Holly Willoughby insists Phillip Schofield doesn’t "drive her nuts", after denying claims the pair were embroiled in a feud.
The This Morning presenter, who has hosted shows with Phil for 15 years, says you could only do the "gruelling" ITV daytime broadcast with a friend.
"It is two and a half hours of live telly," she tells Grazia magazine.
"If you were to do that amount of live telly with someone who drove you nuts, wound you up, annoyed you in any way, well, I think you can only do that with a friend, day in, day out."
The pair, who have been working together since they first hosted Dancing on Ice in 2006, were reported to have had a pay row in 2019 until she received an equal salary for This Morning.
Speaking in October 2020, Phil said there was no truth to the feud rumours, adding Holly had been particularly supportive ahead of him coming out as gay.
He said: "We couldn’t have been closer because I’d told her my secret and she was holding me together at work."
Holly said reports last year of fallouts were a "particularly difficult time", but they knew the truth about being friends.
And she tells the magazine she found it tough not to cry at This Morning’s real-life stories when she began in 2009, and worried it would be seen as a weakness.
Holly, 40, says: "Empathy is a lovely thing. My daughter has it. She’s amazing. You can put her in any situation.
"I had to control it, in a way. Sometimes I can find myself in situations where I’ve really absorbed the energy of what’s going on, I can feel it so much that I start to feel like it’s happening to me.
"I could empathise so much that the emotion would be rising up in me and I’d just start crying.” She now feels more confident being herself and lets the tears flow.
She says: "It took me a really long time to feel comfortable and go, why? Why are you not allowed to feel emotion?
"People were saying, ‘'’m watching this and I’m crying with you.' If I was at home watching this, I’d be crying too. We’re all real people. With real emotions.
"I’m not going to worry any more. [Crying] is seen as being a weakness, as a feminine trait, and success, up until quite recently, looked more like a man than a woman. This was hard for me."
After launching her Wylde Moon online lifestyle range she also talks of her admiration for Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow for moving beyond acting.
Holly adds: "Now everybody talks about eating organically and wellness. I think Gwyneth really was paramount to bringing that into the mainstream.
"For a long time the focus was on work, business, having it all...
"If you focus on all of that stuff then it won’t feel completely whole unless you yourself feel in a good place. Get that bit right and all the other stuff falls into place."
*Grazia is on newstands now.
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