10 ST THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020away from a president, not settling for his
stock answers on the Supreme Court or
QAnon or health care, demanding to know
why Mr. Trump insisted on retweeting con-
spiracy theories.
“I don’t get that,” she said that night.
“You’re the president. You’re not like some-
one’s crazy uncle who can retweet what-
ever.”
(Reflecting on the line, she said: “I’m
shocked at myself. I don’t even know if it’s a
good thing that I said it. That just came
out.”)
And as President-elect Joseph R. Biden
Jr. prepares to move into the White House,
Ms. Guthrie promises to be a bolder name
on her network’s main marquee.
“She’s front and center, critical to every-
thing NBC News will be doing, hopefully for
a long time to come,” said Noah Oppenheim,
the president of the division. “She does have
this extraordinary expertise and aptitude
for the political stuff. But her range is
broader than anyone’s. There isn’t a story I
wouldn’t feel comfortable in saying that she
could dominate covering.”
‘I Don’t Like Confrontation’
This is hardly Ms. Guthrie’s big break. She
already hosts one of television’s last re-
maining tent poles, with more than 3.6 mil-
lion viewers. She has served as a White
House correspondent, filled in on “Meet the
Press,” anchored “NBC Nightly News.” But
that can be lost to the casual viewer watch-
ing her in the morning show madness, in the
celebrity interviews and in food segments
in which Ms. Guthrie, by all accounts a terri-
ble cook, does her best to keep up.
“When people see you on morning shows,
they see you not only doing the tough stuff
but also doing the fun stuff that we do and
maybe that overshadows that,” said Hoda
Kotb, her “Today” co-host. “I think some
people forget that’s who she is.”
The spin cycle of yore having accelerated
to a centrifuge’s speed, viewers had per-
haps already forgotten a similar 2015 event
with Hillary Clinton, in which Ms. Guthrie
pressed the former secretary of state over
her email server. Or her interview with the
former United Nations ambassador Nikki
Haley that left Ms. Haley genuinely
stunned, even speechless, as Ms. Guthrie
took her to task over that “perfect phone
call” Mr. Trump made to President
Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Or her
2020 talk with Mr. Biden about his son Hunt-
er. Or even her 2011 sit-down with Mr.
Trump as he mulled a presidential run, in
which he angrily answered (or failed to an-
swer) her questions about his finances, his
tax returns and his defiant his stance on
President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
“Believe it or not, I don’t like confronta-
tion,” Ms. Guthrie said. “In fact, I kind of
would like to avoid it. But I also don’t like
talking points. I believe that the viewers ex-
pect us to ask the questions.”
That sense of obligation to others has
long been with Ms. Guthrie. She has no
memories of her birthplace, Melbourne,
Australia, where her father was posted
while working in the oil business. It was
Tucson, Ariz., where her family settled and
where she and her two siblings faced finan-
cial hardship as her father went long
stretches without work.
In 1988, when she was 16, Ms. Guthrie’s
father, a lifelong smoker, died of a heart at-
tack.
“Every kid who’s lost a parent has inside
them a certain knowledge that you can’t
even put into words,” she said. “And when-
ever you meet someone else who also has
lost a parent, you know, and they know. You
carry it with you.”
Her parents had walked away from reli-
gion but took the family to a Baptist church
when she was a child. She has held on to her
faith through college at the University of
Arizona (she lived at home to save money),
anchor jobs in Missouri and Tucson, law
school at Georgetown and the “Today” job.
“It’s probably one of the most exciting
things to me,” said Ms. Guthrie, who attends
a nondenominational church in Manhattan,
while raising her children in both her Chris-
tian faith and in the Jewish tradition of her
husband. “It’s far more interesting to me
than anything else.
“I’m always so fundamentally aware of
not being the center of the universe,” she
added. “Having a faith really helps you
know your place in the world. And I really
value that. And I find it endlessly fascinat-
ing. Believing in God, loving God, believing
in a compassionate God, just absolutely
spreads through everything I feel and the
way I look at the world.”
She shares this outlook with her “Today”
colleague Jenna Bush Hager, whose 2008
wedding she covered. After the death of for-
mer President George H. W. Bush, Ms.
Bush Hager’s grandfather, Ms. Guthrie lent
her a black dress for the service at the Na-
tional Cathedral. They attend the same
church and hang out together. Their chil-
dren are in and out of one another’s homes.
