As Hoda Kotb prepares for her exit from Today, the star is getting candid about her time on the show after 26 years working for NBC. Speaking with co-host Jenna Bush Hager, the duo opened up about how they had to change when they joined the major news network.
The veteran news anchor, 60, described NBC's attitude as being: "Welcome in, but you have to change," as she alleged that "if you don’t fit, they want you to wear something a certain way, cut your hair a certain way, speak a certain way."
Hoda added that she felt "it took me longer than, I think, it took" her co-host in order to accept the changes in order to fit into the workplace.
For Jenna, she recalled becoming a correspondent and being told not to use a specific phrase that shocked her. The Texas native joined NBC in 2009 and was told she couldn't use the phrase "y'all."
"[They were like], 'Hey, y'all, isn't for the whole country,'" she told Hoda. "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."
Jenna continued: "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?'"
"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."
While Hoda may be one of the best-loved news anchors in the country, it hasn't always been easy for her, as she previously acknowledged experiencing difficulty when she started as a correspondent for the network's Dateline show.
"When I was starting here, Jimmy, I started working at Dateline and I'll never forget it. Everyone was better at everything compared to me," she confessed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
"Better interviews, better writing, better everything. I was like 'you know what? At least I've got a pretty good voice so at least I've got that.'"
The star quickly realized she didn't even have the right voice, as her boss at the time, Neal Shapiro, called her into his office and tried to show her just how to improve her voice by reading out the line: 'And then something amazing happened.'
It was when she left his office and heard colleague Keith Morrison "tracking a Dateline piece,'" that she finally grasped how she needed to improve.
He advised her that when he was in the booth, he approached his voice like he was reading his kid a bedtime story, advice which Hoda revealed "from there, I started to get confidence."
News that Hoda would be leaving Today shocked the nation back in September. She told her colleagues: "I had my kiddos later in life and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have."
"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."
Her final day will be January 10, 2025.