Jenna Bush Hager got emotional as the final part of Hoda Kotb’s sit-down interview with Savannah Guthrie aired on Friday, March 27.
“Everything she’s said to you over the last two days is perfectly Savannah,” Bush Hager, 44, said through tears during Friday’s Today broadcast. “She has been braver than I can even imagine. She has been so vulnerable.”
She added, “She took her pain, her heart, her faith, her family, in the midst of her despair, she laid it on the table for all of us. She didn’t have to do that and she has. And I think for all of those people who have heartbreak, they feel seen.”
Kotb sat down with her former colleague for a three-part interview as the search for Nancy Guthrie continues. Savannah cried through the conversation, discussing her mom’s disappearance and addressing rumors surrounding the situation.
Savannah’s cohosts confirmed on Friday that she will officially return to the Today show on Monday, April 6. She spoke about reuniting with her Today family during her conversation with Kotb.
“When I look at the Today show, it’s the answer to all of my dreams, actually better than my dreams,” Savannah said. “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.”
Savannah Guthrie’s ‘Today’ Show Interview: Everything We Learned
She added, “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.”
Savannah said that working at Today is “joyful” for her despite what’s been happening with her family.
“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,” she added. “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.”
Savannah’s interview aired more than 50 days after her mom, Nancy, went missing from her Arizona home. Authorities have yet to name a suspect in the 84-year-old’s disappearance, but the FBI has released doorbell camera footage of the alleged assailant.
“I’m glad and grateful to the investigators and the technology companies that were able to find that video,” Savannah said on Thursday, March 26. “So, I hope at least with people of good heart and compassion stop the irresponsible and cruel speculation that had started to swirl. I’m glad that people saw what came to our door.”
Savannah previously told Kotb that her family is “in agony,” pleading anyone with information about Nancy’s disappearance to come forward.
“To think of what she went through. I wake up every night in the middle of the night. Every night,” Savannah said, “In the darkness, I imagine her terror. And it is unthinkable.”