Ms. Guthrie is the godmother to Ms. Bush
Hager’s third child, Hal.
“We both talk a lot about faith and about
what holds us, what centers us, where our
North Star is, how we want to raise our chil-
dren,” Ms. Bush Hager said.
By 1999, Ms. Guthrie had quit local news
and traveled east to law school at George-
town. She settled into Washington group-
house life, doing freelance reporting on air
for the local NBC station. During these
years, roommates got used to hearing their
friend wake up at 4 a.m. While others slept,
Ms. Guthrie would not only study but also
spend time reading the Bible, sitting in a
green leather chair of her father’s.
In 2002, she earned the highest score of
all applicants on the Arizona bar exam and
then started a well-paying associate job
with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld,
working for John Dowd, who later served as
Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. But when of-
fered a federal clerkship, she did something
her friends still find unfathomable: She
turned it down. She said she wanted to re-
turn to television.
She began as a correspondent at Court
TV, in the post-O. J. Simpson era, when
drawn-out celebrity trials were viewed as
entertainment. Martha Stewart, Michael
Jackson and Kobe Bryant were all charac-
ters on her beat. She also got spots talking
about cases on broadcast network shows,
which caught the eye of higher-ups at NBC,
including Tim Russert, who hired her in- She went from general assignment
coverage to Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential
campaign and finally to the White House,
from which she reported until 2011.
“I really didn’t have any sources at all,”
Ms. Guthrie said. “I didn’t know people and
they didn’t know me.” So she became a pol-
icy wonk. “And if you do, No. 1, you’ll find
stories. And No. 2, when you get on the
phone with one of these officials, they’ll im-
mediately recognize that you’re serious and
that you’re tough.”
Then came “Today,” which, despite the
general froth of morning television, has
long been a showcase for more serious me-
dia stars, like Barbara Walters, Tom
Brokaw and Katie Couric. In her first role as
co-host of the show’s third hour, Ms. Guthrie
quickly established the expected light, fa-
milial rapport with Al Roker and Natalie
Morales. Meanwhile, she tried her best not
to engage with the rumors regarding Ann
Curry, whom NBC wanted to force out as co-
host of the show’s first two hours.
But on June 28, 2012, Ms. Curry, sobbing,
told viewers that she “couldn’t carry the ball
over the finish line,” as her colleagues, in-
cluding her co-host Matt Lauer, tried to
comfort her. That was a Thursday. More
than a week later, Ms. Guthrie replaced her.
There were no balloons. No welcome ban-
ners. This was it.
“Anyone would dream to get to host the
‘Today’ show one day,” Ms. Guthrie said.
“But not like that. I knew it was not a good
situation, and potentially it’d be end of my
career. When my boss asked me, ‘Would you
want to do this job?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’
Not because I was being coy. I truly didn’t
know! I wondered, ‘If I do this, and if it’s
such a controversy, it would be so easy to
fail and never work in this business again.’ ”
Executives had reportedly felt Ms.
Guthrie’s “girl next door” presence would
endear her to viewers. While praising her
news instincts, Steve Capus, then the presi-
dent of NBC News, also deemed Ms.
Guthrie “approachable,” a woman with the
on-air presence of Mary Tyler Moore.
“She’s an ultimate team player,” Mr. Cap-
us told The Hollywood Reporter at the time.
Then after more than five years sitting
next to Mr. Lauer, Ms. Guthrie was woken
up on Nov. 29, 2017, and told that she had to
tell the world that his television career was
effectively over. Trying, and failing, to con-
trol her anguish, at 7 a.m. she read the an-
nouncement that NBC had fired Mr. Lauer
over allegations of sexual misconduct.
“That broke my heart,” she said. “That
broke our hearts. That broke viewers’hearts. And we all had to process it at the
same time.”
Before walking downstairs to the set, she
and Ms. Kotb had held hands in Ms.
Guthrie’s dressing room. They prayed. In
the weeks that followed, the two would steer
the show beyond the scandal, with Ms. Kotb
officially getting her own co-host title in
January 2018 — the first time two women
have helmed the prime slot.
