Savannah Guthrie resumed her role as coanchor of the Today show amid her mom Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.
Savannah, 54, returned to the NBC morning show during the Monday, April 6, episode after two months away. Wearing yellow — a color which has taken on significant meaning amid the search for her mother — Savannah joined cohost Craig Melvin behind the desk with a smile.
“Good morning, welcome to Today on this Monday morning. We are so glad you started your week with us, and it is good to be home,” she told viewers.
Melvin, 46, assured his colleague that it was “so good to have you back.”
Savannah’s return to Today comes amid the ongoing search for her mom, Nancy, who was reported missing in Arizona on February 1. Savannah took a step back from the show at the time, traveling from New York to Arizona amid the police investigation into her mother’s disappearance. During Savannah’s absence from Today, Hoda Kotb filled in for her.
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Nearly two months after Nancy, 84, vanished from her home in an apparent kidnapping, Savannah opened up to Kotb, 61, about the tragedy in a Today interview, during which she also revealed her plans to resume her duties at the morning show.
“When I look at the Today show, it’s the answer to all of my dreams, actually better than my dreams,” Savannah explained during a segment from the emotional sit-down that aired on March 27. “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.”
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During a portion of Savannah’s interview that aired on March 26, she addressed the possibility that her fame motivated her mother’s kidnapper.
“I said, ‘Do you think [it was] because of me?’ And [brother Camron Guthrie] said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetie, but yeah, maybe,’” she recalled. “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 added, “It’s just too much to bear to think that I brought this to her bedside,” as she apologized to Nancy and their family.
Savannah and her siblings have pleaded for the public’s help in finding their mother since she disappeared, offering a $1 million reward for information leading to her recovery. On February 10, the FBI released photos and video footage of a masked individual at Nancy’s home. However, now nearly two months later, no suspects have been officially identified.
