Good Morning America host Michael Strahan appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show stage on Monday to let everyone know his signature gap is remaining intact.
“I truly did not think people cared that much about my teeth and I just did it as a little prank, thinking a few of my Instagram followers are gonna go, ‘Oh, he’s [being] crazy’ — they would know it was fake,” Strahan said. The 49-year-old talk show host and former New York Giants defensive end went on to say that he got “Seven hundred text messages, 400 emails…. Everybody’s trying to FaceTime me to see, and I [fooled] everybody.”
On April Fools’ Day, Strahan posted a video on his Instagram account of him going through a dental procedure, supposedly to get the gap between his two front teeth closed. It appears that stunt was no laughing matter to members of ‘Gap Nation’, the community of people who share the signature look and/or don’t want to see Strahan change it.
Read More: Michael Strahan reveals closing of tooth gap was April Fools joke
On Monday’s show, DeGeneres jokingly shared in the fun. “I didn’t realize there was a Gap Nation,” she said. “You would be the king of it, if there’s a Gap Nation. You make it work. It looks good.”
On April 2, Strahan posted another video where he laughingly revealed the prank. “I actually feel really bad about not closing it after everything that I saw, but the gap is here, the gap is not going anywhere for a while and my momma likes it. Thank you guys, April Fools.”
Strahan had tweeted about the love he has for his smile just a week before his April Fools’ stunt, saying “I rock my gap with pride! It’s who I am.” He even poked fun at some of his friends, including Anthony Anderson, who recently closed his gap.
“I got tired of people saying, your gap looks like Michael’s,” Anderson joked on an episode of Good Morning America.
Read More: Michael Strahan slams ‘Bachelor’ host Chris Harrison for his ‘surface’ response to racism scandal
In an interview with Elle magazine in 2012, Strahan said he had previously considered closing his gap.
“There’s so much pressure to be perfect,” Strahan told the publication. “You can fix everything now. For me, I made the conscious effort to say, ‘This is who I am.’ I’m not perfect. I don’t want to try to be perfect. At this point, I don’t think my kids would recognize me without it. They’d be like, ‘Who is this stranger in the house? Call 911!’”
Despite those hints, Strahan certainly had a chance to show off his acting skills and certainly had a lot of people fooled.
The Grio’s Gerren Keith Gaynor contributed to this report.
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