00:00Savannah had to leave a little early. She will be right back here tomorrow though.
00:03A mystery is swirling over Savannah Guthrie's abrupt departure on the Today Show.
00:08On Wednesday, May 6th, about 90 minutes into the broadcast,
00:11Craig Melvin announced that his co-host was done for the day.
00:14A source told Page Six that she left halfway through her workday for some sort of appointment,
00:19and her exit had nothing to do with her mom, Nancy Guthrie.
00:22The following day, Thursday, Savannah returned to the anchor desk
00:25without giving any explanation of her sudden exit.
00:28She introduced the day's news coverage alongside Willie Geist,
00:32who was sitting in for Craig Melvin.
00:39The two then bantered about the upcoming Legally Blonde prequel series, Elle,
00:44set to premiere in July on Amazon's Prime Video.
00:47It's Savannah's favorite movie. Here she is in Happier Times, Halloween 2024,
00:53dressed as Reese Witherspoon's iconic character.
00:55That was a year and a half before the Guthrie family's life would be turned upside down
01:00in a tragedy that dominated national news.
01:03On January 31st, Nancy Guthrie, age 84,
01:06was believed to have been kidnapped from her home outside Tucson, Arizona.
01:10Horrifying video captured the moment a masked man tampered with Nancy's Google Nest camera,
01:15just hours before she was reported missing.
01:18Police also found blood along the front door.
01:21Due to the family emergency, Savannah skipped covering the Winter Olympics in Italy.
01:25After taking two months off from the NBC morning show,
01:28she returned to Today on April 6th.
01:31Her yellow dress was seen as a symbol of hope.
01:34And it is good to be home.
01:35Yes, it is good to have you back at home.
01:37Well, here we go. Ready or not, let's do the news.
01:40Yes, so good to have you back. All right.
01:41It's been a harrowing two months, but staffers at the Today Show were actually given explicit instructions
01:47for Savannah's return.
01:49With more as our senior reporter, Mara Seagler.
01:51What was the Today Show staff told?
01:53So it was the correspondence.
01:55So these are not, so Craig Melvin welcomed Savannah back.
01:58It was really quick.
01:59It was like, welcome back.
02:01And Savannah was like, ready or not, let's do the news.
02:04Jenna Bush Hagar welcomed her back.
02:06Al Roker welcomed her back at different points in the show.
02:09But the correspondents who came on were explicitly told not to mention her mother or welcome her back.
02:17Now, there is a practical reason for that.
02:20You know, you can't keep stopping these segments.
02:22Savannah would then have to respond.
02:25They wanted to, what my source says, is, you know, Savannah's back.
02:28They had done the interviews with her before.
02:30Now she's back at work.
02:31It means it's back to business as normal.
02:33They're just trying to move forward at this point.
02:35It's been a really hard year.
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