Hoda Kotb reflects on the shocking career advice she once received

Hoda Kotb recently reflected on an early-career moment when a boss criticized her appearance.

During Monday’s episode of Today with Hoda & Jenna, Kotb and co-host Jenna Bush Hager discussed the pressures to conform to industry standards. The conversation followed reports that actor Timothée Chalamet had allegedly lost roles for not having “the right body.”

“I related to that,” said Kotb, 60. “I’ve had people telling me there were ‘things that [I’m] not right for.’”

Kotb recalled working in a small market early in her career when a boss made a blunt suggestion. “I played basketball in high school, so I always assumed I was in shape, even though, literally, after college, I wasn’t,” she explained.

She remembered the moment vividly. “He goes, ‘Hey, Hoda. I got an idea – maybe you might wanna try to get on the treadmill,’” she recalled. Bush Hager, 43, was visibly shocked, gasping, “No!”

“Yeah,” Kotb continued. “He said it like that. And I go, ‘What?’ Like, you know when you have a perception of yourself that doesn’t match the perception in the real world?”

Bush Hager jokingly referred to the experience as “reverse body dysmorphia,” a lighthearted take on how Kotb described her misaligned self-image.

Kotb elaborated on the broader expectations she faced. “If you don’t fit, they want you to wear something a certain way, cut your hair a certain way, speak a certain way,” she said.

Bush Hager shared a similar experience from her early days on Today, when she was asked to stop saying “y’all.” She admitted that over time, she returned to her authentic self, realizing, “I couldn’t pretend to be a serious news person.”

Kotb added, “I think you know when you’re pretending, and no matter what it is, you start losing who you are. But sometimes, there are things you have to do to fit into a work environment.”

Kotb did not name the boss or specify the station where the exchange occurred. Before joining NBC in 1998, she worked at several local affiliates, including CBS in Greenville, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana.

The conversation also touched on body acceptance, a topic both Kotb and Bush Hager have addressed in the past. Bush Hager previously shared that she was once dumped by a boy after he saw her in a swimsuit and recalled her late grandmother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, calling her “chubby” as a child.

Despite these experiences, Bush Hager is now focused on modeling self-love for her three children. “All we want is loving children,” she said in an earlier episode of Today. “We don’t need the star kid … we want kids that are kind. The way you do that is model it.”