“There’s just something about making mistakes in public and then being able to recover that allowed me to feel like I could live a truly happy life,” says the former first daughter.
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when Jenna Bush Hager He sits at the installation table every day next to her Today with Hoda and Gina Co-host Hoda KotbYou never know what might come out of her mouth.
“Don’t worry about what I share about myself. Honestly, I’m a very open book,” says Bosch Hager, 41.
Recent shells have had some serious personal stories, including getting a Sunburn on a topless beach While studying abroad in Spain and Engage in “Handkerchief Bandanna” at the White House while her father George W. Bush was the boss. But she’s been equally open about very sensitive topics that affect women, including me Fertility struggles And Body confidence.
“When I watched her throw those bombs on the desk, I was like, ‘What are you doing, girl?'” Kotb says. “But she is unabashedly herself. People spend their entire lives trying to get there, and it is exactly what it is.”
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Bush Hager, who is he? Mother blocks milesand 10 and Anemone8, and his son Hal4, with her husband Henry Hager, a financier, doesn’t think much of it. “I actually try not to put too much pressure on myself for perfection, because I don’t even come close to it. I find perfection very boring.”
The relationship she fostered with real women was also the basis for her popular book club Read with Ginawhich began as a recurring piece on the today in 2019 and has grown to be one of the biggest influencers in the publishing industry. Of the 55 books submitted by Bush Hagar, 39 have become The New York Times bestseller, and 30 have been optioned for TV or movie.
During the pandemic, we set up a book club on Zoom with Lily King, who wrote Writers and loversWith all these strangers. I started crying. I realized it was the first time I’d ever had a conversation about anything other than the logistics of my kids’ school, work, toilet paper, and fear,” she recalls. “It was just a lovely conversation about a book, and I was able to lose myself with strangers who then felt like I friends. I feel very fortunate that this is my job.”
Related: Jenna Bush Hager Says Night Reading With Her Kids Is ‘So Precious’: ‘It Should Be Fun’ (EXCLUSIVE)
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Building on the success of the book club, Bush Hager launched a production company, A Thousand Voices, last year. Although it was suspended due to strikes by writers and actors, 11 works have already been selected for adaptation. “I have a lot of jobs,” she says. “But everywhere I am, I am 100 percent present.
Being present is something that is deeply ingrained in her. Even her grandfather George HW Bush She was the president and her grandmother Barbara The first lady was, “They were so present, that we didn’t fully understand the pressures they had in their jobs,” says Bush Hager. She and her sister, who was then 7 years old,” I thought of as two Criminal And Jambi. “
Related: Jenna Bush Hager Honors Late “Janie” Barbara Bush: “I Really Miss This Strength of Women”
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Life in Texas (Midland first, in oil country, then Dallas, before the family moved to Austin where her father became governor of Texas) felt “normal,” she says.
She and her sister went to public school, her mother was a librarian, and even as her father began to ramp up his political career, “he was definitely My work on my father. He was at home and with us every night and was my mom’s equal partner.”
Related: Jenna Bush Hager honors her grandfather on President’s Day
Christmas visits to the White House and Camp David with her grandfather created precious memories and an opportunity to plunge into and out of another world. “Because I was from Texas, D.C. at Christmastime felt very strange and special,” she says. “the The white house is decorated for Christmas It’s magical. “
Life as the president’s granddaughter was still sheltered, Bush-Hager recalls, “but when my father became president, everything changed.”
He was elected as the Republican candidate in a closely contested election against her Al Gore In 2000 and took office in 2001, a little earlier 9/11 rocked the nation.
“We were 18, and he knew how badly we wanted to just go to college and live a normal life,” she says of going to the University of Texas at Austin with a Secret Service detail (twin sister Barbara She went to her father’s alma mater, Yale). That was his promise to us: don’t worry. You can live a normal life. Which ended up not being quite right. We were probably all a little naive, to be honest.
Related: Jenna Bush Hager’s funniest stories about life in the White House
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The truth is her college days were so boring, Bush Hager says, that she was too embarrassed to receive a call from the actress Kate Holmeswhich he continued when preparing for a role in the 2004 film first daughter. “I was in the library living a normal life as a college student,” she says. “I felt she was going to be disappointed by everything she saw.”
Holmes wasn’t the only one interested in Bush Hager’s college life. The constant attention in the tabloids during that period left scars. “The world expected us to be perfect,” she says of headlines about her and her sister sneaking drinks when they were underage. “But our parents didn’t, and it’s the best blessing they could ever give us: the freedom to be ourselves and make mistakes.”
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Ultimately, says Bush Hager, the public scrutiny hit her hard but made her stronger. “There’s just something about growing up and saying terrible things about you, making mistakes in public, and then being able to recover and live with it, that allowed me to feel like I could live a truly happy life,” she says. “Because I don’t care what people say.”
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