There’s a glamorous chaise longue smack in the middle of Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’s bathroom. With its tufting and plush white upholstery, it’s the kind of piece you’d imagine a femme fatale lounging on in a 1940s MGM picture—and in fact that was sort of its inspiration.
“You know the movie Mommie Dearest?” says Ripa, who since April 2023 has cohosted ABC’s morning show Live with Kelly and Mark with her husband, Mark Consuelos, after her more-than-two-decade run with previous cohosts. “There’s an amazing scene where Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford is lying on a white satin chaise in her dressing room, putting lotion on her elbow.” To demonstrate, she daintily raises her left elbow and, with the pointer finger of her opposite hand, mimics Dunaway’s lotion-applying gesture with the exaggerated theatricality of an old-time Hollywood diva. “I had Bill make me an identical replica of it!”
The Bill she’s referring to is AD100 Hall of Fame interior designer William Sofield, the jovial godfather of modern luxury whose clients have included Tom Ford and Ralph Lauren. Ripa and Consuelos brought on Sofield and his creative right hand and vice president at Studio Sofield, Emma O’Neill, to renovate their Upper East Side town house when they purchased it 12 years ago. At the time, Sofield warned the couple that hammered satin, while “absolutely drop-dead glam,” was not the most practical choice for upholstery, but did as the couple bid.
Thrilled about her Joan Crawford fantasy, Ripa admits she got a little carried away. Not long after moving in, she confesses, “I sat down on the chaise to apply some lotion, kind of as a joke, but when I put my leg down I basically destroyed the entire surface!” The chaise had to be recovered in a less delicate cotton silk, which remains in place today. “I learned my lesson,” says Ripa cheerfully.
