Live with Kelly and Mark is a true family affair, and not just because real-life husband and wife Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are at the helm.

As Live prepares to celebrate Mother’s Day with its annual “I Love Mom” show, longtime EP Michael Gelman highlighted how the upcoming special honors the mothers who make up “a lot” of the syndicated daytime talk show’s staff.

“Just like people do Christmas credits, which we always have a lot of fun with, we do a special Mother’s Day credits, where everyone sends in photos,” he explained to DECIDER over the phone this week. “So they get to be a part of honoring their moms and be seen and be heard on the show, which is always nice. Our show has always been very family[-oriented], very mom-oriented.”

The Live family extends to the show’s fans, as well, who all week have gotten the chance to send in notes and pictures to the show’s signature Inbox, some of which Ripa and Consuelos share on the show. This culminates in “a big Inbox finale” on tomorrow’s show.

This year’s “I Love Mom” show, which airs on Friday, boasts “mom-oriented guest lineup,” featuring Summer House star and new mom Lindsay Hubbard, and Jerry O’Connell, who will be accompanied by his own mother. Plus, Live sent Steve Patterson out onto the streets of New York to chat with people about Mother’s Day, which even included a surprise run-in with Everybody Loves Raymond creator and Somebody Feed Phil host Phil Rosenthal. DECIDER can exclusively reveal a sneak peek at the segment, which you can check out above.

For more on what fans can expect from Live‘s “I Love Mom” show, where Gelman and the Live team seek out inspiration—spoiler: the answer is “everywhere”—and how Gelman has adjusted (or not) to the role of “playing the producer on TV,” check out our full conversation below. And for those in the Big Apple who want to experience the fun of Live with Kelly and Mark at a taping in person, head to their website for tickets.

DECIDER: The Mother’s Day show happening this Friday will be welcoming guests Lindsay Hubbard and Jerry O’Connell and his mother. I would love to ask what goes into the guest selection for a show like this.

MICHAEL GELMAN: Well, we want a mom-oriented guest lineup. Jerry is one of the closest friends we have on this show. He’s been with us for years as a guest. He co-hosts. He’s personally friendly with Kelly and Mark and myself. He’s a great guy and a great personality. We know his mom, though we’ve never really gotten to know his mom… Over the years she’s come with him and we just think the world of him, and we wanted to get to know her. So we had a lot of fun together. We’re going to play a game and see how well Jerry knows his mom, you know, maybe reveal some family secrets. Have some fun. So that’s why we picked Jerry.

Summer House is a huge, huge show. Everyone’s talking about all the scandals. Lindsay is a new mom, a single mom, just brings another perspective to motherhood. So we’re going to talk to her about a lot of her mothering experiences, as well as try to get some tea out of her about what’s going on with this scandal, and really explain it to us because many people are a little confused at what really went on.

Outside of the guest selection, what goes into producing a Mother’s Day show? I know there’s been a whole lead-up this week with the show’s “I Love Mom” Week, but what goes into producing it and what’s the thought process behind what makes the perfect Mother’s Day episode?

We do a whole week leading up to it, and basically we love to hear from our audience and use some of their user-generated content, so they send us lovely notes or funny notes about their mom and pictures. So everyone shares their experience with their mom, and get to honor them. So we read those all week, but we have a big inbox finale on the Mother’s Day special. We decorate the set, we use new graphics for that big show. We also send one of our regulars, Steve Patterson, out on the street and he talks to [people] all over New York City. It’s very funny. We play games with the people on the street, including having them confess to things that you never told your mom as time has passed, and maybe they wouldn’t be mad if you let us know. So people confess to funny things on TV, which will be a lot of fun.

You brought up the inbox. The show has become, I believe, more and more immersive, welcoming fans into the Live family through the inbox, or personal updates about the team’s lives. How do you balance this guest and audience experience while also keeping the show intact?

I think the home audience can relate to when we share things about ourselves or when different people at home share things. I mean, that’s always been the concept. Even with the whole trivia game and all the interaction, and the “Stump Mark,” has always been as a way to have Kelly and Mark talk to not just celebrities who come in, who everyone knows, but also people at home. Even though no one knows Jane from Ohio, once she starts talking and we start interviewing her, people at home realize that, “Hey, there’s a lot that we all share in common.” I think viewers like the personalization and we’re trying to meet individual people.

