Jenna Bush Hager revealed an unnamed “Today” colleague once told her she was hired “because of your dad.”
The former first daughter, 44, made the confession during Wednesday’s episode of “Today with Jenna & Sheinelle.”
“A correspondent said to me, ‘We just thought they hired you because of your dad,'” Hager recalled on air.
She refused to name the person responsible.
“I’m not gonna say who,” Hager told co-host Sheinelle Jones, 46.
The comment came within a month or two of her joining the network in 2009.
Hager openly acknowledged her family connections opened doors.
“I’m sure — and I haven’t asked my boss, and I’d rather not — I got this interview,” she admitted. “I was on the show because my dad was president. I wrote a book.”
Her mother, former First Lady Laura Bush, 78, guest-hosted the 8 a.m. Hour.
“And then my mom and I wrote a book nine months later, and she guest-hosted the 8,” Hager continued. “And so I was on, and then they kept calling.”
She knows the opportunity wouldn’t have existed otherwise.
“I wouldn’t have been given the opportunity” without her parents’ fame, Hager stated flatly.
Jones offered support during the exchange.
“That is why we love you, because you own it,” Jones responded. “But then you still keep going. You don’t sit on it.”
Hager fired back about work ethic.
“We all work like crazy,” she replied.
The privilege has meant constant proving.
“I felt like I needed to prove myself,” Hager shared. “I feel lucky to be here.”
She initially rejected NBC’s overtures.
“They asked me to come work, I said no because I was a teacher,” Hager recalled. “And I kept teaching for several years.”
Teaching, she noted, is “the hardest job there is.”
Eventually she took the interview and started at the network.
Hager became a “Today” correspondent in 2009.
She began co-hosting “Today with Jenna & Hoda” alongside Hoda Kotb, 60, in 2019.
After Kotb departed last year, Jones became her permanent co-host.
Her famous father still complicates her professional life.
“He harasses me,” Hager told Jones about trying to interview George W. Bush, 78. “He likes to make funny jokes.”
In the viral moment that preceded this revelation, Hager had been discussing “nepo babies” with Jones on Wednesday’s show. The topic sparked her memory of the early-career slight. She has spoken before about her complicated relationship with privilege and public life, including pranking her father with a fake Sharpie tattoo in college and warning him to “keep it cool” at presidential funerals where his expressive face goes viral. The daughter and granddaughter of presidents has built a 16-year career at NBC despite, or perhaps fueled by, the skepticism she faced at the start.
Hager’s three children with husband Henry Hager are Mila, 13, Poppy, 10, and Hal, 6.
“Today with Jenna & Sheinelle” airs weekdays at 10 a.m. ET on NBC.