Savannah Guthrie, co-anchor of NBC’s “Today” show, used her own morning broadcast on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, to renew a plea for help finding her mother, Nancy Guthrie, who was kidnapped from her Tucson home. The 2026 Emmy Awards had been handed out the previous evening, Monday, September 14, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, and a clip from the ceremony’s press room gave the longtime NBC journalist her opening. Nancy Guthrie is 84 years old and, as of September 15, had been missing for more than seven months.
“We just want our mom home, give her a proper goodbye. That’s all,” Guthrie said.
An Emmy Moment Turns Toward Nancy
Guthrie, 54, was working alongside guest co-host Willie Geist when the morning show played remarks from actress Allison Janney. Janney, 66, had collected her eighth Emmy on September 14, tying an Emmy record, for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series as President Grace Penn in Netflix’s “The Diplomat.” In the press room, a reporter greeted her by pointing to the compassion and concern she had shown for Guthrie since her mother was taken.
Geist was in the chair because he is filling in for Craig Melvin as host of the third hour of “Today.”
“I honestly can say I think about her every single day. I think about the loss that Savannah and her family are going through. It truly, it just took over — I don’t think I am alone, too. I think all of America is thinking about her,” Janney said.
Geist called that a beautiful expression of sympathy, crediting the actress for pausing in her own moment of victory to recognize what the Guthrie family is going through. Guthrie sounded choked up as she spoke during the September 15 exchange, and Geist gave her a comforting touch.
Her Return to the Desk in April
Guthrie came back to the anchor desk on Monday, April 6, rejoining co-host Craig Melvin at Rockefeller Center in New York after two months away. She wore yellow, the color of the symbol of hope for Nancy’s return. It was good to be home, she told viewers as the program began; Melvin answered that it was good to have her back, and the two moved on to the day’s headlines.
Inbaal Honigman, a body language expert who analyzed the appearance on behalf of Covers, described an emotional rollercoaster in the first 30 seconds, with courage, vulnerability, strength and sadness following one after another. At the start, Honigman said, the anchor held her arms wide at her sides and her head cocked to one side, signaling openness and a willingness to listen; her hands then met in front of her body in what the expert read as a protective gesture carrying fearfulness and loneliness. Melvin was a source of steadiness, Honigman said — Guthrie held his gaze as a way of asking for empathy, and he placed his hand over hers during the broadcast, a signal that she was not alone. Turning back to the camera, she raised her chin and tensed her jaw, an expression Honigman linked to courage and sadness, and to a decision to set emotion aside and get on with the job.
Behavioral scientist Dr. Abbie Maroño came to much the same read by another route. The anchor looked very composed, she said, but more controlled than her usual baseline — shoulders slightly held, movements slower and more deliberate through the transitions between segments, and slight lip compression and tightness through the jaw in the moments she was not speaking. That pattern, Maroño said, points to emotional suppression. Micro-pauses and deeper inhales before Guthrie spoke caught her attention too; she described them as an active regulation of the nervous system meant to keep emotion from surfacing on air. Rather than easing back into the show, Maroño said, the anchor appeared to be leaning on its routine to hold herself together, and she noted that grief presents differently from person to person. Media training, she added, plays a significant role in how well a person can regulate and present on camera while the underlying emotion is still there.
Nancy Guthrie was reported missing from her home near Tucson, Arizona, in the early hours of February 1. The months since have brought no major developments in the case.
A Renewed Call for Help
Guthrie was smiling as the Emmys clip ended. It had touched her, she said, to watch Janney stop in the middle of her own triumph to think about the family. Then she turned the moment outward.
“I never let a moment pass, if I get one, to talk about my mom and how much we miss her and love her, my whole family, my sister and my brother and I and all of our extended families, we’re in such pain. We need help,” Guthrie said.
“So thank you, Allison Janney, for remembering us and for giving an opportunity for me to renew that call,” she added.
A segment built around trophies and acceptance speeches ended in a plea. Janney had named the Guthrie family’s pain from the Emmys press room, and Guthrie answered her from the morning show.
