Today host Jenna Bush Hager was so eager for viewers to forget she was George Bush’s daughter that she was “ready” to nix her famous last name—until her bosses stepped in to stop her.
Bush Hager told her Jenna & Friends guest co-host Scarlett Johansson on Wednesday that leaving her last name behind to host Today wouldn’t have been the first time she’d done so.
“I was a teacher in inner city D.C….and I went by Ms. Jenna, because I didn’t want them to know” she was the president’s daughter. “Although, of course, they knew. And so I was, like, ready to go by Hager,” when she tied the knot with husband Henry Chase Hager in 2008.
She made her intentions known when she started as a correspondent on Today the following year, and Bush Hager said she got some pushback from producers. “They were like, ‘You wrote a book under Jenna Bush,’” she recalled. “‘People may not know who you are,’ which is so stupid because I’ve been here for 15 years,” she continued.
Bush Hager became the full-time host of Today’s fourth hour in 2019, when she joined now-departed Hoda Kotb. The newly rebranded hour became known as Jenna & Friends, which she anchors with a rotation of celebrity guest hosts.
Bush Hager told Johnasson that she doesn’t regret her decision to keep Bush in her name. Bush is “still in there,” she said, “I love my parents… I did both, and I’m fine with it.”
As for twin sister Barbara Bush, the thought of dropping their famous last name didn’t cross her mind when she married Craig Coyne in 2018.
“My sister did not change her last name though,” Bush Hager explained, “because by the time she got married, she’s like, ‘I’m this person.’”
Johansson had similar thoughts when asked if she’d ever considered changing her name following her marriage to Saturday Night Live star Colin Jost in 2020. “Oh no,” she said. “It seemed like a lot of paperwork to me.”
