Jenna Bush Hager Says NBC Banned Her From Using 1 Phrase on ‘Today’ Show

Jenna Bush Hager has learned a lot about the TV business since she started on the Today show 15 years ago. On Monday’s episode of Today with Hoda & Jenna, she and Hoda Kotb shared how they had to change when they joined NBC.

Bush Hager, 43, said when she started as a correspondent in 2009, the network banned her from using one word. “[They were like,] ‘Hey, y’all,’ isn’t for the whole country,’” she alleged. “And I was like, ‘Well, but it’s who I am.’ It’s so weird, and this happens in life too. If you have friends and then, all of a sudden, you’re acting not who you are, and you’re like, ‘Wait,’ something in your gut feels wrong.”

“When they said, ‘You can’t say y’all,’ in my gut, I was like, ‘But why? We have to pretend to be news people?’” she claimed. “Because whenever you pretend to be a news person, I felt like I was acting. And we all know from [our Titanic Halloween skit], I’m not a great actor. When you try to pretend you’re somebody else, it feels crazy.”

Kotb agreed that it felt she couldn’t be her authentic self on air, claiming it felt like they were being told, “Welcome in, buy you have to change.” She alleged, “If you don’t fit, they want you to wear something a certain way, cut your hair a certain way, speak a certain way.”

She explained that she and Bush Hager eventually relaxed into their personalities, although it took “a long time.”

“It took me longer than, I think, it took you,” Kotb told Bush Hager. Kotb joined NBC in 1998 as a Dateline correspondent. December marks her final full month on Today ahead of her exit from the long-running morning show in early 2025. She has been on Today for 17 years, joining Savannah Guthrie in 2017 as the co-lead anchor.

Kotb announced her retirement in September, saying she knew when she turned 60 that she was ready for a change. “I had my kiddos later in life and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have,” she explained. “I feel like we only have a finite amount of time. And so, with all that being said, this is the hardest thing in the world.”