After 10 years, Guthrie still lives for ‘Today’
Co-anchor a steady presence during turbulent decade
When faced with a challenge, “Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie will often take a moment to say a prayer.
It can happen in a makeup chair before she takes her seat at NBC’s Rockefeller Center studio, during a ride to the airport or just before she heads into an interview with a major newsmaker. Once, she prayed with co-anchor Hoda Kotb before they went on the air to tell viewers that their longtime colleague Matt Lauer had been fired.
Based on the turbulent decade she has spent on NBC’s morning franchise, even a nonbeliever would understand why Guthrie, 49, seeks support from a higher power.
Over her 10 years at “Today,” Guthrie has mastered the balancing act of delivering serious breaking stories and smiling through the softer entertainment segments that are part of morning TV, the profit engine of network news divisions.
But the attorney-turnedjournalist also had to navigate several crises at the network and will have to lead the program into a future where a generation of viewers don’t have the same morning TV habit as their parents.
Guthrie said she was grateful for having made it this far after being thrust into the spotlight to replace Ann Curry in 2012, a year after joining the program as a co-host for its 9 a.m. hour. Curry’s unceremonious departure angered some “Today” fans who believed she was treated poorly by Lauer.
“I didn’t think I’d last six months or a year, let alone
10 years,” Guthrie said. “I really didn’t. I thought I’m some transitional person, and I’m going to be the first casualty.”
Steve Capus, the former NBC News president who chose Guthrie for the job, said he was confident that would not be the case.
“By 2012, Savannah had thrived in high-pressure, difficult circumstances,” Capus said. “The ‘Today’ show needed a steady presence to put the turmoil of that time behind us.”
Five years later, Guthrie had to walk through the fire again. In November 2017, she told viewers that Lauer — the longest-tenured host in the show’s history — was banished over sexual harassment allegations. Alongside new co-anchor Kotb, she held the fractured TV family together.
“It was really heartbreaking because I adored Matt,” Guthrie said. “I loved
working with him. But I knew the most important thing I could do was just stay focused and keep going. And having Hoda here — well, I think Hoda saved the show, full stop.”
Instead of seeing ratings collapse after Lauer’s departure, the program’s first all-female hosting team held the audience. The historic pairing also helped mitigate a rash of stories about sexual harassment allegations within the network’s news division.
Guthrie was sent into another minefield last fall during the 2020 presidential campaign when the network asked her to moderate an NBC News town hall with Donald Trump. The network was seen as caving to the former president, who refused to participate in the second scheduled debate against Joe Biden that would be held virtually.
It appeared to be a thankless task, as NBC brass was blasted by political pundits and social media for putting the telecast up directly against ABC’s previously announced event with Democratic nominee Biden.
But Guthrie, a former White House correspondent, delivered a skillful grilling of Trump that made viewers and most critics forget about the mess her bosses created.
Libby Leist, the NBC News senior vice president who oversees “Today,” said the interview was a success because of Guthrie’s tireless work ethic, which she has seen in action since they started working together in 2008 at the network’s Washington bureau.
“She approaches every assignment she gets the same way,” she said. “She’s going to think through every interview top to bottom and think through every question three or four different ways.”
Perseverance has served Guthrie well in the last decade. Viewers are seeing more of her as she guest hosts “Jeopardy!” for two weeks, which kicked off June 14. She’s also handling NBC’s coverage of the
July 23 opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo if they are not canceled due to COVID-19.
After doing “Today” for several months from her homes in Manhattan and upstate New York and the socially distanced “Today” studio, Guthrie has started hitting the road again.
She recently conducted newsmaking interviews in three cities over 36 hours: Brian Houston, founder of the scandal-plagued Hillsong Church; Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, after she was ousted from her
Republican leadership role in Congress; and Ellen DeGeneres, following her decision to end her daytime talk show amid allegations that she ignored a toxic work environment.
Guthrie, who has spoken more openly about her Christian faith in recent years, said the whirlwind day and a half is where prayer can come in handy.
“The No. 1 thing I always pray for is to make sure that I come to an interview with sincerity and good faith, having done my homework,” she said. “I think that’s the best I can give to that person who agreed to be interviewed and may be in a difficult time.”
When difficult times hit “Today,” Guthrie has her own in-house crisis communications expert: her husband, Michael Feldman, managing director of the Glover Park Group and a former senior adviser to former Vice President Al Gore. (They have two children, Vale, 6 and Charley, 4.)
“I am a client, but I don’t have to pay,” Guthrie said. “He’s an amazing partner. I couldn’t have gotten through any of this without him. When I came to the ‘Today’ show, I turned that Google alert off. But Mike has it on because he’s always watching, making sure in case there’s anything we’ve got to worry about.”
While hard-news interviews are Guthrie’s strong suit, she never watches them afterward. But she will occasionally review her Halloween performance on the program in which she re-created a scene from the musical movie “Grease.”
“That was probably one of my favorite moments on the show,” Guthrie said. “Because there’s no young lady coming of age in the late ’70s and early ’80s that didn’t want to be Sandy from ‘Grease’ in those black pants, doing that dance.”