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Savannah Guthrie was back at NBC’s “Today” show anchor desk on Monday for the first time in more than two months since her mother’s disappearance, saying “it is good to be home.”
“Here we go, ready or not,” Guthrie said as the show opened. “Let’s do the news.”
Guthrie has acknowledged that she’s a changed person and that it’s hard to go forward not knowing what happened to Nancy Guthrie, who authorities believe was taken against her will from her Arizona home.
Despite an intense search involving thousands of federal and local officers and volunteers, there has been no sign of the 84-year-old mother of three since she was reported missing Feb. 1.
As part of a video message released by her New York church on Easter Sunday, Guthrie spoke about feeling “moments of deep disappointment with God, the feeling of utter abandonment.” But she said the resurrection is not fully celebrated “if we do not acknowledge the feelings of loss, pain, and yes, death.”
“It’s hard to imagine doing it because it’s such a place of joy and lightness,” she said just over a week ago on “Today” during her first interview since the disappearance. “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.”
Guthrie, one of morning television’s most recognizable faces, has been a co-anchor on “Today” since 2012. She doesn’t anticipate faking her way through the show, which is normally light-hearted with a mix of serious, breaking news.
There had been a great deal of speculation about whether she would return.
“I want to smile, and when I do it will be real,” she told Hoda Kotb, who came back to “Today” to fill in while Guthrie focused on the search. “Being there is joyful, and when it’s not I’ll say so.”
