Why Kelly Ripa joked she and Mark Consuelos ‘failed as parents’

Days after her son Joaquin’s Broadway debut, Kelly Ripa joked that she and Mark Consuelos thought they “failed as parents” when their youngest child first told them he wanted to attend drama school.

“To get any job was, like, inconceivable to us,” Ripa said on the April 13 episode of “Live with Kelly and Mark.”

“I mean, we were just like, ‘You’re going to have to get a job,’” she recalled telling Joaquin, who graduated from the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance in May 2025. “And then he books a Broadway show and it was just, like, remarkable for us to watch.”

Consuelos, 55, agreed that it was “pretty wild” to see Joaquin in action April 9 for opening night of Joe Mantello’s revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”

Joaquin, 23, booked a role in the show opposite showbiz legends Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf. He plays the younger version of Christopher Abbott’s character, Biff.

During Monday’s “Live,” Ripa, 55, remarked that Consuelos has been “in this game a long time” and is finally making his Broadway debut — hinting that Joaquin beat his dad to the punch.

Consuelos, whose show “Fallen Angels” opens April 19, took the jab in stride, saying it’s “not lost” on him that it took 30-plus years to land his big moment on the Great White Way.

Ripa also joked that Joaquin had some “strict parameters” for his parents to follow at the after-party for the show that boiled down to one rule: “Just be cool.”

“We were so cool! I thought we were pretty cool,” Ripa responded, noting they left Joaquin “mostly alone” for the night.

“I mean, I did hug him, and I was like, ‘I’m so proud of you. Congratulations,’” she admitted. “He was like, ‘All right. OK.’ Meanwhile, everybody else was allowed to hug him and tell him how proud they were all night, and that was fine.”

Ripa celebrated Joaquin’s opening night on Broadway with a social media post over the weekend, calling the show “astonishing.”

The post received love from the couple’s friends, including David Muir, Jennifer Garner and Andy Cohen to name a few.

Ripa and Consuelos, who met on the set of “All My Children” in 1995 and tied the knot the following year, are celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary this year.

In addition to Joaquin, the couple also share son Michael, 28, and daughter Lola, 24.