Live host Kelly Ripa had a great job and a gorgeous family, but apparently even the most successful stars can hold a grudge.
As Ripa's former co-host revealed in a new interview, the pair are still not on speaking terms almost three years after Strahan left their show to host Good Morning America.
"I haven't spoken to her in a long time," Strahan, 47, told the magazine. "I learned through all that went down with that, you can't convince people to like you."
While Ripa has yet to respond to Strahan's interview, she undeniably has a few good reasons to stay ticked off at Strahan.
In 2016, he suddenly broke the news that he was ditching Live to host GMA, and Ripa took several days off without explanation. Apparently, her co-host had not shared his decision with her beforehand.
When Ripa came back the next week, she said that she had "earned the right" to "gather [her] thoughts" after 26 years with ABC.
"I think that all people are deserving of fair treatment in the workplace," she later said about Strahan giving her the cold shoulder. "People deserve respect."
At the time of his departure, Stahan told People that he was disappointed to be "painted as the bad guy, because I value the way I carry myself. I don't want people to see me as 'Oh, he just ran out, just left them there.' That's just not true."
But Strahan also admitted his relationship with Ripa was strained behind the scenes.
"Toward the end of it all, we didn't really communicate that much," he said. "I kinda looked at it like, 'It was what it was.' I come from a business where you have to collaborate. The show was going well? We're all winning. That's all that matters to me."
Ripa gave her side of the story in a separate People interview, and revealed Strahan had hurt her by withholding his plans to leave the show.
"After 26 years, at this point we are like a family. And sometimes when you are so comfortable with somebody, you may not give them the same consideration as somebody you're not as comfortable with "“ a certain formality falls away."
But she also seemed more willing to forgive Strahan years ago. "People make mistakes," she said, "and we're all human."
In his recent interview, Strahan also said he has no regrets about the way he handled his departure.
"I handled it as professional as you can handle it and I have been a professional from day one there to the last day I left," he insisted.
A string of guest hosts replaced Strahan before Ryan Seacrest finally settled into Ripa's left hand seat in 2017, where he has remained ever since.
Ripa may have had the last laugh, as these days Strahan is hosting GMA's third hour show GMA Day in the early afternoons. The show's ratings just don't hold a candle to Live, consistently trailing Ripa's show by more than a million viewers.
