Ryan Seacrest’s Embarrassing Mistake Shuts Down Kelly Ripa’s New Game Show

Ryan Seacrest has been an unavoidable presence on television and radio since the 1990s, but it would be wrong to assume that all his experience has made him impervious to mistakes. While filming the premiere of his Live with Kelly and Ryan co-star Kelly Ripa’s new game show Generation Gap, he made a flub so bad production was shut down. The new series is a quiz show where Ripa asks families about pop culture from different generations.

When Ripa visited On Air with Ryan Seacrest Thursday morning, she revealed that Seacrest is the first surprise celebrity guest on Generation Gap. Unfortunately, Seacrest was surprisingly not prepared to be on a game show and he “screwed” up filming. He gave away an answer, forcing producers to shut the show down for 45 minutes.

“There’s a portion in the show that I’m sure is not in there now where I was reading a card, and I was so nervous,” Seacrest recalled, notes Entertainment Weekly. “I was so nervous I was going to screw it up that I read the question and the answer.” Seacrest said there was “panic” on the set, but Ripa laughed about the incident.

“He screwed it up and the lawyers went into lawyer mode,” Ripa explained. “I’m going to give it away because it’s no longer in the show. All he had to say is, ‘This is American … blank.’ And he said, and I quote, ‘This is American Idol.’ I knew already the horror of the lawyers, and once the lawyers come out, everything shuts down for 45 minutes.” That’s not a great start for a brand new show. Generation Gap debuts Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.

Generation Gap was not the only topic Seacrest and Ripa discussed. When they brought up the current divorce rate, Ripa said the first year of marriage is the toughest. Ripa and her former All My Children star Mark Consuelos have been married since 1996 and are parents to daughter Lola, 21, and sons Joaquin, 19, and Michael, 25.

“I found the first year [was the toughest],” Ripa told Seacrest, jokingly adding that they thought they made a “horrible” mistake. She turned serious though, explaining, “At the end of the day, if you just give yourselves a breath and take it easy on each other… We had very specific ways we had always done things… so when you blend your two habits often times they’re not compatible.” Ripa went on to tell Seacrest that she’d like her children to live with someone before they marry, since that is how you “really get to know a person.”

During Tuesday’s Live episode, Ripa told Seacrest they finally did something they have dreamed of since getting married: go on a kid-free vacation. They went on a multi-state trip and “had the time of our lives,” she said. The trip involved rock climbing in Utah and getting lost in Colorado.