The Talk has come to an end, but the co-hosts have memories that will last a lifetime.
As the set came down and the cameras turned off for the final time on Friday, Dec. 20, Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Natalie Morales, Jerry O’Connell and Sheryl Underwood gathered in the greenroom to reflect on their time on the talk show with PEOPLE.
All teary-eyed, each co-host said the show changed their lives for the better.
“It was a great mix, I think, of light and laughter and then sentimental and emotional time,” Kloots, 42, says of the concluding episode.
Throughout the episode, montages of the best moments throughout the show’s 15-year run played, and Morales, 52, notes that it is important to remember everyone who paved the way for the show’s success.
“What I loved is that they really paid tribute to the hosts that came before us, too,” she says. “I think up until this week, it was honoring each and every one of us, but there were so many great co-hosts before us, and so it was nice seeing Julie [Chen Moonves], nice to see Sharon [Osbourne]. It was nice seeing everyone from Carrie Ann [Inaba] to Sara Gilbert all getting their time.”
Underwood, who has been on The Talk since season 2 (the longest of the current hosts), says watching all the clips brought back even more memories for her. Speaking about the time she took her wig off live on air — which was shown, not once but twice, during the finale — she recalls that in the moment, she didn’t find it very funny.
“What they didn’t show was the camera shot of me going, ‘No, I’m not doing it!’” she shares. “Why? Because my crush Donny Osmond is sitting next to me. I’ve been in love with Donny Osmond since Tiger Beat magazine. And I be like, ‘I’m not doing this,’ [and producers said], ‘Do it. Do it. Do it.’ I was like, ‘No.’ But then I was like, ‘You better do it for your job and the comedy.’ So I pulled down the wig. But you notice, it’s not braided down, it’s just hair.”
“You kid the ones you love,” Morales chimes in, and Underwood, 61, agrees as she laughs.
“One time [Osbourne’s] tooth fell out on camera,” Underwood continues, as Kloots adds: “I thought she put something black on it!”
“No! It was real,” Underwood reveals.
She then tells the co-hosts that Prince once sent the show flowers to get Osbourne’s attention.
“Sharon had explained something on the record business, and I had a person that knows Prince, so they call my phone, and then Prince is on my phone talking,” Underwood says. “He wants to talk to Sharon, and I said, ‘This better still be Prince when I hand her the phone.’ And it was.”
Gbajabiamila, who joined The Talk in 2021, says stories like Underwood’s are what make the show so special.
“It’s so fun to come here every day,” he explains. “I was always looking forward to the topics, what we gonna talk about, when was gonna be happening, from the heavy ones to the light ones, the fun ones.”
“I always enjoy Jerry,” he adds. “I didn’t get a chance to say this out there, but you know, especially with the serious ones, Jerry finds the funny in just about dang everything.”
“And it’s hard doing a live show every day,” says Kloots, who also became a co-host in 2021. “You come to work with whatever just happened at home that morning or at night, and it’s tough, but we would always sit down in those chairs, and it was just joy. It was really just a joy. It was so nice.”
Morales, who was previously on the Today show until moving to The Talk in 2021, says having a live audience changed the way she did her job. “When you have that instant connection with [the audience] and people are giving you feedback right away, it’s really energizing,” she says. “I had never really felt that.”
Morales and Gbajabiamila, 45, reveal they have even made friends with some consistent audience members over the years.
“I went and had drinks with some of them yesterday!” Morales says, and Kloots adds: “You forget the audience has grown with us, you know. They’re invested in us and all of our families.”
O’Connell, 50, says bringing his family to tapings over the years reminds him of how big of a role the show has played in his life.
“It’s so funny too to see when they showed a clip of my kids the first season I was here,” he says. “It was so long ago, they were just kids.”
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And while there are many parts of The Talk that the co-hosts will miss, it’s the little things that often mean the most, they say.
“Crystal from crafties, she would always know what I wanted,” Gbajabiamila says. “I just thought that little touch, just knowing what I didn’t eat, what I like, my preferences. She’d be like, ‘Oh, I figured you’d like this,’ whenever they had something. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ it’s like, ‘You really know me.’”
“I’ve worked with a lot of teams, but this is a team that, from day one, that I’ve come in here, and it’s a special place,” Morales gushes. “People really respect you. They respect what you bring every day. They know that you’re here to make this a better place, and I think everybody wants you to have a good time while you’re doing it. So yes, it’s a job, but at the end of the day, everybody here, they do make you feel like you’re a member of the family.”
Kloots jokes, “And the clothes, the hair and the makeup, getting to look good every day!”
More than anything, the five agree that it’s their bond that they will miss the most. “I’m gonna miss my co-hosts. I’m gonna miss seeing them every day,” O’Connell says.
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