Live! With Kelly and Michael Audience Boos Michael Strahan's Departure

Kelly Ripa reveals there will be a farewell special for the co-host

By Francesca Bacardi, Callie Marx May 03, 2016 3:39 PMTags
Kelly Ripa, Michael StrahanABC

The audience at Live! With Kelly and Michael isn't happy with co-host Michael Strahan's decision to leave the morning talk show.

Kelly Ripa acknowledged Strahan's departure during Tuesday morning's episode, which didn't sit well with the fans. "A week from this Friday is Michael's final show here at Live!," said Ripa, 45, which led to booing from the audience.

"We still love you, Kelly!" shouted one person sitting in the audience.

"Thanks, I'm still here!" Ripa said with a laugh.

Strahan's last day is Friday, May 13, so the show will be hosting a special farewell episode in his honor before he officially starts full time at Good Morning America in the fall. "We'll remember. We'll reminisce. We're going to look back at the fun times we've had together—wait till you see all the stuff that we've done, you're not going to believe it," she said to Strahan. "So join us for Michael's Flashback Friday Farewell on Friday the 13th."

She then laughed about the irony of the date and added, "You can't plan this! You literally cannot plan it."

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for GQ

Is that more shade being thrown?

Sources tell E! News that while Strahan and Ripa seemed to have gotten over the drama that took place over the past few weeks, there is still lingering tension on set. "The spark was missing...You can tell there's a sadness in Kelly, after working with someone for so long," an insider says, adding, "but you can tell she's just trying to put on a smile and put forward the best show"

When the show wasn't taping, Ripa and Strahan interacted and took photos with members of the audience, but never together. "It didn't seem like they were avoiding each other but kept their distance for sure," another source tells us. "They went separate ways during commercial breaks."

Monday the co-hosts celebrated their Daytime Emmys win, and both said the victory caught them off guard because they found out from their friends. "I find when we tend to not go we tend to win," Kelly joked of their absence from the Los Angeles awards show.

Let the countdown to Strahan's departure begin.

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