Jenna Bush Hager has made it clear that her least favorite segment to do on Today is the life hack segment, which often features her and Hoda Kotb performing needlessly complicated kitchen hacks that are meant to make cooking easier… though that is often not the case.
She and Kotb could barely hold it together during Friday’s (July 12) broadcast after the life hack segment featured one too many knife-related hacks. Like a true mom, Bush Hager appeared thoroughly spooked as she watched Kotb handle a large knife multiple times during the segment.
One tutorial showed how to make popsicles out of a pint of ice cream. “Oh God, watch that knife, watch your finger, for real. [An injury] is the last thing you need,” Bush Hager warned her co-host as Kotb struggled to saw through the pint of ice cream. Bush Hager then walked off, telling Kotb, “I got a better idea.”
Kotb appeared to know what her co-host was thinking and exclaimed, “Don’t get a spoon! Don’t you dare!”
“Hoda, this is a mess,” Bush Hager said as she helped herself to some ice cream with her spoon. “You guys, why did we think we could do this?”
Kotb then let out an exclamation, freaking out Bush Hager. “So close, it’s fine, nothing happened,” Kotb told her co-host.
Later on in the segment, they were tasked with doing another dangerous hack that including squeezing a lemon around a sharp knife to avoid making a mess when squirting it into iced tea. After showing the tutorial, it appeared that Bush Hager was yelling about the possibility of Kotb cutting “her hand off.”
“We’re doing another knife hack?!” she exclaimed towards the camera. “I have an idea, let’s juggle some knives and see how that goes!”
Kotb also began to feel the danger, even as she tried the hack despite Bush Hager’s warnings. “Are y’all trying to sabotage me? This is now getting dangerous,” she said.
“I think someone’s trying to kill us,” Bush Hager joked.
Though she admitted that she doesn’t “think this is smart” to do on national television, Kotb tried the kitchen hack out as Bush Hager warned, “Wait, Hoda, please be careful! This is so stupid. That [knife] could go right through that lemon!”
Kotb managed to successfully complete the hack, prompting applause from the Today crew, which Bush Hager sarcastically reciprocated.
“Yeah! She cut off her hand!” she joked as she clapped along.
She and Kotb ended the segment with a final warning to viewers at home: “You gotta be careful, and children should not do it.”
During a previous kitchen hack segment, Bush Hager began to gag at a tutorial that they aired on the show, noting that it did not look “appropriate for morning television.”
Today with Hoda & Jenna airs on weekdays at 10/9c on NBC.