Jimmy Kimmel is in New York this week, specifically Brooklyn. He broadcasts from the East Coast for a week at least once a year, which is always fun because of the guests he can get who are working in New York. Kelly Ripa joined Jimmy (after he appeared on her show, Live with Kelly and Ryan) and she talked about – wait for it – her kids. Mainly she talked about her oldest child, Michael, who attends New York University and lives in Brooklyn. According to Kelly, Michael is footing his own bill for room and board and it’s proving a challenge as it’s leaving him “chronically poor.”
If you don’t have time for the whole interview, here’s the part about Michael’s financial straits:
Your son lives in Brooklyn now. How’s that going for him? Does he like it?
You know, I think he loves the freedom. He hates paying his own rent and he is chronically poor. I don’t think he ever experienced extreme poverty like now. It’s very funny, my parents, always give my kids, for years, for Halloween, they mail them an envelope with $20 in it. For years, I’m like, ‘Mom, Dad, you don’t have to do that. They don’t appreciate it, don’t worry about it.’ For years, my kids sort of ignored the $20 and Mark and I would say, ‘you know, when we were kids, $20 would take you through weeks and weeks of life.’ But now that he’s living on his own, he’s called like three times, ‘Halloween envelope arrive?’ He’s like, tak(ing) the subway, to get his Halloween envelope. Just so he can have electricity.
At the risk of being a Kelly apologist, I do think she’s being sarcastic calling him “chronically poor” and experiencing “extreme poverty.” And Michael’s neighborhood, Bushwick, is listed as one of the more affordable options in Brooklyn. But let’s face it, the average rent is still almost $3K/month so let’s be real, the kid’s not slumming it. But if I’m reading between the lines, which I think is what Kelly is hoping we will do, Michael is on a budget now and he’s learning to live within it. I doubt Michael has a job, I’m sure his parents pay his rent and give him a monthly allowance, but honestly, even that’s admirable for a celebrity kid. We all know his parents will bail him out if things become too dire, but forcing him to learn how to stretch a dollar by not paying his gas bill for him is a step in the right direction. Although I do agree with Jimmy, who gets $20 for Halloween?
As mentioned, Michael goes to NYU’s Tisch School of Arts. He asked Kelly to be a producer on one of his school projects, an experimental film. Kelly posted the cute Instagram below, but the best part of the story is about the professor for whom Michael was doing the project, Chris Goutman. Kelly said Chris was the casting director who directed Mark Consuelos and Kelly’s screen test on All My Children and worked with them on the soap for 11 years. So when Michael was touring the various film schools to determine which he wanted to attend, Chris singled him out and said, “You have to go here because I am literally the reason you exist.” I love that story but I hope not all kids have to decide their futures based on how they got here, otherwise mine are working in a Jameson’s distillery.
Photo credit: Avalon, Instagram and YouTube
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