He’s 6-feet-5. She’s 5-feet-3. There’s no way they should be seeing eye-to-eye.
But on camera, morning TV co-hosts Michael Strahan and Kelly Ripa look evenly matched. We thought that maybe the set designers dig a hole in the floor for Strahan’s chair or extended the legs on Ripa’s chair or sat her on a stack of telephone books to create the optical illusion.
Actually, heredity is responsible for the discrepancy, executive producer Michael Gelman tells The Post.
“We measured them, from the tip of their tailbone to the top of their heads,” he says. “They’re both 36 inches.
“She measured herself at home with an old-fashioned measuring tape, and I measured Michael at the studio.
“Kelly is very long-waisted for someone her size. He’s very short-waisted. Hence, they look the same size on the air.”
The co-hosts use the chairs custom-made by set designer Mike Fagin, which were completed last November shortly after Regis Philbin left the show, part of a “mini-makeover” that included a new “chat desk.”
“That’s what we’ve been using. Nothing changed when we hired Michael,” Gelman says.
Strahan, whose debut on the show delivered a huge ratings uptick, tucks his extremely long legs almost completely under this thighs, while Ripa’s toes barely touch the floor. Gelman is so used to Ripa walking around the set in “stilts,” his term for her heels, that he thought she was closer to 5-feet-8.
“There’s no special effect. I don’t have her sitting three feet back,” Gelman says.