Jenna Bush Hager will have some new faces joining her as co-host of the Today show once Hoda Kotb makes her exit later this week — and the list is star-studded!
On Monday, Jan. 6, Bush Hager, 43, announced on the air that as Kotb, 60, wraps up her final week as a co-host on Today, a rotating list of celebrity guests will be stepping in to help fill the empty slot, including Taraji P. Henson, Eva Longoria and Keke Palmer.
“It’s going to be our month of wonder women,” Bush Hager said during Monday’s broadcast, revealing that the three actresses would be joining her during the week of Jan. 13.
“You know what that says? Heavy hitter, home run, wow,” Hoda chimed in. “This is a big week.”
“We love these women, we’ve said we love these women,” Bush Hager added. “I feel like Hoda helped me manifest this. Nobody will ever fill this chair, but the three of them sure can try.”
Henson, Longoria and Palmer have all appeared on Today multiple times, each coming on as guests to share comedic bits, speak about their business ventures and more.
The newly-rebranded Today with Jenna & Friends will begin on Jan. 13, and the morning talk show will feature a rotating roster of co-hosts until someone permanent is named. The pair also revealed that the show will have a new theme song, which Bush Hager unveiled on Monday.
“I was picturing you and how proud I’m going to be of you, walking right here from that wall to this desk with that song,” Hoda told her co-host during the show. “It’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be amazing.”
Kotb first announced her plans to depart her role at Today on Sept. 26 after 17 years on the show and 25 years total working for NBC, telling PEOPLE soon after that she planned to focus on spending time with her family following her youngest daughter’s medical emergency in 2023.
“I’ve kind of been contemplating, wondering, thinking about what I wanted this next chunk of my life to look like as I turned 60. And I like adventure, I like new beginnings. I’m a sunrise person and not a sunset person, and I was wondering, what does it look like for me?” she told PEOPLE in early October.
“… There’s the guilt you carry because you can’t be 100% at work and 100% at home,” she added. “Something has to give if you want excellence. If you’re going to be excellent at work, something has to give at home. And if you want to be excellent at home, I mean excellent, and do all the things, something has to give at work. It can’t be equal.”
Kotb won’t be gone from NBC entirely, though, as she notes the plan is still “being formulated,” she said in another conversation with PEOPLE.
“It’ll involve doing some specials, doing the podcast and doing maybe the Olympics, stuff like that,” the Making Space podcast host explained at the time. “It’ll be like those kinds of things. So it’ll be specials and all those things. And I think every month or so, I’ll come back on the Today show and do a little something in this space, which I think will be fun.”
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The Today show airs weekdays, beginning at 7 a.m. ET, on NBC.
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