Savannah Guthrie is set to return to the Today show on Monday, April 6, following an emotional interview concerning her mother Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.
Hoda Kotb announced to viewers on Friday, March 27, that Savannah, 54, will be back on the morning show alongside the “wonderful human being” Craig Melvin. “Because she is not going to let sadness win. Her joy is going to be her protest,” Melvin added. “It’s where she belongs. It’s where we all want her to be. We cannot wait to welcome her back with open arms here.”
Savannah delved into her decision to return during a conversation with Kotb on Friday. “When I look at the Today show, it’s the answer to all of my dreams, actually better than my dreams,” Savannah shared. “It’s hard to imagine doing it because it’s such a place of joy and lightness. I can’t come back and try to be something that I’m not. But I can’t not come back because it’s my family. I think it’s part of my purpose right now. I want to smile, and when I do, it will be real. And my joy will be my protest. My joy will be my answer.”
She continued, “Being there is joyful. And when it’s not, I’ll say so. And I have been so grateful to have this family, I consider this my family, my greater family, and when times are hard, you want to be with your family. And I want to be with my family. And so I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I’ll belong anymore. But I would like to try.”
During segments of Savannah’s interview that aired during the Thursday, March 26, episode of Today, she touched on various topics regarding her 84-year-old mother’s disappearance. Savannah broke down in tears as she speculated with her brother, Camron Guthrie, about whether her fame might have played a role in the abduction.
“I said, ‘Do you think [it was] because of me?’ And he said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetie, but yeah, maybe,'” she recounted. “But I knew that. I hope not. I mean, we still don’t know. Honestly, we don’t know anything. We don’t know anything. So, I don’t know that it’s because she’s my mom and somebody thought, ‘Oh, that girl, that lady has money, we can make a quick buck.’ That would make sense, but we don’t know.”
Savannah expressed the overwhelming burden of feeling responsible, saying, “It’s just too much to bear to think that I brought this to her bedside,” before apologizing to her mother and her family. She also addressed the “irresponsible and cruel speculation” that anyone in her family was involved in Nancy’s disappearance.
“It’s unbearable and it piles pain upon pain. There are no words. There are no words. I don’t understand, I’ll never understand,” she said. “And no one took better care of my mom than my sister and my brother-in-law. No one protected my mom more than my brother. We love her and she is our shining light. She is our matriarch. She’s all we have.”
Savannah Guthrie’s first sit-down interview following mom Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance was an emotional one. Savannah, 54, returned to Today for the three-part conversation with former colleague Hoda Kotb, which started airing on Wednesday, March 25. The women shed tears as they discussed the continued search for 84-year-old Nancy, who went missing from her Arizona home […]
Later in the interview, Savannah shared that she felt a spiritual message during the ongoing search for her mom. “As I said to myself, ‘I can handle anything, God. I can handle anything, I just can’t handle not knowing. I have to know,'” she recalled, “I heard a voice and it said, ‘You do know where she is — she’s with me.'” She concluded, “So whether she’s on this earth still or whether she is in heaven, I know where she is, I know who she’s with. But we need to know.”
Savannah’s conversation with Kotb, 61, is her first TV interview since her mother’s disappearance in Arizona on February 1. She has been on a break from the Today show since then, with Kotb stepping in during her absence. As the search for Nancy continues, her family has offered a $1 million reward for any information that could lead to her return, hoping someone will provide details that will bring her home.
