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All of which naturally brings us to the dressing room door belonging to Hager, after the show. As we sidestep head-set-ed producers, rolling racks, and trays of tiny cupcakes, she tells me how she and Johansson met not too long ago at a dinner party and hit it off. “Then Scarlett was here as a guest after Hoda announced she was leaving,” Hager remembers, “and I asked her, ‘Would you ever come and guest host?’ And she said ‘100 percent.’”
Yeah, right. Johansson, so famously private that her husband made a joke about it at last year’s White House Correspondents Dinner (“Don’t be shy. Come right up. She hates privacy!”), sitting down for a solid week on mid-morning television to talk about kids, dating, and flower arranging? Surely you thought she was being polite, I ask Hager. “Of course! I was like, Is this real?” It was.
“She’s intentional,” Hager says she’s come to realize. “Okay, and she wears cool clothes. Scarlett is an Avenger. But her badassery is not surpassed by her kindness and her generosity. It’s miraculous for somebody who’s been in this industry for so long, which can turn people…” Hager’s light Texan twang peters out with the ellipsis. “You know. Into not kind and generous. I keep being like, There’s some kind of error, because you’re famous.”
A few blocks east of the TODAY show studio, Johansson sits cross-legged on the floor. Glasses on, her TV makeup off, hair pulled back in a ponytail—she’s in the middle of a square of softly lit glass offices, the plush headquarters of her production company, These Pictures. The lack of overhead lighting, neutral tones, and whispering quiet give the office a spa vibe. She’s speaking to her partner, Jonathan Lia, about the possible release date of her directorial debut, titled Eleanor the Great and starring the 95-year-old June Squibb. As I sit down, the conversation turns to who should sit next to Hager on the show permanently. Despite social media reactions to her turn that week, it won’t be Johansson.