The Halloween talk-show tradition continued on Monday as the broadcast network morning and daytime hosts donned pop-culture-inspired ensembles.
The hosts of NBC’s Today, the syndicated Live With Kelly and Ryan and ABC’s The View all dressed up for the holiday, with movie and TV show characters and popular musicians among the inspirations.
Still, not every show that traditionally participates in the festivities went all out this year. ABC’s Good Morning America, which skipped dressing up for the holiday in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic continued ahead of a high-stakes presidential election, saw its hosts once again mostly pass on dressing up. The show, which featured live interviews with Friends star Matthew Perry and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever director Ryan Coogler and actress Danai Gurira, instead celebrated the holiday by showing off some last-minute costume ideas and with a candy cooking contest between Carla Hall and Buddy Valastro.
Read on to see how more of this year’s broadcast network talk-show hosts got into the Halloween spirit.
Today
The NBC morning show brought Las Vegas to New York’s Rockefeller Center on Monday, with the hosts sporting Sin City-inspired ensembles. Today co-hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb got into the swing of things as Cirque Du Soleil performers. Carson Daly and Dylan Dreyer made an appearance as David Copperfield and his assistant Adelaide. Al Roker dressed as Sammy Davis Jr., while Willie Geist and Jenna Bush Hager kept things musical as Elvis and Celine Dion, respectively. Craig Melvin was ready for a fight as Muhammad Ali and Sheinelle Jones took on a more evergreen costume of a Vegas showgirl.
And the Today show also incorporated one recent Vegas event featuring two of Hollywood’s biggest names, the wedding of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, with Peter Alexander and Kristen Welker playing the newlyweds.
Live! With Kelly and Ryan
Over on Live! With Kelly and Ryan, the hosts showcased a multiverse of content, with Kelly Ripa, Ryan Seacrest, producer Michael Gelman and executive in charge of production Art Moore and special guests wearing what the show proclaimed would be more than 70 costumes over the course of the show.
Titled “Live’s Multiverse Halloween: The Best in the Universe,” the syndicated show’s annual celebration began with a Stranger Things-inspired opening.
Ripa and Seacrest then spent the show traveling through various movie and TV show universes, dressing as Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange, Billie Eilish, Harry Styles, Elvis (making his second appearance of the day but this time as Austin Butler’s character in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic) and Nancy Sinatra.
The pair were also inspired by movies that haven’t even been released, and one of which has not even been announced, dressing up in fighter suits for auditions for a potential third Top Gun movie and dressing as Barbie and Ken, as embodied by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in leaked paparazzi photos from the upcoming Greta Gerwig Barbie movie.
Ripa and Seacrest dressed as the dolls for their main interview segment with Kal Penn, who wore a Cookie Monster costume in a bid to score a long-sought-after role on Sesame Street.
The show also continued its tradition of mashing up TV shows debuting a celebrity version of Say Yes to the Dress, featuring Ripa and Seacrest as Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker, and fake spinoff Say I Do to the ‘do featuring Teresa Giudice.
The Housewives franchise also got a nod during a House of the Dragon-inspired Real Housewives of the Dragon, featuring characters from the HBO prequel acting like the Bravo reality TV stars. Ripa and Seacrest’s House of the Dragon costumes also showed up in a Full House of the Dragon mashup with a cameo from John Stamos.
The show later poked fun at the most recent season of The Bachelorette, with two women looking for love, with The Bachelorssss, featuring triplets as the suitors. The segment featured guest appearances from Bachelor franchise host Jesse Palmer and last season’s Bachelorettes Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey.
Live also offered its take on the buzzy FX series The Bear, with Seacrest as Jeremy Allen White’s main character Carmen Berzatto. While the segment began by poking fun at the show’s memorable “yes chef” quote, including the moment in which Carmen is referred to as “Jeff,” it morphed into a take on Goldilocks as two more bears were hired and the restaurant switched to serving porridge.
The View
TV shows also served as the inspiration for this year’s costumes on ABC’s The View, with the hosts opening Monday’s episode in a black-and-white 1960s sitcom set before showing off their individual ensembles, each based on a different show.
Sunny Hostin took on Bridgerton‘s Queen Charlotte, saying she loved both the show and the character and wanted to “pay homage.” Hostin even received a video message from the actress behind the character, Golda Rosheuvel, who said she was “immensely flattered” and felt like she was “looking in a mirror” at the “strong, smart, independent, talented and glamorous woman … portray[ing] this classic character.”
Joy Behar dressed as Married With Children‘s Peg Bundy, saying she admired how the character is “opinionated, outspoken, brutally honest,” things Behar says she “admires in any woman.”
Sara Haines portrayed Schitt’s Creek‘s Moira Rose, praising the show and actress Catherine O’Hara. Celebrating her first Halloween as a View panelist, Alyssa Farah Griffin dressed as Sex and the City‘s Carrie Bradshaw, and Ana Navarro donned Charo’s Love Boat costume, with the real Charo making a surprise appearance on The View.
Leading the hosts, Whoopi Goldberg dressed as a handmaid from Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale, with the back of her red cape reading, “My body, my morals, my life, my choice, not yours.”
Some of the women switched into their characters’ other ensembles as the show went on, but they remained seated in a colored version of the ’60s sitcom set.
The Talk
The hosts on CBS’ The Talk showed off two sets of costumes on Monday.
One set of costumes included Natalie Morales and Jerry O’Connell as Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly, with the two pretending to drink blood shots; Amanda Kloots as Khaleesi; Sheryl Underwood as Megan Thee Stallion; and Akbar Gbajabiamila as Shaft.
Another set of costumes featured Morales as Wednesday Addams, O’Connell as Thor, Kloots as Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman character, Underwood as Serena Williams and Gbajabiamila as Black Adam, with him even pitching a sequel to franchise star Dwayne Johnson.
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