Lola, Michael, and Joaquin Consuelos might be television royalty thanks to their parents Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos — but that doesn't make them immune from awkward family moments. It turns out that the stars really just are like us... for better or worse.
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00:00Lola, Michael, and Joaquin Consuelos might be television royalty thanks to their parents,
00:05Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, but that doesn't make them immune from awkward family moments.
00:11It turns out that the stars really are just like us, for better or worse.
00:17It's safe to say that as the children of celebrities, Kelly Ripa's three kids
00:22didn't have childhoods that would be considered typical by most. In that respect,
00:27one big element that the average child didn't have to contend with was the constant presence
00:31of paparazzi attempting to snap photos of them when they were out in public with their parents.
00:36During an interview on her mom's podcast, Let's Talk Off-Camera with Kelly Ripa,
00:41Lola Consuelos recalled paparazzi being a constant presence in her childhood. However,
00:47she said she never considered it to be that big of a deal. She explained,
00:51"'I was very aware of it. But you always told us something else,
00:54like when you'd pick us up when we'd walk home from school. I'd be like,
00:58there's people taking photos of us, and you'd be like, they're taking photos of the birds.'"
01:02Even as a little kid, Lola admitted that she never bought her mom's explanation,
01:07but eventually came to realize that because her parents consciously didn't draw attention
01:11to the photographers, she and her brothers were able to mostly ignore them. According to Ripa,
01:16the paparazzi were an unfortunate fact of life that they were all forced to deal with.
01:21She told her daughter,
01:22"'You were born at a time when the tabloid press was really hard on me.
01:26And therefore, they were hard on you guys, too.'"
01:29There's no way to sugarcoat this. Lola Consuelos has accidentally walked in on her parents getting,
01:35well, intimate. As Kelly Ripa herself admitted in both an episode of her podcast
01:40and alongside her husband on Live!, even more unfortunately, this has happened multiple times.
01:47"'So she opens the door, and we see the door open, and we're like,
01:50ahhh, close the door, knock! Knock! I'm being resuscitated.'"
01:56So, Lola got in the habit of issuing a comedic warning whenever her mom and dad prepared to
02:01embark on a romantic vacation together, since the first incident took place on a prior vacation to
02:06Italy. During a 2023 episode of her Let's Talk Off-Camera podcast, Ripa revealed,
02:12"'What's so funny is every time I go away now, my daughter is like,
02:16don't get pregnant, which is very funny because my daughter is so provocative.'"
02:20Ripa also shared the response she tends to give her daughter after receiving that
02:24particular tidbit of cautionary advice.
02:27"'I was like, yeah, don't worry. Don't you get pregnant. How about that?''
02:31Kelly may have laughed off her daughter's vacation warnings, but she's also well aware
02:35that there's a big kernel of truth lurking beneath the surface. She admitted,
02:40"'You gotta be careful with those away trips. That's how babies are made.'"
02:44Parents will often check out the social media posts of their kids in order to get a glimpse
02:48at what they're up to when there's an absence of parental supervision. That's not the case
02:53for Kelly Ripa, though. As she revealed in an interview with E! News in 2023, she said,
02:59"'I'm pretty sure they've blocked us. When you have a news feed and it says,
03:02suggest more, suggest this, like this, or block this channel,
03:06I'm certain they have blocked any channel with any mention of our names.
03:10Just like they block us on social media. They block us any way they can.'"
03:14In fact, Ripa is pretty certain that her kids aren't following her or her husband
03:18Mark Gonzalez on their respective social media accounts, and she joked that they
03:22may not even know that the couple began hosting live together. She admitted,
03:27"'They don't really pay attention to what we're doing. They're just happy that mom
03:30and dad are finding ways to pass the time since they've left the house.'"
03:34Kelly Ripa's oldest son, Michael Consuelos, graduated college in 2020 in the midst of a
03:39tough job market and a worldwide pandemic. That, Ripa explained during a 2022 episode
03:45of Live with Kelly and Ryan, impacted the plans that were in place for him after graduation.
03:50She said,
03:51"'I know that Michael graduated college in May of 2020 and he had a writing job lined up,
03:56which evaporated because the pandemic shut down the production, and it just never came back.'"
04:01"'We gave him a grace period of an additional year to, like,
04:06find other job opportunities, because it's hard.'"
04:10That said, Ripa also explained why she and husband Mark Consuelos remained adamant that
04:15their kids be gainfully employed after graduating college, and that living with
04:19mom and dad for years after that is simply not going to happen. She said,
04:24"'Because we were married at 25, you know what I mean? And we feel like because we
04:27didn't have safety nets, we got something cooking.'"
04:31The three children of Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are no longer kids.
04:35All three are now grown adults with partners of their own. That came into play when the couple
04:39were joined by their kids for a vacation in late 2023, which they discussed during a January 2024
04:45episode of Live with Kelly and Mark. As Consuelos pointed out, each of their kids brought along
04:50their significant others. While Mark originally suggested it was weird, he ultimately admitted
04:56that it was great and that their kids appear to have excellent taste when it comes to choosing
05:00partners. Kelly, however, said she wasn't entirely certain that the whole thing would work out as
05:05well as it did. She claimed,
05:07"'We didn't know how it was going to go, you know what I mean? You just don't know.
05:11Everybody seems nice when you have dinner with them, but how's it going to go?'
05:15In the end, though, she confirmed it all went swimmingly, gushing that, quote,
05:19"'It was so nice.'"
05:21When Mark Consuelos joined Kelly Ripa as guest host of a 2022 episode of Live with Kelly and
05:26Ryan, they confirmed that their children found them utterly disgusting. The reason, Ripa explained,
05:33was because of their parents' eating habits.
05:35"'Our kids get very grossed out by us in general, but especially when we're eating,
05:39they are sickened by us.'"
05:41Consuelos conceded that he had noticed the criticism the kids offered toward her eating
05:45habits, but offered an explanation.
05:48"'You have a very interesting way of eating food.'"
05:50Consuelos then went on to describe his wife's very specific method of picking up food with
05:55her hands and then stuffing it into her mouth, offering viewers a vivid demonstration that
06:00certainly allowed an understanding of their kids' point of view. He joked,
06:05"'You stick all three fingers, the tips of all three fingers, into your mouth.'"