Sometimes, TV hosts join forces and strike up a true friendship.
But other times, it goes in the complete opposite direction.
These are the tales of the co-hosts who wanted absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj didn't exactly click with each other when they served as
judges on Season 12 of American Idol. TMZ released a behind-the-scenes video of the
two of them verbally sparring at an Idol audition in 2012,
and feud rumors ensued. Deadline reported that they attempted to downplay their drama
at the American Idol TCA panel, but the toothpaste was already out of the tube.
Talk of conflict began before they were even on set together.
On a January 2013 episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Minaj said,
"Before I went in there [...] I heard them saying
'Mariah doesn't want you on the panel' but I was like, 'No. I am friends with Mariah.'
I was like arguing people down. Like, 'Don't believe everything you read, you're crazy.'"
But when it came time to film, Minaj claimed that she started noticing some shade.
She added that she couldn't hold a grudge against Carey, and that she didn't know
or care if the feeling was mutual. When Carey appeared on the Kyle and Jackie O show in 2015,
she called American Idol the worst experience of her life.
Kelly Osbourne and Giuliana Rancic had a messy falling-out after the 2015 Oscars
episode of Fashion Police. When Rancic saw a dreadlock-sporting Zendaya, she commented,
"I feel like she smells of patchouli oil. Or weed."
After the episode, Osbourne tweeted,
"I DID NOT MAKE THE WEED COMENT. I DO NOT CONDONE RACISM!"
She also noted that she was seriously considering leaving the show.
Rancic then apologized to Zendaya on E! News the day after the episode aired. That same week, it
was announced that Osbourne was indeed done with the show. Later that year, Osbourne told The Wrap,
"I will never admit to liking Giuliana because I
don’t. I don’t think she’s a good person and I think she’s a liar."
When the topic Rancic came up when Remix Magazine interviewed
Osbourne in October of that year, she said,
"People are responsible for their own words so I couldn't give a f--- about that."
It sounds like that feud is in the past,
though. When USA Today asked Osbourne about Rancic in 2017, she said,
"That has been given more than enough publicity.
I do not need to add any fuel to that fire. And it's not my life anymore."
In 2016, NeNe Leakes joined Fashion Police as a special co-host. But shortly thereafter,
Radar Online reported that she apparently wasn't getting along with her fellow hosts.
She addressed that story on Instagram as she wrote,
"Nene Leakes has been nothing but professional and nice to EVERYONE on
the set of Fashion Police! [...] If there are any problems, they are not from Nene Leakes!"
But that wasn't the end of that. The day the Radar Online report came out, Leakes shared her
side of the story with blogger B. Scott. She said that her Fashion Police co-stars didn't
talk to each other or catch up with one another during downtime. As she explained,
"Let me tell you what happens — when you arrive on set,
everybody goes to their dressing rooms. When they say 'come out',
everyone comes out and sits on the couch. There's no talking, no communication, nothing."
She added,
"What I do know is that I’ve been very kind to everyone on that set [...] Now,
I am not saying it has been reciprocated."
But it doesn't look like things stayed icy forever. In 2017,
Brad Goreski told The Daily Dish:
"We've become really good friends, and she's great to be on TV with."
Jenny McCarthy joined The View panel in 2013,
but she lasted as a co-host for only a year. And it doesn't sound like she managed to strike up
a friendship with series creator Barbara Walters during that time. The twists and
turns of their relationship are front and center in the 2019 book Ladies Who Punch:
The Explosive Inside Story of "The View." One notorious incident happened when Walters allegedly
demanded that McCarthy go flush someone else's tampon that was floating in the communal restroom.
According to McCarthy, Walters would regularly
single her out and demand that she change her clothes. She also shared,
"When I'd hear the shuffle of her feet, I knew that Barbara was after me. It would get faster.
Oh my God — she's coming! Based on the speed of the shuffle, I would hide or get on the phone."
It sounds like McCarthy's experience wasn't totally negative, though. In 2020,
she told Us Weekly that working with Walters was invaluable because of how
much she was able to learn from the TV veteran.
Also covered in Ladies Who Punch was the less-than-rosy dynamic
between Rosie O'Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg. In the book, O'Donnell said,
"I'm never going to not have respect for Whoopi Goldberg."
But she also added,
"Whoopi [...] was as mean as anyone has ever been on television to me,
personally — while I was sitting there."
On a May 2019 episode of Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,
Goldberg shared that she didn't read the book or speak with the author.
"I don't like talking out of school, and I don't like other people talking out of school."
"Rosie had some strong words about you. Is it- Is it-"
"That's okay."
"Right."
Following the release of Ladies Who Punch, O'Donnell went on Cohen's SiriusXM show,
where she talked some more about working with Goldberg. As she put it,
"I've known her for many, many years, and always looked up to her. So I was very surprised at
what went down. I thought we were going to be like Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan,
passing the ball back, throwing the layups up."
According to O'Donnell, there was tension surrounding her throwing
to commercial on her first day, and after that,
the ladies' working relationship never recovered. O'Donnell also noted,
"It was really very painful to me to feel how much she didn't like me."
