Savannah Guthrie is returning to NBC’s Today show via a lengthy pre-recorded interview with her colleague and friend Hoda Kotb. The talk show rolled a short clip of their conversation on Wednesday morning — Guthrie and Kotb sat down together on Tuesday — the full thing will air in two halves across Thursday’s and Friday’s episodes.
“Someone needs to do the right thing. We are in agony. We are in agony. It is unbearable. And to think of what she went through. I wake up every night in the middle of the night — every night,” Guthrie told Kotb in the emotional clip rolled on Wednesday. “And in the darkness, I imagine her terror, and it is unthinkable — but those thoughts demand to be thought, and I will not hide my face. But she needs to come home now.”
“There is a desperation and also a steeliness about Savannah,” Kotb told her colleagues back at the desk. “She is hoping that somebody, whoever this person is, will see something and say something.”
Kotb said the interview will cover the investigation, as well as Savannah’s “faith” and “how she’s getting through.” Kotb added that she was “marveling” how Guthrie was “able to sit there, with an outfit on, and have a conversation” about such a harrowing ordeal.
Carson Daly called the clip and situation “gut-wrenching.”
Guthrie, the beloved co-anchor of the program (alongside Craig Melvin), previously returned to the Today set on March 5 for an off-air visit with her co-workers. Some of the tearful first reunion was captured by photographers.
“Savannah Guthrie stopped by the studio this morning to be with and thank her Today colleagues,” an NBC News spokesperson said at the time. “While she plans to return to the show on air, she remains focused right now supporting her family and working to help bring Nancy home.”
Guthrie has been off-air since her mom Nancy Guthrie was taken from her Tucson, Arizona home in the early morning hours of February 1. Nancy remains missing and there has been no proof of life since the violent crime was committed. Nancy Guthrie is 84 years old, barely mobile, and suffers from a heart condition. The investigation, a joint effort between the Pima County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI, continues.
At times, it looked like the search had serious momentum. Tech experts were able to recover doorbell-camera video of the alleged perpetrator — the footage was previously thought to be lost. At least one man was detained at in the frantic early days, but he was soon released.
The Today show did not share a return-to-work date for Savannah on Wednesday, though a source tells The Hollywood Reporter that is coming soon. Savannah’s return date will not be announced in her interview with Kotb, I’m told. In the interim, Kotb and Sheinelle Jones have filled in for Savannah; Nancy Guthrie had been a semi-regular guest on the program.
The Guthrie family is offering $1 million “for any information that leads to [Nancy’s] recovery.”
“We also know that she may be lost. She may already be gone,” Savannah Guthrie said in an Instagram video announcing the reward. “She may have already gone home to the Lord that she loves and is dancing in heaven with her mom and her dad, with her beloved brother, Pierce, and with our daddy.”
The feds had previously posted a $100,000 reward.
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