Hoda Kotb Debuts Hair Transformation, Calls It a 'Happy Accident'

The 'Today' host turned a hair disaster into a chic new 'do.

Hoda Kotb is sporting a new 'do! The 57-year-old Today host debuted darker brunette hair on Tuesday's show, a big change from her previous light-colored locks.

Although her hair looked fabulous, Kotb told her guest co-host on Hoda & Jenna, Sheinelle Jones, that the color was actually a "happy accident." The TV veteran had been preparing to see her entire family for the holidays and decided to do a keratin treatment -- a semi-permanent hair smoothing method -- but after three hours of the treatment, her hair was "fire engine orange."

"It was Bozo orange," she recalled, clearly horrified, saying "there was something funky with the chemicals." "I was like an orange Q-tip."

'Today' show

But Kotb and the show's hairstylist woke up at 3:15 a.m. to fix her color before the morning show.

"She just started putting stuff on it, and it's dark brown now, so, that's the way it is," she said with a smile. "There you go."

While Kotb stayed calm in her hair crisis, she also shared with ET back in October 2020 that her fiancé, Joel Schiffman, also proved himself to her during the pandemic. 

"We haven't had any big tragedies in the time we've known one another. And this was a difficult time. And I realized in this moment that he's rock solid in a crisis, he's rock solid," she told ET at the time. "Like, he doesn't create problems that aren't there, he learns how to deal with what we have. He's not concerned about X and Y, he cares about our health and safety. He takes good care, ... but he's just the right person. And I think I chose well. And that's a good feeling because sometimes you don't know, you know, you hope you did."

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