I think social media and the way media in general is going is going in that direction. We’ve kind of always been there, but we’ve even gotten more immersed in interacting with the people at home and the audience responds to it. Our ratings show it.

How are you honoring the moms in your life and in the Live team’s life through this episode?

Just like people do Christmas credits, which we always have a lot of fun with, we do a special Mother’s Day credits, where everyone sends in photos. So they get to be a part of honoring their moms and be seen and be heard on the show, which is always nice. Our show has always been very family[-oriented], very mom-oriented. A lot of the staff are mothers, and we give them the opportunity to have a life in addition to working extremely hard on this show.

For me personally, I’m very close with my family. They’re in Florida, but I still talk to my mom and FaceTime with her on Mother’s Day, and it’s always a nice day for her. With my own wife, who’s the mother of my children, we celebrate her and usually, the girls and I will have a group FaceTime together. So not only can we talk, but we can all exchange gifts and I take her somewhere special. Her real wish is always that I take over the dog walking. I’m like, “What do you want this year?” We’ve exchanged so many gifts over the years that she’s like, “All I want you to do is do the morning dog walk.” I’m like, “You got it.”

Certain Live episodes may be rooted in tradition, but also you incorporate some new elements every year. How do you go about seeking out those new ideas? Who are the people or the sources that you go to for inspiration?

We take inspiration from everywhere. Again, social media does kind of give you a polling of where people’s heads are at and what people are talking about. But also, again, because my staff are in that demographic and we all have been thinking in that direction for so many years—I mean, that’s who we produce our show for. We kind of brainstorm, and in the end, we come up with some new things and some new versions of old things. The Love Inbox we’ve been doing for the last couple years because people love it and we like to hear their stories, and the people at home like to share their stories. So things like that. When it works, we keep doing it, and we always try to put a new twist on everything.

Your role as executive producer on the show might seem like more of a behind-the-scenes title, but you are very much an on-camera presence when it comes to Live. Did you always feel comfortable in this role, being more of a vocal presence throughout the show, especially the beginning segments of the show?

No. First of all, I don’t know how comfortable I am now. My focus still really is being the real producer of the show. Playing the producer on TV is kind of a different role. It’s fun and I probably have become more comfortable. But at the very beginning, I mean, this was something, literally 40 years ago, when we were a local show and Regis [Philbin] would always talk about his executive producer. He started talking to me, and usually it was a complaint about something which was, you know, his shtick, of something going wrong, and also was reacting to stories. And one day he’s like, “Why do you never laugh?” I’m like, “Oh, I was trying to be quiet.” And then I realized yes, he is looking for this reaction, an on-camera and off-camera reaction. I was like, wow, I should stop kind of holding back and trying to be quiet because I’m on a TV set, and really be an audience member and give him that feedback. So I think I’ve grown into the comfort of being an on-air person when it’s organic to the show. I do produce myself into the show sometimes, but not nearly as many times as some people would think, because I just want it to be organic and natural.

With the Mother’s Day show marking another special holiday episode, what is the next event on Live‘s lineup?

We always do a big, blown out July 4th show, and this year because of America 250, it’s going to be even bigger. We have a bunch of things we’re brainstorming and planning for that show. But that’s always a big episode for us.

Has Halloween planning even begun yet?

Oh, Halloween [planning] started literally the day after Halloween. Like, we already were talking about things that we either couldn’t get together that are still going on or were just starting out that we’re talking about things for next year.

At DECIDER, we’re a site that’s dedicated to all things streaming. So what are you watching right now?

We are always looking for new things to watch. We’re very—how could I say it—piggish, where we’ll start watching something, but then we’ll burn through it so quickly. I love Hacks, I love [Your] Friends & Neighbors. I have to go to my binge list, because we watch so many things. I like to keep up on things, and I am a TV fanatic, and I always have been. Paradise I love.

Live with Kelly and Mark airs on weekdays. Check out their website for your local listings.