Ripa, who is on maternity leave after giving birth recently to her third child, will keep her morning-show gig, the paper says. In the new ABC sitcom, called "Faith and Hope," Ripa will play a newly unemployed soap actress, Faith, who moves in with her family-oriented fraternal twin sister, Hope.
One studio exec tells the paper that Ripa was "pie-in-the sky casting," but ABC Entertainment president Susan Lyne said Ripa was "really our only choice for this role."
Ripa has been two-timing co-host Regis Philbin for a while. Though she reluctantly gave up her "All My Children" role to focus on the talk show, she made her prime-time debut as a limited-run character on the NBC series "Ed."
JOSH & FERGIE: ROCKED BY SCANDAL
Did he cheat with a stripper?
Married less than a year, the couple denies an Atlanta woman’s claims that she and Josh had a fling
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