Former child stars Raven-Symoné and Candace Cameron Bure shared The View stage for a time,
but they sure didn't share many views on life. During one particular 2015 episode,
the two found themselves at odds while discussing a story about a bakery
that refused to make a cake for a lesbian couple. Bure defended the bakery's decision,
and while Raven, herself a lesbian, said that it was discrimination. After Bure said
that people have a right to choose who they associate with, Raven interjected,
"I refuse to associate myself with you right now."
A few weeks later, Bure went on HuffPost Live and talked about the dustup,
as she shared that she was satisfied with the way she defended her beliefs. As she put it,
"I was pleased with, you know, how I handled myself."
It's hard to say for sure whether or not this disagreement sparked a long-running feud,
but according to People Magazine, the two reconciled backstage after the segment.
According to Michael Strahan, things were strained between him and Kelly Ripa long
before he left Live! for Good Morning America. In 2020, he told The New York Times Magazine,
"When it was time to go, it was time to go.
Certain things that were going on behind the scenes just caught up."
When asked if he and Ripa ever tried to address
their issues while he was still on the show, he said,
"One thing I tried to do is have a meeting every few weeks with her. We met a few times,
and that was fine. But then eventually she said she didn’t
need to meet. Can’t force somebody to do something they don’t want to do."
After Strahan revealed that he was done with Live! in 2016, an unnamed source told Page Six,
"[Strahan and Ripa] could not stand each other, and whenever they communicated off-camera,
it was always through their reps."
But whatever was truly going on behind the scenes,
Strahan claims he doesn't dislike Ripa. He told The New York Times Magazine,
"If people think, 'Oh, he hates her' — I don't hate her. I do respect her for
what she can do at her job. I cannot say enough about how good she is at her job."
Michael Strahan isn't the only former co-host that Kelly Ripa has been on the outs with.
In a 2017 interview with Larry King, the late Regis Philbin shared that he and Ripa hadn't
really kept in touch since he left Live! This stood in sharp contrast to his relationship
with his other former co-host, Kathie Lee Gifford, with whom he remained friends after she left Live!
He also noted that Ripa was "offended" when he exited Live! As he put it,
"She thought I was leaving because of her.
I was leaving because I was getting older and that wasn't right for me anymore."
As of 2019, Ripa and Philbin still weren't talking, and it also sounds like they didn't
really interact much off-stage back when they were still co-hosts, although that wasn't
really because of any bad blood between the two. Philbin reportedly made a point of not yukking
it up with his co-host behind the scenes. As Ripa recalled to The New York Times in 2017,
"Regis had a mandate: Absolutely no talking off-camera. He had almost a superstition about
it. You save it for the show. I'd be like, 'Good morning,' and he'd say, 'Save it for the air!'"
Sharon Osbourne and Dannii Minogue were judges on the fourth season of The X Factor UK,
and their dynamic was apparently incredibly rocky from day one. Minogue told her side of
the story in her 2010 memoir, My Story, in which she wrote that Osbourne was initially welcoming,
but that didn't last. One of the crew members whispered to Minogue that Osbourne wasn't happy
with the changes to the judges lineup in the middle of their first day of auditions.
There was one particularly scarring incident before the first live show. As Minogue recounted,
"I was crying because someone I had admired greatly had come
to my room before screaming and swearing relentlessly in my face for 20 minutes."
Minogue also wrote that being at the judging panel next to Osbourne was like being, quote,
"forced to sit next to the school bully." In Osbourne's own memoir, Unbreakable, she wrote,
"The more [Minogue's reported relationship with Simon Cowell] progressed, the worse it
became between her and me. It was unbelievably bad. Dannii had taken to walking past me in the
hallway without even making eye contact. I'd like to say it didn't bother me, but it did."
Osbourne also revealed that she left the show after that season,
primarily because she didn't get the money she asked for, but she also noted,
"The Dannii business was mixed in there too."
The very first season of American Idol welcomed not one, but two hosts to the stage.
Everyone remembers Ryan Seacrest, but there was also another MC by the name of Brian Dunkleman.
The two initially steered the Idol ship together, although they didn't exactly become best friends.
But when Dunkleman returned for the Season 15 finale, amends were made. In a 2016 interview with
People Magazine, Dunkleman said that he apologized to Seacrest for all the times that they didn't get
along in the past. Then, when Dunkleman chatted with Huffington Post in 2018, he clarified,
"I apologized to him for how we didn’t get along back then.
That’s what I apologized for. I didn’t apologize for my behavior. I said,
'I’m really sorry that you and I didn’t get along like we could’ve back then.
I wish things were different, but they’re not, and I wish you nothing but the best.'"
Dunkleman suspected they didn't connect as co-hosts because he was a comic,
whereas Seacrest was a traditional presenter. As he put it,
"I think it's kind of normal for co-workers to have their problems,
but it was a long time ago and it's just not worth talking about to me."
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