WAXHAW, N.C. — After weeks of hopscotching across the country on assignments for NBC’s “Today,” Jenna Bush Hager settled her pregnant frame into an oversized leather couch here to conduct an interview. Her subject was Jackson TerKeurst, a 24-year-old Liberian college student who was adopted as a teenager by a local family.

As the cameras rolled, Hager fired off emotional questions about his violent childhood and his adopted family. When the filming ended, Hager leaned across the couch and gave TerKeurst a high five.

“You’re answering too perfectly,” Hager said. “That was awesome.”

Hager, the daughter and granddaughter of former presidents who once stuck out her tongue at members of the news media and whose name used to be the punch line for late-night television show jokes about her underage drinking citations, has officially become a member of the press.

She has emerged as one of the few bright spots in an otherwise difficult year for “Today,” on which she has often commented on the soft side of politics and been able to burnish her own family’s reputation. Unlike other correspondents, she frequently gets invited to the show’s couch, where she shows off her sometimes offbeat sensibility (she recently confessed on air that she dreamed her unborn child was a cat).

And she has expanded into print and social media. She wrote a young adult novel, “Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope,” and in November she became an editor at large at Southern Living magazine, sharing holiday decorating tips. “People really respond to her because she is so real and she is so approachable,” said Lindsay Bierman, Southern Living’s editor.

She runs a blog called the Novo Project that links to her Southern Living posts. She is a regular presence on Twitter, posting snapshots of her cat; assuring her mother, Laura Bush, that she is not skiing while pregnant; and talking about the fatherhood fears of her husband, Henry, who works for a private equity firm. (Based on comments she has made on “Today,” she’s in her ninth month.)

“If you had asked me in college, was I going to do the job I’m doing now, I would say ‘Absolutely not,’” Hager acknowledged as she sat on the deck of the TerKeurst home on a warm early spring afternoon, nibbling on a lunch of Mexican food. “Because I’ve been interviewed so much and because I was the subject, I think I have a sensitivity.”

(TerKeurst, who noted that Hager invited him to feel a kick from her baby, said: “I knew who George Bush was, but I didn’t know who Jenna Bush was. She’s more down to earth than I thought she would be.”)

While fame may have given Hager that sensitivity, it has also given her a huge leg up in starting at the top of the ranks of daytime television. While Hager’s original arrangement with “Today” mirrors those by other political daughters turned correspondents like Chelsea Clinton (on NBC) and Meghan McCain (on MSNBC), she has so far appeared more often than the others, producing several segments a month.

And as with other political offspring, these media jobs have enabled Hager to recast the image of her immediate and extended family.

Her “Ganny,” Barbara Bush, is presented as a mother who lost a daughter, Robin, to illness at age 3. Her “Gampy,” George H.W. Bush, is a prolific letter writer who sent love notes to his wife. Her father, George W. Bush, is her cat sitter, an impatiently expectant grandfather and a baby nursery decorator (he’s contributed a portrait of her cat that he painted). Her Southern Living reports present her mother as the consummate entertaining expert, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a football fan.

Matt Lauer, the “Today” host, interviewed her on election night about the pressures political families face. In December she produced a special about holidays at the White House.

Her pregnancy has received the kind of attention television might lavish on a royal birth. She announced her pregnancy on “Today” in December, as her parents gushed on air by phone to Lauer. NBC turned the baby shower that “Today” hosted for Hager into a segment, a blog item on its website and a photo spread in People magazine.

But Hager said her professional goals remain apolitical, and that also is the case with her twin sister, Barbara, who is a founder of the nonprofit Global Health Corps.

“We’re interested in policy,” Hager said. “But we’re not really interested in traditional American politics.”

Hager quickly dismissed questions about her younger drinking exploits that drew negative attention from the media. She said that growing up, her parents advised her “don’t pay attention to people who don’t know you.”

Hager’s history with the media has clearly shaped her combination of warmth and guardedness before reporters. During the recent “Today” shoot here, she talked jokingly about her trouble trying to keep the screen of her well-worn iPad clean and openly about the early years of marriage. But when a reporter asked to talk to her twin sister, she sharply said she was soon headed to Africa. The mention of her grandfather’s health — he was released in January after nearly two months in a Houston hospital — was quickly met with, “My Grandpa is so much better.”