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“It’s wonderful to be back,” Savannah Guthrie expressed as she resumed her role on the “Today” show after an absence exceeding two months.
Monday marked her return to the anchor desk following the mysterious disappearance of her mother, Nancy Guthrie, from her Arizona residence sometime after the night of January 31.
The broadcast kicked off with a brief nod to Guthrie’s return, although the show did not delve into details about her mother’s situation. Co-host Craig Melvin simply remarked, “It’s great to have you back at home,” as the segment commenced.
Guthrie cheerfully announced, “Well, here we go, ready or not, let’s do the news,” signaling her readiness to dive back into her duties.
While Guthrie has shared videos on social platforms and participated in an interview with former co-anchor Hoda Kotb, she had not been engaged in her regular tasks since her mother went missing.
“It’s hard to imagine doing it because it’s such a place of joy and lightness, and I can’t come back and try to be something that I’m not,” Savannah Guthrie told Kotb on March 27. “But I can’t not come back, because it’s my family. I think it’s part of my purpose right now.”
Over the weekend, Guthrie recorded a message for her church admitting that she momentarily questioned whether scripture’s teaching that Jesus experienced all human emotions was correct as she went through the agony of waiting for answers about her mother’s apparent abduction that still haven’t come.
“After Jesus died, after he breathed his last breath, what did he actually know?” Guthrie said in the message. “On the cross, he cried out, ‘My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?’ That is the anguished cry of someone who does not know the answers.”
Recent revelations about the investigation show it may have been hamstrung from the beginning. A source told Nexstar’s NewsNation that the Pima County Sheriff’s Office had an inexperienced head in charge of its homicide investigation unit and assumed Nancy Guthrie, 84, wandered off on her own in the beginning, to the detriment of the investigation. The union representing local deputies unanimously gave a vote of no confidence to Sheriff Chris Nanos.
In the opening weeks of the investigation, photos and video of a masked individual appearing to disable Nancy Guthrie’s doorbell camera sparked optimism that a break could come in the case, but a source told NewsNation there are no suspect.
While she and her siblings waited in Arizona for answers about their mother, Savannah Guthrie missed out on covering the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, for which she had spent weeks preparing. Sources also told NewsNation that in the early days of the investigation, she was considering leaving the role altogether.