Savannah Guthrie‘s Today show return date has been revealed following her emotional interview about mom Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.
Hoda Kotb told viewers on Friday, March 27, that Savannah, 54, will be back on the morning show’s set alongside “wonderful human being” Craig Melvin on Monday, April 6.
“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 discussed her decision to return in depth during her 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 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. 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 added, “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 the portions of Savannah’s interview that aired during the Thursday, March 26, episode of Today, she addressed a wide range of topics surrounding her 84-year-old mother’s disappearance. At one point, Savannah broke down in tears as she recalled speculating with her brother, Camron Guthrie, about whether her fame factored into the kidnapper’s potential motive.
“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 added, “It’s just too much to bear to think that I brought this to her bedside,” before apologizing to her mother and her family.
Savannah also reacted to 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.”
Later in the interview, Savannah revealed that God spoke to her amid 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 remembered, “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 sit-down with Kotb, 61, marks her first TV interview since her mom was reported missing in Arizona on February 1. Savannah has been on hiatus from the Today show since her mother disappeared, with Kotb filling in during her absence. As the search for Nancy continues, her family — who has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to her return — is still hoping that someone will reach out to the authorities with details that will bring her home.
