Kathie Lee Gifford made a heartwarming — and hilarious — return to Today over five years since she left the NBC morning show.
“What does it feel like coming back here?” Gifford’s former cohost Hoda Kotb asked her on the Tuesday, March 26, episode of Today With Hoda and Jenna. “It feels good,” she responded. “It’s been five years.”
Gifford, 70, followed up by poking fun at Jenna Bush Hager, who took over her role as cohost of the fourth hour of Today in April 2019. “You wanted my job so badly,” Gifford joked after which her daughter, Cassidy, apologized for her mother’s words. “Hope you’re happy now. You could smell it on her before.”
Bush Hager, 42, responded with laughter before asking Gifford whether she would be up for the task of hosting the show in 2024.
“No,” Gifford immediately responded. “I have said so often, especially in the days when I was with Regis, we talk for 23 minutes straight without a note … no writers, anything. Back then, you weren’t editing yourself all the time. That’s the trouble with today, too, with humor. When you gotta think about what you’re gonna say, the fun goes out.”
Gifford previously cohosted Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee with the late Regis Philbin from 1985 to 200 before joining Today in 2008. Gifford announced she was stepping down from her role at Today after nearly 11 years of hosting in December 2018.
Kathie Lee Gifford is back in Studio 1A!
The former TODAY co-host @KathieLGifford joins Hoda and Jenna with her daughter, Cassidy Gifford, to discuss working together in their new Prime Video series “The Baxters” and more. pic.twitter.com/ycNtinUAP4
— TODAY with Hoda & Jenna (@HodaAndJenna) March 26, 2024
“Hoda’s known it for a long, long time,” she explained on air at the time. “All these other projects have been bubbling up in my and [are] so exciting — movies and music and so many wonderful things. I need time for them to do them properly.”
While reminiscing on her hosting days on Monday, Gifford praised Kotb for coming out of her shell. “The most fun thing for me when I was here was watching you become ‘that Hoda,’” she shared. “I remember saying to you, ‘If you can be the same person on the air with me, Hoda, as you are here in the hair and makeup, we’re gonna have a hit show.’ And she got rid of the notes … And once we started being friends, [it clicked] because it was authentic.”
Earlier in the broadcast, Gifford and Cassidy, 30, joined Kotb and Today stars Al Roker, Craig Melvin, Savannah Guthrie and Carson Daly out on 30 Rockefeller Plaza. “I haven’t worn high heels for five years,” Gifford quipped after hugging Kotb.
Guthrie, 52, called Gifford a “sight for sore eyes” before asking whether she missed “freezing out here on the Plaza.” Her response? “Not one bit,” she stated.
Earlier this month, Gifford exclusively told Us Weekly that she had no interest in taking on a new hosting gig “in this world where you got to watch what you say,” adding, “I’ve made a living not watching what I say.”
Instead, she’s set to star alongside Cassidy in the new Prime Video series The Baxters, which premieres on March 28.
“[I wanted] to be a part of something that would give people hope and that would show the real side of a Christian family and what they go through,” Cassidy told Us of the show. “I think so often it’s so cookie-cutter and so clichéd when it’s depicted in the media, and you understand why some people don’t even want to go near it. They think it’s just so saccharine and they’re going to feel like they’re judged.”
