Many of the Today show anchors haven’t contacted Savannah Guthrie amid her on-air hiatus following her mom Nancy Guthrie’s continued disappearance.
“I don’t know if people realize, none of us have had much correspondence with her over this whole 54-day ordeal,” Carson Daly said during the Thursday, March 26, broadcast. “So as we’re watching this with the world, we’re learning and unpacking so much about our dear friend.”
He added, “It’s hard to process here [on] live TV in the moment.”
Savannah, 54, took a step back from her Today duties last month after Nancy, 84, was reported missing in Arizona. She sat down with Hoda Kotb for an emotional interview, which began airing on Wednesday, March 25, and continued on Thursday morning.
“I said, ‘Do you think [it was] because of me?’” Savannah recalled of a conversation with her brother, Camron, who previously worked in military intelligence. “He said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetie, but yeah, maybe.’ I knew that. I hope not. I mean, we still don’t know. Honestly, we don’t know anything. We don’t know anything.”
According to Savannah, it’s been “too much to bear” thinking that she was responsible for mom’s possible kidnapping.
“[If] it’s because of me, I have to say I’m so sorry, Mommy. I’m so sorry,” the TV journalist tearfully added. “I’m sorry to my sister and my brother and my kids and my nephew and Tommy, my brother-in-law. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. If it is me, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Nearly one month after Nancy was first reported missing, police are still investigating her whereabouts. As for Savannah, she’s been leaning on her faith to get through the tragedy.
“My faith is strong and resolute,” Savannah said on Thursday. “I early on felt — and I heard for one of the very few times in my life — I did hear God speak to me. 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.’ I heard a voice and it said, ‘You do know where she is — she’s with me.’”
While Savannah and her siblings weren’t sure whether Nancy was “on this earth still” or “in heaven,” they want to make peace.
“We need to know,” she stated, later adding, “Someone needs to do the right thing. 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. And in the darkness, I imagine her terror. And it is unthinkable. She needs to come home now.”
At the end of the pretaped interview, Savannah’s coworkers further offered their support and prayers.
“The grief is just unfathomable, it’s hard to watch,” Craig Melvin told Daly, 52, and Kotb, 61, in the studio. “It seems like she’s found some peace.”
Kotb concurred, believing that Savannah “has found some” peace but still “wants the answers too.”
The third part of Kotb’s interview with Savannah is set to air Friday, March 27.
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