Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagicThere's a reason why you've spent today thinking, "Why doesn't Jimmy Kimmel join Kelly Ripa full-time? He already hosts a show with Live in the title, after all!"
Though you already know that the answer is, "because the New York native hosts a late-night show and makes his home in Los Angeles now," the chemistry was indeed real this morning when Jimmy co-hosted Live! 's first show since Michael Strahan's departure last week.
"I'm like the ex-boyfriend you go back to for sex after you break up with your husband," Jimmy joked on Live! this morning, referring to the fact that he was also her first guest co-host when Regis Philbin left the show in 2011. "That's so true, I throw up my little bat signal and here you are," Kelly laughed.
And while Kelly is based in New York and Jimmy's in L.A. (though when she's out there she usually does Jimmy's show and he was the main speaker when she got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last October), they manage to maintain an interstate squad.
Jimmy is of course longtime close friends with Howard Stern, who has a vacation home in Southampton, as does Kelly and her hubby, Mark Consuelos. When Howard married Beth Ostrosky in 2008, Mark was the one who officiated.
"At a certain point I felt like the mother of the bride because I was carrying the marriage certificate in my purse all night," Kelly recalled to Regis Philbin on that incarnation of Live! at the time.
Howard, meanwhile, took major issue last week when his commentary on the behind the scenes drama between Kelly, Michael and Live! management was taken out of context and turned into a headline about him criticizing Kelly.
Moreover, Jimmy stopped by The Howard Stern Show this morning before reporting for duty at what is once again Live! With Kelly and Howard supplied Jimmy with all sorts of inappropriate questions to ask Kelly on air.
"He gave me a list of about 75 questions to ask you," Jimmy admitted to Kelly first thing this a.m., "and I told him I would ask some of them."
For the record, Kelly always does the show with panties on. "Today I wore two pairs," she offered.
And the hour was delightful, showing that—while Kelly and Michael were consummate pros for most of their short, post-scandal time together—there's something to be said for co-hosts being real-deal friends behind the scenes.
And the squad doesn't stop at the aforementioned six.
In fact, the fold also includes John Krasinski and Emily Blunt and Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux, both of which couples have vacationed in Cabo San Lucas together with Jimmy and Molly and Howard and Beth.
Howard even spoke at Jen and Justin's super-private weekday wedding last year.
"I got up and I bitched that they took away my cell phone when I came in," he joked on his own show about the top-secret nuptials.
Kelly, Mark, Jen, Justin, Howard and Beth were all there, in turn, to watch Jimmy marry Molly back in 2013. Jimmy, John and Emily were all at Jen's 46th birthday party at their L.A. home last year as well.
And thanks to Howard for getting Jimmy to open up a little bit more about an interesting idea.
"Well, I have my show, you know," he said laughingly on Stern when asked if he'd actually be interested in the Live! job full-time. "I don't know, if I lived here and I was around it would be a fun job to have."
Asked if he would ever do both shows from New York, he adamantly said, "No, I don't think it's [possible]...With my job [in late-night] that's it. There's nothing else you can do. It's all day, it's all night, it's relentless."
But he's always happy to help out a friend like Kelly when he can.
"I think a co-host like you is like a vacation day for me because you are so good at what you do. There is nobody better. There is nobody better on TV than you," she gushed to Jimmy this morning. "That is nice of you to say, I feel the same way about you," Jimmy replied. A few minutes later he added that she was "genuinely the nicest person" he knows in show business. Kelly, in turn, told Jimmy he had the most beautiful family.
Not a bad way for Kelly's latest Live! chapter to begin.