Photo: Getty Images
TODAY Show anchor Savannah Guthrie revealed that she plans to officially return to the show on April 6 during an emotional three-part interview regarding her 84-year-old mother Nancy's suspected kidnapping with longtime former co-anchor Hoda Kotb.
“She is coming back to this job that she loves here at ‘Today,'” said Kotb, who stepped down from her TODAY co-anchor role in 2025, but has filled in for Guthrie since her mother's disappearance in February, alongside Jenna Bush Hager, Dylan Dryer, Craig Melvin and Al Roker during the show's live broadcast Friday (March 27).
Guthrie addressed the difficulties she faces in returning to the show during the interview with Kotb, which aired on Thursday (March 26) and Friday.
"I just love this beautiful place that we call home, where we get to come and be every day," she said of the TODAY Show. "I just wanted to be with my family. They're my family too."
"I don't know how to come back and I don't know how not to come back," Savannah added, though acknowledging that she still believes it's "part of my purpose."
"I don't know if i can do it … but I would like to try," she continued. "I’m not going to be the same, but maybe it’s like that old poem: ‘More beautiful in the broken places.'”
Guthrie had previously said it's unbearable to think that her mother's kidnapping may have been because of her own high-profile name.
“It’s too much to bear, to think that I brought this to her bedside… and it’s because of me,” Savannah said. “I’m so sorry, Mommy. I’m so sorry. … to my sister and my brother and my kids and my nephew and my brother-in-law. I’m so sorry if it is me.”
“I don’t know that it’s because she’s my mom and somebody thought ‘that girl has money, we could make a quick buck.’ That would make sense,” she added.
The full interview will air in two parts on Thursday and Friday (March 27) and serves as Savannah's first since her mom was reported missing on February 1, which is suspected to be part of a kidnapping based on eerie surveillance footage showing a masked man loitering on Nancy's doorstep. Savannah said she was notified of her mother's disappearance by her sister, Annie, after Nancy hadn't shown up for church.
“My sister called me and I said ‘Is everything OK?’ And she said ‘no, she said ‘mom’s missing,’” Savannah said.
Nancy was initially suspected to have suffered a medial emergency in the middle of the night.
“The back doors were propped open, you know, and that didn’t make any sense,” Savannah revealed. “We thought maybe they came and there was a stretcher, and they took her out the back … But her phone was there, and her purse was there, and all her things — and it just didn’t make any sense.”
The family realized something was "very wrong" when they found blood spatters on Nancy's porch and the doorbell camera yanked off, backing fears of a potential kidnapping for ransom.
“I mean, it’s just absolutely terrifying,” Guthrie said of the surveillance of the apparent kidnapper.
“I can’t imagine that that is who [her mom] saw standing over her bed,” she added. “It’s too much.”
Savannah also said that her family suspects only two of the random demands they received were actually sent by the kidnapper.
“There are a lot of different notes, I think that came and I think most of them … are not real and I didn’t see them,” she said.
“But, you know, a person that would send a fake ransom note … it really has to look deeply at themselves. Yeah. To a family in pain,” Savannah added.