The Kelly Ripa Makeup Look That Made Her Fans Uncomfortable

Kelly Ripa doesn't mind making her fans squirm once in a while, like when she's making inappropriate confessions about her private life with Mark Consuelos, her husband and "Live With Kelly and Mark" co-host. Her candid personality is part of her onscreen charm. In addition, Ripa's game to try new makeup looks, even if it means risking a beauty fail. In 2025, for her big post-Oscars show, Ripa adopted a particularly transformative makeup look to become Glinda. However, Ripa wasn't aspiring to just any incarnation of the classic "Wizard of Oz" character: She wanted to look like Ariana Grande from "Wicked."

Ripa posted a video of the makeup process on her Instagram account, and the sped-up footage made it hard for viewers to absorb all the changes the makeup artist and hairstylist made to her appearance. "Girl you got me messed up," divulged one Instagram fan. "I was like 'isn't that Kelly? No wait it's Ariana,'" they explained, noting that they vacillated back and forth trying to figure out the answer. Another fan expressed a mix of emotions, admitting, "This is so disturbing and amazing. I'm so conflicted." They weren't the only ones. Other commenters' reactions ranged from frightened to delighted.

Kelly Ripa's fans weren't the only ones unnerved by her dramatic cosmetics. Her family members were also caught off guard. Over video calls, Consuelos and his and Ripa's daughter, Lola, couldn't tell that the TV host was pretending to be Grande at first and thought she was the real deal. In an interview with Variety, Ripa said it was only her voice that revealed her true identity: "Then I opened my mouth, and their entire energy shifted. They were back to treating me like me."

Although they have two distinctly different appearances IRL, Kelly Ripa and Ariana Grande are both willing to switch up their styles for their onscreen work. Grande's pulled off numerous dramatic transformations, and in this case, she opted for paler tresses and eyebrows for her Glinda character. For some "Wicked" fans, however, the contrast between Grande's deep brown eyes and artificially platinum hair is a bit disconcerting. 

Similarly, when transforming into Grande as Glinda, Ripa still looks very much like herself well into her Instagram video, even with overfilled lips and shape-altering contour. However, when her makeup artist inserts contacts that make her blue eyes look brown, it feels disorienting, since Ripa abruptly seems to become a different person.

While Ripa's been associated with blond hair a long time, her natural color was actually a lot closer to Grande's pre-"Wicked" hue. Like Grande, Ripa transformed her hair from darker to lighter for work reasons, experimenting with a new shade for a "Live" segment. She kept her hair blond for its better ability to hide gray hairs, and as she's gotten older and her hair has gotten grayer, Ripa discussed these changes with her typical candor. "It's not like a gorgeous silver or a pretty white," she explained on "Live" in 2024 (via People). "It's almost translucent in its quality, which I think is weird." Since she didn't feel comfortable with her current natural hue, Ripa resolved to continue coloring her hair.