Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...Savannah Guthrie was absent from the “TODAY” show Wednesday for professional reasons, though it raised eyebrows amid the more than four-month disappearance of her elderly mother Nancy Guthrie.
The 54-year-old broadcast journalist – who returned to the NBC morning show in April – was “on assignment,” per co-anchor Craig Melvin, and therefore replaced by Jenna Bush Hager during the June 17 episode, Us Weekly reports.
Melvin elaborated that his colleague was “starting production meetings on the Wordle game show coming to NBC later this year.” Guthrie announced last month that the show had been picked up in February.
The Daily News has reached out to a “TODAY” representative.
Guthrie has been making headlines perhaps more than she’s reported them following the suspected abduction of her 84-year-old mother Nancy, who was last seen at her Tucson, Ariz. home on Jan. 31.
Guthrie took a leave of absence from “TODAY” amid the initial frantic search for the matriarch, during which TMZ and other media outlets received alleged ransom notes.
Just last week, volunteers in Mexico began looking for Nancy after receiving an anonymous tip on Mother’s Day, which said to check an unmarked grave near the border town of Nogales.
In the days and weeks after Nancy disappeared, the FBI released disturbing doorbell camera footage of a masked man outside her home in the hours after she was last seen. They eventually identified the suspect as a male with an average build, standing between 5-feet-9 and 5-feet-10. The video showed the suspect wearing a ski mask, gloves, holster, and a 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Backpack.
The Guthrie family offered a $1 million reward in conjunction with the $100,000 reward offered by the FBI and another $2,500 from the 88-CRIME tip line, which also received an anonymous $100,000 reward.