Savannah Guthrie, co-anchor of NBC’s “Today” show, turned a segment on the 2026 Emmy Awards into a fresh appeal for help finding her mother, Nancy Guthrie, who was kidnapped from her Tucson home. The ceremony took place Monday, September 14, 2026, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, and the morning program aired a clip of it the next day, Tuesday, September 15. Nancy Guthrie is 84, and as of September 15 she 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 to Nancy
The opening came from the Emmys press room. Guthrie, 54, was on set with guest co-host Willie Geist when the morning show played remarks by actress Allison Janney. Janney, 66, won her eighth Emmy on September 14 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, tying an Emmy record for her performance as President Grace Penn in Netflix’s “The Diplomat.” A reporter in the press room opened by commending the compassion and concern she had shown Guthrie since her mother was taken.
“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 in the press room.
Geist, who is filling in for Craig Melvin as host of the third hour of “Today,” called Janney’s comments a beautiful expression of sympathy and credited the actress with 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 April Return to the Desk
Co-host Craig Melvin welcomed Guthrie back beside him at Rockefeller Center in New York on Monday, April 6, closing out a two-month absence from the anchor desk. Yellow was what she chose to wear that morning — the color of the symbol of hope for Nancy’s return. Opening the program, she told viewers it was good to be home. Melvin replied that it was good to have her back, and they moved on to the day’s headlines.
Inbaal Honigman, a body language expert who analyzed the appearance on behalf of Covers, counted an emotional rollercoaster inside the first 30 seconds — courage, vulnerability, strength and sadness in quick succession. At the open, the anchor held her arms wide at her sides with her head cocked to one side, which Honigman read as openness and a willingness to listen, before she brought her hands together in front of her body in a protective gesture the expert tied to fearfulness and loneliness. Melvin steadied her, 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. Then Guthrie turned back to the camera, raising her chin and tensing her jaw. Honigman read that expression as courage and sadness, and as a decision to set emotion aside and get on with the job.
Behavioral scientist Dr. Abbie Maroño came at the appearance from another angle and landed in much the same place. Guthrie looked very composed, she said, but more controlled than her usual baseline: the shoulders stayed slightly held, the movements between segments slowed and turned deliberate, and slight lip compression and tightness through the jaw showed when she was not speaking — a pattern Maroño tied to emotional suppression. She also picked up micro-pauses and deeper inhales before Guthrie spoke, describing 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 no two people grieve the same way. Media training, she added, does a great deal to determine how well a person can regulate and present themselves on camera even as the underlying emotion persists.
Nancy Guthrie was reported missing from her home near Tucson, Arizona, in the early hours of February 1. There have been no major developments in the case in the months since.
Renewing the Call for Help
The Emmys clip ended and Guthrie smiled in the studio on September 15. Watching Janney stop, in the middle of her own triumph, to think about the family had touched her, she said. She then widened the moment beyond herself.
“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.
An awards-show segment full of trophies and acceptance speeches carried the appeal. The actress had put the Guthrie family’s pain into words backstage at the Emmys; the anchor replied to her from the morning show.