The TODAY Show desk looked a bit different heading into the midweek with the absence of one of its main co-anchors.
Savannah Guthrie took the day off from the morning news show on Wednesday, October 28, with co-host Craig Melvin joined instead by Fourth Hour co-host Sheinelle Jones.
© Getty ImagesNo reason was given for Savannah's absence, with Craig simply mentioning that Sheinelle was in for her colleague for the morning, with the rest of the morning proceeding as usual.
While the mom-of-two herself didn't provide any explanation or insight into her absence on social media, her leave appears to be a brief one. She was last on the show on the Tuesday, October 27 airing.
And she will likely be back before long for the TODAY Halloween extravaganza, their annual parade of costumes out on the TODAY Plaza, which will take place this year on Friday, October 30 before heading into Halloweekend.
The hosts have set a high bar for themselves already with last year's outing, which included the likes of Miranda Priestly aka Meryl Streep, Anna Wintour, Mr. T, Rocky Balboa, Beyoncé in her Cowboy Carter era, Prince, and more, with the theme being a "Road Trip" around the United States.
One of the show's executive producers, Tom Mazzarelli, shared some insight with People on the rigors of planning the show's beloved annual Halloween special. "It's become, over the course of the years, we try to do a unique theme," he explained to the publication.
© NBC"I would say we start in earnest in the spring where we begin the conversations with our production team and we begin the conversations with the anchors from spring into summer once we have a sense of where we want to head," confirming that the anchors do in fact get to provide their own input on their costumes.
"Each year we raise the bar and it becomes a little bit bigger each year, which is a blessing and a curse, so what we like to do is as we develop the theme and we develop the costumes, we also try to figure out what they're gonna do," he continued, referring to their mini-sketches and musical numbers.
© NBC"It began as just a costume event and has now morphed into a whole production involving song and dance and all sorts of other things. So we have to factor that in as we do this. We have to factor in, can we get the rights to songs? We have to factor in video rights and all sorts of other things that add another element of production and a degree of difficulty as we go."
Although, drastic transformations sometimes yield drastic reactions. In 2023, after dressing up as Pink for the Halloween show, Dylan Dreyer told HELLO! on the Plaza of her son Calvin's reaction: "Calvin saw a photo of what I was going to wear and said 'Mommy, you're not going to wear pants?!' and then he saw the tattoo and was like 'What's going on right now?!'"
© NBCDespite his reticence, the mom-of-three was insistent on making sure her pop star attire survived through not only the morning show, but also later into the day for trick-or-treating with her sons. "Hopefully this makeup will stick until this afternoon!" she quipped.
