Usher really turned up the heat when he visited Today With Hoda & Jenna back in 2023, and Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb are still gushing about it.
The co-hosts made sure to tell actress Taraji P. Henson all about it when they shared a clip of her own steamy encounter with the R&B singer. “Let’s take you back to the Usher concert,” Kotb said as they aired a video of Henson and Usher dancing close together. “You look like you were having a very good time a few months back. Now, we want to know because we’ve been in Usher’s presence, too.”
“And we turned red,” Bush Hager interjected to add, or “beet red,” as Kotb put it.
“My hair looks crazy, that’s what I think,” Henson commented. “But I didn’t care. He has this thing. You just forget about everything… He’s like a magnet, I can’t explain it.”
Bush Hager then told Henson all about the time Usher serenaded them on Today with his hit song “There Goes My Baby” ahead of his Super Bowl Halftime performance.
“He came and danced one time behind Hoda and me,” she told Henson. “I was red in places I didn’t even know turn red.”
The ladies shared a laugh as Henson agreed, saying, “He knows he has this effect!”
Usher surprised them with an intimate performance when Bush Hager and Kotb asked if he was planning on serenading someone during his Super Bowl set. ” The stadium probably makes it very hard to find one lady,” he responded as he reached behind him to procure two hidden roses. “But right now I have two amazing, lucky ladies…”
The R&B legend left Kotb and Bush Hager giggling in their seats. “Can you tell that I’m blushing?” Bush Hager asked at one point. The performance seemed to be enough to convince them to actually come to Usher’s Vegas residency for some more one-on-one time.
“Yes! We’re going to Vegas,” Kotb exclaimed after the dance. “We are going to Vegas.”
The co-hosts later joked that they were going to dry the flowers and keep them “forever” in their diaries.
Kotb also pretended to write about the steamy encounter in her diary, saying, “Dear diary, Usher invited us to come to his show.”
Today with Jenna and Hoda airs on weekdays at 10/9c on NBC.
