Kelly Ripa admits ‘All My Children’ "changed the whole trajectory of her life".
The ‘Live! With Kelly and Ryan’ host met her now-husband Mark Consuelos on the set of the soap opera, and she admits her time on the television show completely changed her whole life and not just her acting career.
She said: "I got like, six callbacks and two screen tests, ’cause they were really sure they wanted me. And I wound up getting the job. But it was really – I mean, talk about happy accidents. It really was a happy accident. It changed my life. It changed my entire life – not just my acting life, but changed the whole trajectory of my life."
And Mark has revealed it was one of his first acting jobs too.
He added: "What drew me to the role was that I had never worked as an actor before, so that was very exciting, to get a job. It was one of my first auditions. Similarly, I had to re-screen test a few times as well."
The 49-year-old actress and television presenter and her co-stars "bonded" with Mark from the get go.
She told People magazine: "You know, Mark was working the whole time and so we bonded with him as a cast.
"So imagine, suddenly, they kept saying, ‘Well, there’s got to be a better actor out there.’ And we’re like, ‘No, he’s our friend now! We love him.’"
Meanwhile, Kelly previously admitted she and Mark found each other "at the right time in their lives".
She said: "I think we found each other at the right time in our lives. We were really young, not that that’s the right time in somebody’s life, but we were really like, pliable, right? Like we were pliable to each other.
"We really, like, learned – we learned each other well and so with that comes a certain level of comfort and confidence and experimentation and just fun like we have fun."