Today co-host Carson Daly revealed during a recent broadcast that he once covered up an ankle tattoo bearing an ex-girlfriend's name with an unconventional design featuring a crab claw emerging from a pocket knife. Speaking with co-host Jenna Bush Hager on the November 12 episode of Today With Jenna & Sheinelle, the veteran television personality shared the story behind his roughly 15 tattoos while discussing comedian Pete Davidson's ongoing tattoo removal process, according to EntertainmentNow.

Although neither Daly nor Bush Hager explicitly named the former partner during the morning show segment, both Entertainment Weekly and People note that the The Voice host has previously confirmed the ankle ink was dedicated to actress and singer Jennifer Love Hewitt. The pair were a high-profile pop culture couple in the late 1990s before going their separate ways.

A Six-Hour Session in Hell's Kitchen

During the morning broadcast, Daly explained that the vast majority of his body art holds permanent family and historical significance that he would never alter.

He pointed to tributes honoring his wife and children, a 9/11 memorial piece, and an arm tattoo depicting a green beret in honor of his grandfather's military service. However, the ankle tattoo bearing his former girlfriend's name quickly became an issue when he began dating someone new.

"I dated another girl who said, 'That's gotta go!'" Daly told Bush Hager, as cited by Yahoo Entertainment. "Like, first things first, that name on your ankle's gotta go."

The cover-up was not a carefully pre-planned artistic endeavor. Instead, it happened spontaneously at the tail end of an marathon appointment in New York City's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. After sitting in the tattoo chair for approximately six hours for another piece, Daly suddenly remembered the lingering name on his ankle and asked the artist to improvise a solution on the spot.

"I told my guy, I was like, 'Oh, my god!

I forgot. You've gotta just do something with the ex,'" Daly recalled.

Giving the tattoo artist complete creative freedom turned Daly into a test subject for a concept the artist had reportedly been wanting to try. While some headlines, including coverage from The Sun, refer to the resulting artwork generally as a crab, Daly emphasized the bizarre specificity of the final image during the broadcast.

"An hour later, I look down, and now I have, it's a crab claw coming out of a pocket knife," Daly said, repeating the description for emphasis. "And it's a cover-up. It used to have the ex girl's name."

Jersey Shore Origins and 1990s Pop Culture

When Bush Hager suggested during the segment that Daly likely got the original tattoo because he believed the relationship would last forever, the former MTV Total Request Live host immediately dismissed the romantic theory.

Instead, he attributed the decision to an impulsive night out in New Jersey.

"No, I was drunk in the Jersey Shore," Daly deadpanned during the discussion. "I was in Seaside Heights. I remember like it was yesterday."

Following the anecdote, Daly offered a straightforward piece of advice to viewers considering relationship ink, recommending that people avoid putting anything on their bodies that they might eventually want to remove.

In the late 1990s, Daly and the I Know What You Did Last Summer and Party of Five star were fixtures of youth entertainment media, dating for approximately one year. Despite the permanence of the tattoo and the eventual breakup, the two maintained a cordial professional rapport in the years that followed.

According to People, Hewitt even appeared as a guest on Daly's late-night NBC program, Last Call with Carson Daly, in 2005, where the host showed her the altered ankle tattoo on air.

Where Both Stars Stand Today

Decades removed from their late-1990s romance, both Daly and Hewitt have long since moved on and built families of their own. Daly married food blogger and author Siri Pinter in 2015, and the couple share four children—tributes to whom now occupy permanent spots among Daly's collection of 15 tattoos. Hewitt married her The Client List co-star Brian Hallisay in 2013, and the pair have three children together.

Daly's candid reflection comes amid a broader trend of public figures openly discussing tattoo regrets and alterations on daytime television.

Prompted by high-profile cases like Pete Davidson's extensive laser removal sessions, Daly's story highlights the more traditional—and occasionally eccentric—route of heavy ink cover-ups.

Sources