Savannah Guthrie will return to Today next month.
Guthrie, 54, has stepped away from hosting the NBC morning show amid the search for her mother, Nancy, who has been missing since February 1 in what authorities believe was an abduction from her home in Tucson.
Despite a lack of answers in the case, Guthrie will return to Today starting April 6.
“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,” Guthrie said during the second part of her interview with Hoda Kotb. “But I can’t not come back, because it’s my family. I think it’s part of my purpose right now.”
The news comes just one day after part of Guthrie’s emotional first interview since her mother’s disappearance aired. Guthrie broke down sobbing at the idea that her family was targeted because of her Today fame.
“I don’t know that it’s because she’s my mom and somebody thought, ‘Oh...That lady has money and we can make a quick buck.’ I mean, that would make sense,” Guthrie, 54, told Kotb on the NBC morning show.
“But we don’t know. Which is too much to bear, to think that I brought this to her bedside. That it’s because of me,” she said through tears.
“I’m so sorry Mommy. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry to my sister and my brother and my kids and my nephew and Tommy, my brother-in-law. I’m just — I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. If it is me, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Nancy was last seen at her Arizona home the night of January 31. She was reported missing the next day in what police believe is an abduction after a masked person was recorded at her front door. No suspects have been identified in the case.
The 84-year-old was in fragile health when she went missing. Her family said she relied on daily medication that could have “fatal” consequences if she doesn’t take it. 911 dispatch audio from when she was reported missing revealed she also has high blood pressure, a pacemaker and cardiac issues.
Guthrie also detailed the first weekend after her mother went missing in her interview, telling Kotb: “We thought that she must have had some kind of medical episode in the night and that somehow the paramedics had come because the back doors were propped open.
“And that didn’t make any sense. We thought maybe they came and there’s 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 made any sense.”
Guthrie flew from New York to Tucson to join her siblings. Along with police investigators, they found that there was blood on the doorstep of Nancy’s home, and that her Ring camera was pulled off the wall.
She said her brother “saw right away very clearly what this was.”
“He said, ‘I think she’s been kidnapped for ransom,’” Guthrie recalled. “And I said, ‘What? Why? What? And it sounds so, like, how dumb could I be, but I just didn’t want to believe. I said, ‘Do you think because of me?”
Police do believe Nancy was targeted. The Guthrie family is offering a $1 million reward for information and Nancy’s return. The FBI has separately offered a reward of $50,000 for information leading to her recovery, or to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance.
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