What to Know
Before she became one of the most well known morning show hosts on TV, Kelly Ripa was best known for her soap opera career, being a staple of the cast of All My Children for a full decade. And apparently, in her past life, she was also briefly (get it?) an underwear model. But according to Kelly, she looked “exhausted and weird” in the photoshoot where she posed in a Jockey bra, and even though most moms can’t relate to modeling underwear, they can relate to why she was so exhausted.
Kelly posed for the ad in 1999.
90's Jockey bra ad featuring ABC soap opera actors.
— Jazzy (@geminiminx) September 2, 2023
Esta TerBlanche (Gillian #AMC)
Rebecca Herbst (Elizabeth #GH)
Julie Pinson (Eve #portcharles)
Erika Page (Roseanne #OLTL)
Kelly Ripa (Hayley #AMC) pic.twitter.com/j1f4c59DYV
The topic came up during a segment on Kelly’s Let’s Talk Off Camera podcast, where she was playing a game of two truths and a lie. One of her truths was that she used to be an underwear model, though she acknowledged that a lot of people have assumed that was the lie.
“What you’re looking at here is me and my one time as an underwear model,” Kelly said, showing off the photo. “This was a Jockey ad campaign that was shot with the women of ABC daytime. That’s me down there.”
Sure enough, Kelly is posing in white pants and a black bra alongside other soap stars like Erika Page from One Life to Live and Rebecca Herbst from General Hospital.
At the time of the photoshoot, Kelly wasn’t feeling her best.
As far as we can tell, Kelly looks amazing (as usual) in the shoot, but she isn’t the biggest fan of the way the photo came out.
“Why, Kelly, do you look so exhausted and weird?” she said. “Well, I’d just had a baby, so all of the oxygen I’m not expending because I’m holding in my stomach.”
If this photoshoot was in 1999, that means that she was less than two years out from the birth of Michael, her oldest child with husband Mark Consuelos, who arrived in June 1997. This also makes her a first time mom, so there’s no doubt that the postpartum life was throwing her for a loop — especially since she still had to be on camera (and in her underwear, at that).
It wasn’t the ideal time for an underwear shoot, according to Kelly.
Kelly went on to explain that her recent pregnancy was why she was wearing high-waisted pants instead of low rise like the other stars in the ad.
“Notice I’m the girl with the high-waisted pants because they were like, ‘We don’t know what to do here, we’ll sit her down and put her in high-waisted jeans,'” Kelly said. “I didn’t breathe for the whole eight-hour shoot. This is the proof that I was an underwear model that nobody can still believe.”
And on top of all of that? She was breastfeeding. Kelly added, “I’m also a nursing mother, but you can’t believe it in this photo.”
Poor Kelly. No matter how she remembers it, she did look great, objectively. And she deserves some slack regardless. Who asks a postpartum mother to participate in an underwear ad?
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