Savannah Guthrie Returns to TODAY as Mystery Around Her Mother Deepens | Nancy Guthrie Missing

Drop Dead Serious With Ashleigh Banfield

True Crime

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2026

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Savannah Guthrie returned to TODAY, but the mystery surrounding her mother, Nancy Guthrie, is still impossible to ignore. In this episode of Drop Dead Serious, Ashleigh Banfield breaks down Savannah’s emotional return to the show, the moments that stood out, and the questions that still remain about Nancy’s disappearance. Joining Ashleigh is Brian Balthazar, veteran television producer and longtime Today contributor, to give insight into Savannah’s return.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone. I'm Ashley Vanfield. This is Drop Dead Serious and I'm coming to you early today.
0:11.1	Normally I drop episodes in the evening, but today I'm doing an early one. It's April 6th, Monday.
0:17.9	Day 65 in the Nancy Guthrie investigation. It's an important day for Savannah Guthrie.
0:23.4	This was her first day back on the Today Show. I have a ton for you today about this.
0:31.7	It may not seem significant to you. It's actually really huge for a lot of reasons.
0:36.4	First of all, I'm going to show you a whole bunch of clips that I thought were very significant throughout the two-hour show that she did today with her colleagues.
0:43.6	And then I've got a really special guest who's joining me.
0:47.2	Brian Baltazar worked with me at NBC.
0:50.6	He was a producer of mine on the shows that I did on MSNBC.
0:55.3	And we've remained friends all these years. He's also been not only a producer on the Today Show, I think for over a decade,
1:03.0	and he became like that with Kathy Lee Gifford. But he's also been a guest on the Today Show a lot.
1:10.1	So he's very familiar with the protocol,
1:13.3	the traditional, the standard, you know, the format, the everything, and all the personalities
1:18.6	when it comes to the Today Show. So he's going to join me with his thoughts about the program
1:23.4	today, the significance of it, how hard it is. It's not just showing up on TV, y'all. It is hard to do one of those shows. You work all the day before at night. You try to get a good sleep. You get up at about, I don't know, crack of ass, like three o'clock in the morning, maybe 2 a.m. if you're a lady, because we got to do the hair and makeup. The boys don't have to do so much.
1:45.3	But it is a lot.
1:52.4	And then, of course, you throw the pressure of everything that Savannah's been under and the emotional strain that she is still under and the grieving.
1:56.1	And then try to put on your happy face and do a show like that.
2:02.1	So I want to go over some of the significant parts of the show that I thought really stood out.
2:07.8	First and foremost, they opened the show in a standard way.
2:15.0	There was nothing different that the Today Show producers did to, you know, change anything up. Like Savannah came in ready to work and do the standard job that she
2:20.7	always did. I actually figured they would have her on tape a lot, that they'd help her ease in
	...

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