‘Today’s Hoda Kotb Reveals A Former Boss Once Recommended She “Get On The Treadmill”

Hoda Kotb shocked Jenna Bush Hager on Today when she revealed a boss she once had before coming to NBC once commented on her weight.

“I had just started working in a small market,” Kotb recalled during Monday’s (Dec. 2) broadcast of Today. “And I played basketball in high school so I always assumed I was in shape even though, literally, after college and stuff I wasn’t.”

She continued, “I still remember my boss going to me, ‘Hey Hoda, I got an idea. Maybe you want to try to get on the treadmill?'”

Bush Hager’s jaw dropped as Kotb continued, “I go, ‘What?!’ You know when you have a perception of yourself that is not the perception of the world?”

“Yeah, it’s called reverse body dysmorphia. I have it too,” Bush Hager joked.

Kotb added that Bush Hager was also asked to make some changes when she began working at NBC, like not saying the word “y’all” on live television.

“I know when you came to the network it was like, ‘Welcome in, but you have to change,'” she mentioned.

“When they said you cant say y’all, in my gut I was like, ‘But why?'” Bush Hager confessed. “We have to pretend to be newspeople because whenever I tried to pretend to be a newsperson I felt like I was acting… I’m not a great actor.”

Kotb and Bush Hager have previously recalled networks wanting “uniform” and “cookie-cutter” newscasters.

“I remember when I first started somebody told me to stop saying y’all,” Bush Hager said. “They said, ‘You shouldn’t say y’all.’ And I said, ‘Well, why not?’ Do they just want us to be robots in blazers?”

Kotb, who has been working in the industry for decades, agreed.

“I don’t know why that’s the way it was, but it really was, they wanted uniform,” she said. “This is what a reporter looks like, an anchor looks like and sounds like this, and go to a voice coach and speak this way.”

Today with Jenna and Hoda airs on weekdays at 10/9c on NBC.