gifford has criticized Kelly Ripa's book explaining she didn't have the same experience with Regis Philbin. (Peter Kramer/NBC)

"My experience with Regis was one of the greatest experiences of my entire life. I worked with him for 15 years," she explained to Fox News Digital. "We never had one unkind word between us."

However, Ripa noted that her relationship was different because she and Philbin came from "different generations."

"I had and still have enormous respect, admiration and reverence for Regis," Ripa told Entertainment Tonight about Philbin, who passed away in 2020. "I, like most of the viewing public, felt like I knew him, but to expect two people from such different generations to have some sort of weird, forced friendship when they never knew each other is a very strange thing to put on one person. It was only put on one person and that is how I describe it [in the book]."

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Kelly Ripa, seen in 2005, recently wrote in her memoir that her working relationship with Regis Philbin was not easy. (Gregory Pace)

The former "All My Children" star explained that the two had a "very professional working relationship" and noted that "used to be celebrated."

"That used to be a celebrated thing, but in this weird, gonzo, tabloid, let's pit the man against the woman world we live in, somehow that was strange and I was vilified," she told the outlet. "That’s why I address it in the book."

"We had a professional working relationship and that’s what we had and that’s OK, because we are from different generations, we had different friend groups and we had different professional backgrounds."

Kelly Ripa has landed on the New York Times Bestsellers list for the past two weeks. (Getty Images)

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Since Philbin's departure, Ripa has continued to host the show and has welcomed two different co-hosts. In 2012, she was joined by Michael Strahan. However, he abruptly left in 2016 and began hosting "Good Morning America."

Currently, Ripa hosts the show with Ryan Seacrest. The two recently celebrated five years of co-hosting together.

"It's a privilege," Ripa told Entertainment Tonight about hosting "Live!" "It's a privilege of doing this job that you get to be in the homes of people every day. It's a constant. Even though our show is very irreverent, there's a certain reverence that people are still [watching] all of these years later."

Ryan Seacrest became Kelly Ripa's co-host in 2017 following Michael Strahan's departure. (Astrid Stawiarz)

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