Michael Strahan knows Halloween is coming when the wardrobe personnel at “Live! With Kelly & Michael” ask him his bra size.
Nothing quite says “Trick or treat” on this show as a jock in drag. Last year, the very jovial Strahan dressed up as Madea and Oprah Winfrey for the show’s annual costume party. This year, he’ll be dressing up as tennis queen Serena Williams.
A bra and some enhancements were involved, but Strahan reveals that he couldn’t go strapless. “I had to wear a strap. They were falling down,” he says of the moving parts. He also wears a wig and the busy co-host reports, “This is my favorite [costume] when I look at all of them.”
Strahan says some viewers were shocked that he was so willing to do drag, but the shock value is exactly what he’s looking for. “Whatever they throw at me, I do it. You have fun with it. You gotta laugh at yourself with this job,” he says.
This year, Strahan also does Tiger Woods and Kanye West, which were much easier to pull off. For Woods, the makeup artists whited out his beard and moustache, but for West, he got to strut his stuff. “I had that Kanye West swagger where you just don’t care what anybody thinks. I quite enjoyed that part.”
There are 50 costume changes for Strahan and his partner-in-crime, Kelly Ripa. When Ripa first started on this show there were four costume changes for the Halloween show and they were all done live. Now, the planning starts way in advance as the producers look at prominent names in the news and see if they appeal to the co-hosts.
“I try to lock onto one thing identifiable in their appearance or personality,” Ripa says. “I don’t think I’ve ever turned down any suggestion.”
Those suggestions included Lindsey Vonn (“I’m more of a prop for Michael’s Tiger Woods”), Rafael Nadal (“I do things with my butt. I manipulate my body in a respectful and loving way that will remind people of Rafa”) and her proudest moment — Kim Kardashian.
“As soon as I put on the butt pad I had more self-confidence,” Ripa says. “I feel better about myself.”
The butt is the width of two chair cushions and comes from Ripa’s cage of body parts located in the studio basement. There are fake breasts and breastplates there, which Ripa has used to play bombshells such as Jessica Simpson. For Kardashian, the butt was enough. The rest was makeup.
“She’s quite beautiful, so they try to make me blurry,” she says. “I try to look sultry. It’s very challenging for me.”
The easiest costume this year was the “Duck Dynasty” fatigues and beards.
“It was kind of liberating. So much of me was covered,” she says. “You can’t see my features.”