Jenna Bush Hager is looking back at how her former Today cohost, Hoda Kotb, influenced her profession on the legendary morning show.
“It’s been an incredible opportunity [leading the fourth hour]. In the identical way that I didn’t envision myself working on the Today show, I never envisioned Hoda leaving,” Bush Hager, 43, said on the Tuesday, July 8, episode of the “How She Does It With Karen Finerman” podcast. “The truth is, she kept saying, ‘Don’t sign your contract.’”
She continued, “I assumed she was saying that so we could link up our contracts and be there until the identical time, but what she was doing was protecting me because she knew I used to be gonna be doing the show by myself.”
Kotb, 60, emceed Today for greater than twenty years, ultimately leaving earlier this yr to pursue other projects and spend more time together with her family. Bush Hager now helms the fourth hour program, which has been rebranded as Jenna & Friends.
“I didn’t even have one inkling of a thought that she was about to say, ‘I’m leaving.’ It’s nothing we discussed,” she said. “I do know she loved her work and loves her work, and so, leaving it … I couldn’t wrap my mind around it until I sat down together with her [and] I heard her reasoning. It was not something I selected. It was a shock, and it was a disappointment on the time.”
In keeping with Bush Hager, she and Kotb “really sat within the goodbye of it” until the veteran TV journalist’s final episode aired in January.
“We, form of, mourned what was,” Bush Hager added. “We leaned into what this latest chapter would appear like. We talked about it so much. We met about it [and I] felt we were in a extremely great spot for it to occur.”
Now that Bush Hager is the leader of the fourth hour, she hasn’t tried to vary her work style an excessive amount of.
“I lead with humor, and one among the things that’s been an excellent blessing that’s been uncovered is we were all the time a extremely tight team,” she said. “The Today show is a family … [and] it’s a extremely wonderful place to work, and I do know that legacy of it.”
The previous first daughter also tries to “lead with appreciation and gratitude.”
“I’m continually telling people ‘thanks’ for the work that they do,” Bush Hager said. “Most of the times, the producers are what make the show hum in any respect. I even have vulnerability. I’m very honest about my feelings and, without delay, the best way I feel is wildly grateful for this team of people who’s gotten me through this.”
Bush Hager also noted that the Today crew has gotten closer since Kotb’s exit.
“If you undergo the lack of something and the event of something latest, you rely on one another,” she said. “That’s been a extremely fun, beautiful chapter that I never would have asked for.”
Bush Hager leads Jenna & Friends alongside a rotating lineup of celebrity cohosts, comparable to her husband, Henry Hager, Dwyane Wade, Scarlett Johansson and even Kotb.
“We’ll eventually have a everlasting host, I feel, but we don’t know,” Bush Hager added. “I like planning and plans and knowing how things are going to go. For my personality, this has been a challenge. It’s been an excellent approach to live in the current. Like, we don’t have a plan, and that doesn’t scare me. We don’t need one. … What we’re doing now could be great.”