Savannah Guthrie will return as co-anchor of the Today show on April 6, more than two months after her mother was abducted from her Arizona home.
In a tearful interview with longtime colleague Hoda Kotb, Guthrie said that returning is part of her purpose.
“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,” she said. “I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I’ll belong anymore, but I would like to try. I would like to try.”
Guthrie added that she isn’t going to be the same as before. “Maybe it’s like that old poem, ‘More beautiful in the broken places,” she said.
Guthrie also described the Today show as a place of “joy and lightness,” saying that the joy she shows will be her protest.
The journalist’s 84-year-old mother, Nancy Guthrie, was reported missing on February 1 after she didn’t arrive at her friend’s house to attend virtual church services.
The older Guthrie was last seen after having dinner with her daughter, Annie, the night before. Police have described the case as a potential kidnapping. The Guthrie family has received multiple ransom notes.
While there are few clues and many loose ends in the investigation, Guthrie tied her high-profile status to her mother’s disappearance.
“To think that I brought this to her bedside, that it’s because of me,” Guthrie said. “I’d just say: ‘I’m so sorry, Mommy. I’m so sorry.”
Guthrie has visited the set of Today since her mother went missing, thanking her colleagues for their support.
As she prepares now to return to the show, her co-hosts have enthusiastically welcomed the news.
“It’s where she belongs,” Craig Melvin said. “It’s where we all want her to be. We cannot wait to welcome her back with open arms.”
Kotb added that Guthrie was “coming back to this job that she loves.”
After Guthrie’s visit to the studio, Jenna Bush Hager, another host, called Today “her home, and where she feels so loved, and she is beyond loved here.”
While her return will be highly anticipated must-watch television, Guthrie was direct about approaching the show on her own terms.
“I want to smile,” she added. “And when I do, it will be real.”
