Megyn Kelly and Suzanne Somers Under Fire for Comments About 'Marital Rape'

During Thursday's episode of Megyn Kelly Today, the host and actress Suzanne Somers joked about marital rape.

The 71-year-old Somers and her husband of 40 years, 81-year-old Alan Hamel, were on TODAY to promote her new book, Two's Company: A Fifty-Year Romance with Lessons Learned in Love, Life & Business. Kelly said the book is a "virtual how-to guide for how to stay in love and in lust," notes HuffPost.

The interview was awkward from the start, especially for a show that starts at 9 a.m. Somers and Hamel talked about their sex lives, with Somers claiming they have sex everyday. Suddenly, the Three's Company actress said, "Sometimes I'm not awake for it, though."

The audience laughed, along with Kelly and Hamel.

"Alan's like, 'Those are some of the best times,'" Somers said.

"Fine by me," Hamel, a Canadian TV producer, added.

But then, the conversation took another weird turn. She said the couple was recently in Canada to see a friend who is a trial lawyer. The friend was working on a rape case that centered on a husband and wife. Somers' friend told them it is illegal to have sex with your spouse while he or she is asleep.

"I said, 'You would be in jail,'" Somers recalled while pointing to her husband.

Marital rape is illegal in 50 states and having sex with your spouse while he or she is asleep is considered rape.

Some viewers were stunned by the jokes about marital rape.

"The sequence in which Megyn Kelly and Suzanne Somers joked about marital rape on air is absolutely surreal," one person wrote.

"It really pains me when women eat their own. I promise, there's nothing funny about [rape] or [sexual assault]," another added.

In an excerpt of Somers' book, published in PEOPLE, the actress claims she was almost raped during a photo shoot in the 1970s in Mexico.

"I went down to lie by the pool, and all of a sudden a creepy guy was there," Somers wrote, adding that the man was intoxicated and working as a waiter.

"He fell all over me, and I ran into the house," Somers wrote. "I was alone with this creepy guy and I thought, 'There's no one here who cares about me, if I run to the ocean what's going to happen to me down there?' I hid in the house and he's going 'Suzanne.' It's like a horror movie, 'Suzanne.'"

"I'm thinking, 'I am just so going to get raped, or killed,'" she wrote. "I had no power at all."

Somers wrote that three men working on the photoshoot arrived in time and the waiter left.