Kelly Ripa Hosts Awards Show For Her Idols

Talk show sweetheart Kelly Ripa is the perfect choice for a night of honoring television icons; she’s cute, she’s bubbly, and she absolutely adores the people accepting the awards.

Ripa took the stage last night in her second hosting gig for the TV Land Awards; she previously hosted in 2007. Among the honorees this time around were Fran Drescher for “The Nanny”, the cast of “Lavern and Shirley” (who had a mini-reunion), the cast of “One Day At A Time”, and members of the ’90s sketch-comedy show “In Living Color”. Ripa says that being a child of the ’70s meant she was parked in front of the television all the time, so characters from those shows meant a lot to her, and still do.

“That’s what we had,” she said. “These characters were our lives and I get excited still. I’m still excited seeing Faith Ford as weird as that sounds. I still get excited.”

Of course, becoming famous in your own right doesn’t mean you don’t get starstruck sometimes, and Ripa says she felt it while she was onstage this year and realized that Laverne and Shirley were looking at her.

“When I saw Laverne and Shirley in the audience,” she says, “I almost jumped onto their table. You can never explain to these people how much they meant to you.”

Some of the highlights of last night’s fete included the Innovator award, given to the cast of “One Day At A Time”, the Impact award, which went to “Murphy Brown”, and the Icon award, which was presented to Aretha Franklin by John Legend.