Kelly Ripa Says She’s Open To a Female Co-Host

As Live with Kelly and Michael comes to a close with the departure of Michael Strahan, Kelly Ripa and the ABC team are on the hunt for a new host. The show has thrived off of male-female co-host pairings since the premiere of Live with Regis and Kathie Lee in 1988, but Ripa told PEOPLE that they may switch things up a bit.

“From my perspective, I like to get as many different people, men and women, in the chair as possible,”she said in the magazine’s May 23 cover story. “Just because you never know who you’re going to hit it off with. Some of the people I’ve hit it off with the best have been women, which is not unusual for me. I’m a girls’ girl. I like the dynamic of that.”

Ripa added that the process of finding a new host is all about chemistry. “You want somebody working there who’s comfortable working there. That’s how you figure – it’s like a puzzle. It’s very much like an equation, an algorithm. Let’s see, if we put somebody here and somebody there, and, ‘Oh, this guy really likes to talk about this,’ or, ‘This guy’s really good here,’ or, ‘This lady is amazing,’ or, ‘She was great last time, let’s give her another shot.’ ”

PEOPLE added that male names have been thrown around in the search—including Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper—but Ripa would not confirm any candidates. The one thing she did make clear was that she’s not interested in hosting the show solo: “I like having a partner. I don’t think it works otherwise. I need someone sitting next to me.”