Asked to compare Ms. Guthrie with
Kathie Lee Gifford, her co-conspirator on
the boozy, comically chaotic fourth hour of
“Today,” for over a decade, Ms. Kotb said,
“with Kathie Lee, you know the funny and
then learn just how smart she is,” while
“with Savannah you know the smart and
you learn the funny.”‘United in Anxiety’
Many chose to ignore the smart leading into
the night of what was supposed to be the
second presidential debate, which Mr.
Trump backed out of after the debate com-
mission planned to stage it virtually be-
cause of his bout with Covid-19.
Democrats were furious when NBC gave
Mr. Trump his own forum at the same time
as Mr. Biden’s event over at ABC. There
were social-media meltdowns and peti-
tions, including one signed by a couple of
the network’s own prime-time stars.
“Having dueling town halls is bad for de-
mocracy — voters should be able to watch
both and I don’t think many will,” tweeted
Ms. Couric, who left NBC in 2006.
Ms. Guthrie had traveled to Miami, un-
certain if the event would happen, waiting
for clearance from the National Institutes of
Health. She shut herself in her hotel room,
read through research binders and con-
sumed Diet Coke and nuts from the minibar.
Once the conversation started, she did
not offer Mr. Trump a chance to riff as he
had in his rallies, and she peppered him
with well-informed follow-ups. When he de-
meaned her approach, calling it, “so cute,”
she refused to acknowledge the slight.
“My 15-year-old turned to me at one point
and said, ‘I almost feel bad for Trump,’ ” saidMeridith Webster, the chief communica-
tions officer for Vox Media, Ms. Guthrie’s
longtime roommate and best friend.
Though the event finished second in over-
all Nielsen ratings, the praise for Ms.
Guthrie, excluding conservative outlets
and Mr. Trump, who called her “crazy,”
came in from all over.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh, my God, you know,
who would have the guts to say that to Don-
ald Trump?’ ” said her NBC News colleague
Andrea Mitchell of the “crazy uncle” line.
“And Savannah Guthrie could because of
the manner in which she does it.”
On the “S.N.L.” that followed, Alec Bald-
win’s President Trump seemed even more
disoriented than usual. When Ms. McKin-
non’s Savannah Guthrie — the actress even
borrowed the pink suit — pretended to beat
him up with a folding chair, à la WrestleMa-
nia, she showed no mercy.
Ms. Guthrie’s heightened status was evi-
dent weeks later on Nov. 7. She had left her
home at 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 and had not re-
turned to it since. During that time, as Elec-
tion Day stretched into days, she spent 29
hours on air, 19 of which came in the first 40
hours of coverage.
But one moment mattered the most. Ms.
Guthrie had been part of the network’s elec-
tion coverage in previous years, but she had
never announced the winner of a presiden-
tial contest before. Sitting socially distant
with her network colleague Lester Holt, it
was left to her, at 11:25 a.m., to finally say
that NBC could project that Mr. Biden
would be the next president.
“People say the country is so divided,”
she said later. “And it is divided. But they
were united in anxiety awaiting this result.”
Two days later, she returned to “Today,”
to the chilly social distance of Studio 1A.
Noticeably absent now are the tourists
who usually throng there, lining the street
behind the ground-level studio, straining to
make their way into the screen. For them,
Ms. Guthrie remains the woman Bradley
Cooper delivered flowers to when Mr. Feld-
man finally proposed. She’s the “older par-
ent,” sharing her day-to-day domestic
drama on air. And she makes it clear that
she’ll be there when they return, even if she
isn’t quite sure she deserves it.
“I’ve interviewed Tom Hanks five times
now,” Ms. Guthrie said. “He calls me ‘Savvy.’
What are you talking about? I’m Savannah
from Tucson. There’s no reason I should be
here. I didn’t work any harder than anybody
else. I’m just in on the joke. I know how
lucky I am.”CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Top, Savannah Guthrie of
NBC News. Second row from
left: Ms. Guthrie questioning
President Trump in Miami
on Oct. 15; and with Hoda
Kotb on “Today.” Above,
Ms. Guthrie and Lester Holt
anchored NBC’s coverage
of the election, which
stretched on for days.‘Having a faith
really helps you
know your place
in the world.’
Savannah Guthrie Has Questions
YAEL MALKA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESBRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES NATHAN CONGLETON/NBCVIRGINIA SHERWOOD FOR NBC NEWS