The awkward moment seen around the world! Hoda Kotb didn’t realize she was stirring the pot when she asked Nick and Vanessa Lachey about a baby gift they allegedly sent his ex-wife, Jessica Simpson.
“Here’s the thing, when I was interviewing Jessica she was talking about on what great terms everyone was. Like, ‘I’m so happy for them. We have children. They have children.’ And she mentioned something, I thought, about a gift,” the 55-year-old journalist told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Wednesday, February 12. “So I was like, ‘Oh, so everybody’s happy.’ So when they came I was like, ‘Isn’t that cool everybody’s friends?’ And then that wasn’t the way it was received. I didn’t understand what was going on. I actually was confused.”
Kotb made headlines earlier this month when she told Nick, 46, and Vanessa, 39, that Simpson, also 39, spoke about the couple sending her a present when the Today anchor chatted with the singer about her new memoir, Open Book.
“I feel bad. I’m sorry, but you said somebody sent her … It wasn’t us,” Vanessa fired back on Today with Hoda & Jenna. “I don’t know her address. But thank you, whoever sent it from us!”
After the moment went viral, Cohen, 51, told Kotb that he “spent a couple minutes trying to get to the bottom” of the situation during his own chat with Simpson on RadioAndy, but didn’t get answers.
“I didn’t get a gift. I don’t know where that came from,” the fashion designer told Cohen on February 7.
Simpson, who was married to Nick from 2002 to 2006, added that it’s a “gift” for her that he’s happy after their heartbreak.
“He has three beautiful children, he’s a father and he’s celebrated for that,” she told Cohen. “That’s really a gift to me because I thought that I crushed his heart. I don’t think he believed that I could actually grow up. … We were great together when we performed, we were great together on camera. We lived that.”
Vanessa, for her part, has maintained that she and Nick didn’t reach out to Simpson when she welcomed any of her three kids with husband Eric Johnson. She also threw subtle shade at Kotb when replying to a fan via Twitter.
“You make sure you do your research and state facts and ask appropriate questions as the host… don’t you think,” she wrote. “The statement wasn’t true, so I was simply clearing that up. But definitely a beautiful sentiment if it was.”
Simpson chronicled her marriage and subsequent divorce from Nick in Open Book. After the “What’s Left of Me” crooner told Us Weekly exclusively that he hasn’t read the tell-all, Simpson told Us that she wasn’t expecting to hear from her exes.
“None of those men have reached out to me and I didn’t expect any of them to,” Simpson told Us. “They all know these stories, so I don’t think any of this came as a surprise to any of them.”
