Kelly Ripa is among the many in Hollywood mourning the loss of her friend Luke Perry, who died Monday several days after suffering a stroke.
On Tuesday’s episode of Live With Kelly and Ryan, Ripa spoke about her relationship with Perry, who was 52 when he died. Ripa’s husband, Mark Consuelos, co-starred on Riverdale with Perry, and Ripa made a guest appearance in an episode of The CW series earlier this year.
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She revealed that her co-host, Ryan Seacrest, broke the news to her on Monday and that she “never got out of bed the rest of the day.”
“We lost a great friend to the show; a great guy,” Ripa said at the top of the show Tuesday. “Luke Perry passed away yesterday. Very, very, very shockingly. I’m still stunned. I woke up this morning thinking that there had to of been a mistake… He’s our age. So when somebody your own age passes away unexpectedly, you cannot believe it.”
Ripa continued her tribute, speaking about how her and Conseulos’ relationship with Perry grew after the men started working on Riverdale together.
“In all of the years I’ve known Luke Perry and especially with Mark and Luke working on Riverdale and especially getting to know him on a more personal level outside of the show, he is one of the only people in show business I’ve never had a show business conversation with,” Ripa revealed. “We talked about our kids, we talked about our relationships, we talked about raising our kids in this cockamamie show business life and making them conscientious or normal — whatever that means.”
She went on, calling him “a good man” and recalled his early days on Beverly Hills, 90210.
“I have to say, this was a good, good man. You won’t see a person say otherwise,” she said. “He’s a good man, a good soul, conscientious, a gentleman, a dear friend of our family, of the Live family. I mean, when I first saw him… as Dylan McKay on 90210, it was like… oh now we’re talking about something. It was like, now this guy is sparkly.”
She said that Perry “shatter[ed] your expectations… in the best way.”
“Mark and I would be at work at All My Children at eight at night still and we would be sitting in make-up and hair…watching 90210 for entertainment,” Ripa recalled. “When Mark was working with Luke, I only called him Luke Perry. Cher is a one name person. Luke Perry is Luke Perry.”
“Every time Mark would FaceTime me, and Luke was there, I would say, ‘Hang on, let me get lipstick,’” she quipped. “Luke would say, ‘Honey, we are a little old for pretense.’ And I would say, ‘Not for you, Luke Perry.’”
She concluded by offering Perry’s family her condolences. “Our thoughts are with his family and beloved children who he really thought about constantly,” she said. “That is why he went to work. I have never had a conversation with him without talking about his kids.”
Perry’s publicist said Monday that at the time of his death, he was surrounded by son Jack, 21, daughter Sophie, 18, fiancée Wendy Madison Bauer, ex-wife Minnie Sharp, mother Ann Bennett, step-father Steve Bennett, brother Tom Perry, sister Amy Coder, and other close family and friends.
Seacrest also paid tribute to Perry on Tuesday.
“I was a teenager of the ’90s and 90210 was the show we were obsessed with, and I remember, in Atlanta, my parents built on a bedroom downstairs, which meant I got to move from a little bedroom to their old bedroom, which meant there was cable and a television,” Seacrest said. “I remember saying to Mom and Dad, ‘Can I please have a TV in my bedroom because all I want to do is watch Beverly Hills, 90210?’ And they said OK.”
“Then later I met him through our business. All those things you say about him are so true once you meet him in person,” Seacrest added.
On Monday, Seacrest shared his condolences on Twitter. “Luke Perry was a great actor and truly one of a kind,” he wrote. “Watching him on 90210 was one of the reasons why I wanted to move to LA. Thinking of his family and friends on and off the set. Rest in peace.”
Photo credit: Vivien Killilea / Stringer / Getty
