Jenna Bush Hager took Al Roker to task for calling her “Big Red.”
“Earlier this week when I was wearing red … remember this? And I walked onto the set and Al goes, ‘Hey, Big Red!’” Bush Hager said on Thursday’s broadcast of “Today with Jenna & Sheinelle,” referencing Tuesday’s episode of the “Today” show.
“And all the girls were like, ‘No, no! Don’t say that!’” Sheinelle Jones confirmed, as she mimicked the co-host’s reactions.
Bush Hager insisted of the impromptu nickname, “You can’t call somebody, a woman ‘big!’”
Jones, meanwhile, said Roker should have said “Skinny Red!” instead.
Jones recalled “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie saying, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you said that,” after which Roker asked Jones, “What did I do?”
“And I said, ‘You can’t say anything that takes up space!’” Jones explained.
Roker “came up with all these other things,” to diffuse the situation, including “Tall Red,” but Bush Hager wasn’t having it.
“I’m like, ‘Not okay!’” she exclaimed.
Though the show host joked about the nickname on Thursday’s episode, she’s previously disclosed that she’s struggled with body image issues.
Bush Hager — who shares kids Mila, 13, Poppy, 11, and Hal, 7 with husband Henry Hager — once said she’d dealt with the feelings since the age of 9.
“I no longer think that way and I haven’t for quite some time,” she said in 2023.
“I think having children, and your body changing in that way, is such a good reset where you realize, ‘Wow, I’ve been doing this incredible thing, and my body is so much more than a vessel to be made fun of, to be worrying about.’”
She added, “I found a journal over Christmas break where in fourth grade my New Year’s resolution was to lose 5 lbs. — my daughter, my eldest is now in fourth grade and she seems so young.”
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