- Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager played The Best Friend Game on their talkshow.
- It's a trivia card game that tests how well friends know each other.
- Spoiler alert: They know each other very well.
If you watch Today with Hoda and Jenna, you know Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager love some friendly competition. They often engage in silly games on their talkshow, and the latest got slightly more serious than usual because it—drumroll please—put their friendship to the test.
That’s right, the pair were tasked with playing The Best Friend Game, a trivia game that quizzed them about one another. And although they've only been co-hosting their segment for three years, they’ve known each other for much longer (Hager was a correspondent for Today before joining Kotb on the fourth hour), so they were up for the challenge, to say the least.
The instructions were simple—well, they were supposed to be, but Kotb admittedly kept getting confused. After drawing a question card from the deck, they were both to answer it as it pertained to the person who drew it. The goal was for their answers (which were written on dry erase cards) to match once revealed.
For example, the first question was: “If I was an animal what would I be?” And Hager drew the card, so the question was about her. Her answer was a dog, but Kotb answered it for herself and wrote “cat.” The misunderstanding persisted, which resulted in them hilariously bickering about the rules—ironically on brand for best friends, don't you think? “Are you serious” Hager asked. “Were you good at games?”
After having a laugh, they moved on. “Would I eat something a day after its expiration date?” Hager asked. That was easy, because the answer was the same for both of them: Yes. “Well, I would smell the milk, do the test,” Hager said.
The second to last question revealed the most about their friendship. It was about Kotb, and the card read: “Could I survive without my calendar and to-do lists?” After taking a moment to scribble their answers, they held up different ones. Kotb claimed that yes, she could survive, but Hager whole-heartedly disagreed—so much so that she convinced Kotb to change her answer.
“You talk to yourself with your to-do list every day!” Hager exclaimed, proceeding to launch into a full (hilarious) impression of Kotb discussing her daily agenda.
“Oh my god... I do do that,” Kotb conceded. “You're right. You're right! The answer is no.”
You know what they say, best friends know each other better than they know themselves—and that seems to be the case for these two.
Kayla Blanton is a freelance writer-editor who covers health, nutrition, and lifestyle topics for various publications including Prevention, Everyday Health, SELF, People, and more. She’s always open to conversations about fueling up with flavorful dishes, busting beauty standards, and finding new, gentle ways to care for our bodies. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ohio University with specializations in women, gender, and sexuality studies and public health, and is a born-and-raised midwesterner living in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband and two spoiled kitties.
