Savannah Guthrie’s “scratchy” voice, as the host put it when she announced in December that she would undergo surgery this year, has a new sound.
The Today co-host Guthrie joined the show via Zoom on Tuesday to debut her “new voice,” after being off the desk since mid-December.
“I am still on vocal surgery, but I’m allowed to talk five to 10 minutes every hour,” she told hosts Sheinelle Jones, Al Roker, Craig Melvin, Jenna Bush Hager, and Carson Daly.
“This is my new voice—or my old voice! But my new voice!” she said. After joking with the hosts by responding to their questions by writing on a white board, Guthrie revealed that she, in fact, is allowed to speak—but only for “five to 10 minutes” per hour.
“The good news is, you know, it worked. Sheinelle knows; she went through this and had this surgery. It’s kind of a slow recovery. You’re allowed to talk, and if you talk too much, which is a real risk for me, you start to feel it, so you have to really take it easy,” Guthrie said, adding that she can return to work on the show next Monday.
“But Friday I’m gonna come, and we’re gonna do a little story just about what this whole thing is like,” she added.
On Dec. 19, Guthrie told viewers it would be “my last day for a little while.”
“Some of you have noticed that my voice has been very scratchy and started to crack a little bit,” she said at the time. “Well, I have found out what it is. I have vocal nodules, and I also have a polyp. It’s not a big, big deal, but I am going to have to have a surgery in the new year and be off for a couple of weeks.”
“This has been going on for years, honestly,” she also said, and added that she was grateful “to have a solution.”
