NEWSJenna Bush Hager Slams Al Roker for Calling Her 'Big Red' on Set: 'That's Not OK'
Jenna Bush Hager scolded Al Roker for his new nickname.
Oct. 22 2026, Updated 2:29 p.m. ET
Jenna Bush Hager called out Al Roker after he revealed his new nickname for her.
The anchor opened up about Roker's accidentally offensive comment, which stemmed from her wardrobe choices, on the October 22 episode of TODAY With Jenna and Sheinelle.
"Earlier this week when I was wearing red, remember this?" she asked her co-host, Sheinelle Jones. "And I walked onto the set and Al goes, 'Hey, Big Red!'"
Al Roker took Jenna Bush Hager by surprise when he called her 'Big Red.'
The women shouted his comment in unison as they began cackling over the veteran weatherman's commentary on her outfit.
"And all the girls were like, 'No, no, don't say that!'" Jones said as she reenacted women on the set pleading with Roker to stop before he trotted out with Bush Hager's new name.
As soon as the words left Roker's mouth, Bush Hager spun around and asked him to repeat himself.
"Did you just call me Big Red?" she asked, emphasizing the word "big."
'You Can't Call a Woman Big'
Jenna Bush Hager, Savannah Guthrie and Sheinelle Jones scolded him for the name.
As Bush Hager and her pal and fellow Today anchor, Savannah Guthrie, looked at him in horror, Jones recalled Roker leaning over to her, completely clueless about what he'd done wrong.
"What did I do?" he whispered to Jones as she responded, "You can't say anything that takes up space. I was like, 'Say Skinny Red.'"
"You can't call a woman 'big,'" Bush Hager added.
The well-meaning meteorologist then came up with other nicknames for Bush Hager that she may have found less offensive than his original instinct.
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'Not Okay'
Jenna Bush Hager called Al Roker's comment 'not okay.'
She noted that Roker tried to call her "Tall Red" instead, but she was hoping the nickname wouldn't stick.
"It's not okay," she concluded about Roker's comments on her outfit and stature.
Their reminiscences about Roker's new nickname for Bush Hager earlier in the week came as the women were discussing nicknames given to them by friends or partners.
Jenna Bush Hager revealed some of her other hilarious nicknames.
Bush Hager admitted that she and her husband, Henry Hager, used to have equally cute and cringeworthy names for one another, though they had very little to do with color or size.
"When we were really young, he called me shiny," she admitted of her husband, whom she met when she was just 23 years old. "I don't know why that was just our nicknames for eachother."
She then admitted to calling her husband "pup," which sent the entire studio into laughter almost as much as Roker's "Big Red" mishap.
