‘Live With Kelly and Mark’ Previews Post-Oscars Episode, Including Ambitious ‘Wicked’ Parody That Fooled Even Kelly Ripa’s Daughter (EXCLUSIVE)

Kelly Ripa makes for a pretty convincing Glinda. A few weeks ago the host was in costume as the “Wicked” character — as portrayed by Ariana Grande in the film — while taping the opening to the upcoming “Live with Kelly and Mark” post-Oscars episode. “The makeup and hair was so real that I FaceTimed Mark, and I FaceTimed my daughter and my daughter’s best friend, and fooled them,” Ripa told Variety. “They thought they were talking to Ariana Grande. Then I opened my mouth, and their entire energy shifted. They were back to treating me like me.

Ripa’s husband and co-host Mark Consuelos backed her up: “Yeah, we thought she was Ariana Grande!” (Scroll down to watch the full open.)

Executive producer Michael Gelman said he was worried that Ripa’s transformation was almost too perfect: “At first I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. Kelly looks so good that people are going to think that it’s the real thing and not a takeoff,” he said. “But then you could tell that it’s Kelly. Kelly and Mark both really hit it out of the park doing this. And our makeup and hair team and our producers, who edit that together with the green screens and special effects, it’s just huge.”

Added Ripa: “It’s extraordinary, and I don’t like to sing our own praises, but it is inspired. We really did outdo ourselves.”

“Live with Kelly and Mark” will once again go live on Monday, March 3 — the day after the Oscars — at 6 a.m. PT/9 a.m. ET from the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood, less than seven hours after the Oscars sign off at the venue. Guests will include Steve Aoki and Lil John supplying the music, while Jerry O’Connell will report for the show from the red carpet and Nikki Glaser will give her take on the awards show’s winners and losers.

“Jerry is returning to our red carpet to do our fashion stuff, which is, I don’t mind telling you is my favorite, because he is so bonkers and zany on the red carpet,” Ripa said of O’Connell, who was available to return to “Live” now that his competing program, “The Talk,” has come to an end. “He’s willing to say and do anything, and he’s got just such a great rapport with people.”

Gelman and team are also still saving room for any Oscar winners to drop by that morning. “It’s always iffy, because you don’t know who’s going to win,” he said. “And then people sometimes just want to go out and party. But we’ve had a pretty good track record over the years of getting people to show up the next morning. So we’ve left enough pad in the show that we can fit in any Oscar winners that we get.”

It’s a long 24 hours for the “Live” crew, as they’re taping the red carpet and interviews throughout Oscar Sunday — and then of course, backstage at the show Ripa and Consuelos are chatting with winners right after they collect their trophies.

“They are not focused and truly in the fifth dimension,” Ripa said. “Pulling people out of the fifth dimension and into a space where you’re interviewing them is my favorite job, because I can’t imagine what it would feel like. It’s got to feel surreal. We talk to people, and then will bump into them a month later, two months later and they have no memory of seeing us backstage.”

Added Consuelos: “They’re not in their bodies. You can see that they’ve had a different kind of experience. That’s always interesting, meeting the people backstage just after they’ve won the biggest award their life.”

At some time around midnight, the security switches and the Dolby becomes the “Live” production homebase. “At first we get the control room and the stage, so there’s all kinds of tweaking on which set pieces we’re going to use, and which ones we’re not,” Gelman said. “Putting that whole technical quagmire together is really a challenge for our tech team, but it pretty much goes off without a hitch.”

There’s very little sleep for the “Live” crew overnight. Gelman said he finally learned that he needed to take a few cat naps to stay sharp during the actual broadcast. “For a bunch of years, I got no sleep, or I dozed for half hour,” he said. But really, I found that my brain gets mushy, so I try to get two to three hours, if I can. After the Oscars end, we’ll have our production meeting and talk about, who have we been able to book for the next morning? Then we revamp the entire show at 11 o’clock at night. That’s when a lot of the work starts getting done, where they start editing the red carpet package piece, the fashion piece, the backstage winners piece.”

By Monday midmorning, it’s all over — and that’s when Consuelos gets to do the other thing he’s most looking forward to: “Getting our In N Out burger for the plane home,” he revealed.

Here’s two exclusive first looks at the behind the scenes production on this Monday’s “Wicked” parody set to air during the “Live with Kelly and Mark” post-Oscars edition:

And here is the full open: