Savannah Guthrie hugs ‘Today’ fans and cries as she returns to Morning News
Perhaps what was most special about Savannah Guthrie’s return to “Today” was how normal it seemed.
This was by design. Guthrie, the co-host of NBC’s morning news show, has been absent from the program since her mother Nancy was reported missing on February 1. “Today” had covered the case aggressively in the early days of the investigation, seemingly as much out of a sense that they couldn’t ignore news about their own TV family as a desire to let go of potential leads. As time went on, however, Guthrie had publicly expressed a desire — including as an interview subject for “Today” — to take her family tragedy out of the center of the picture. “Well, here we go, ready or not,” she said to her co-host Craig Melvin at the top of the broadcast. “Let’s do the news.”
That’s what Guthrie and Melvin did, with a broadcast in which the nod to Guthrie’s family situation was largely in the margins. Guthrie’s yellow dress and Melvin’s yellow tie matched the yellow ribbons worn by many fans at Rockefeller Plaza, but served as a bright accent to news stories about the efforts to open the Strait of Hormuz and the Artemis II NASA mission. Some correspondents alluded not to Guthrie’s sad news but to the happy fact of her return, with Al Roker giving her a kiss at the top of his weather report and Jenna Bush Hager briefly declaring, “We have our sunshine back” before sharing a TikTok-derived “toddler tantrum hack.” At the end of the first segment – the segment where, before the show’s more lifestyle-like content took over, Guthrie and Melvin did the news – the hosts were shown exchanging a high-five and looking into each other’s eyes. Viewers who have struggled to imagine Guthrie’s emotional state over the past two months were given a hint of relief: She was visibly relieved that she had shown she could make it to the top of the show.
The broadcast seemed carefully constructed to show Guthrie, in her return, to her best advantage. On her first day back, Guthrie didn’t do a single interview solo. (Melvin did two, including a relatively sensitive conversation with singer Rebecca King-Crews, along with her husband Terry Crews, in which she broke the news that she is being treated for Parkinson’s disease.) And in the 8:30 corner of the show, in which the hosts gather outside to greet their audience, Bush Hager escorted Guthrie by the arm to the Plaza so she could speak briefly. “These signs are so beautiful,” Guthrie said tearfully. “You guys have been so beautiful. I’ve received so many letters, so much kindness for me and my whole family. We feel it. We feel your prayers. So thank you so much.” When the show went commercial, she was shown hugging fans.
This brief statement may have been all that needed to be said before the hugging began. “Today” has covered the Nancy Guthrie story, both to try to help a case that has stymied investigators and to honor the anchor’s unimaginable pain, but forcing her to dredge up deep wells of feeling on live TV is an inhumane ask. This past weekend, Guthrie’s Easter message, shared publicly by her church, provided a sense of her inner state, and it is one of both hard-won hope and anxiety: Guthrie described the feeling of “deep disappointment with God” and “utter desolation.” It is not a criticism of “Today” to say that this particular sentiment, expressed in this way, is more than the program could bear. Instead, Guthrie’s return seemed like an attempt to reclaim a piece of her old life for herself, and to show her audience that she is doing well and that we can do challenging things at home too.
Guthrie’s return was ultimately an unusual TV event — a highly publicized comeback moment that the network and the show made every effort to downplay. Guthrie undoubtedly wants it that way, but in the end it also felt good for the viewers. Hearing Guthrie make silly morning show jokes — urging South Carolina’s Melvin to wear “ear muffs” before reporting on his home state team’s loss in the NCAA women’s basketball finals, or hearing that two bald eagle parents had listened to “baby making music” before they got eagles — was a reminder of something that doesn’t need to be said outright to be clear.
Grief is complicated; that’s how people are. And you can laugh and watch the news and do your work while feeling restless inside. Guthrie’s return was a powerful, courageous demonstration of that. By the time her part of the broadcast came to an end, her dress had made its double meaning clear. Yellow is the color used to symbolize support for missing people and track them home. It is also the color of the sun.
