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“She saved my butt,” admitted the Today host, revealing the cringeworthy personal question she says then-producers urged her to ask the reality star during her first year as a co-anchor of the morning show.
Savannah Guthrie is taking a look back at one of her most “embarrassing” Today show moments.
While speaking with Andy Cohen during a SiriusXM town hall on Thursday, the journalist detailed an awkward moment from her interview with Khloe Kardashian during her appearance on Today back in 2012 — the same year Guthrie became an official co-anchor of the NBC morning show.
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Guthrie — who described herself as being a “naive, green anchor” at the time — said she was urged by then-Today producers to ask Khloe about the now-longtime circulated rumor surrounding her biological father, with many speculating that her dad isn’t actually Robert Kardashian.
When Cohen asked Guthrie and her co-anchor, Craig Melvin, about their “most embarrassing moment on television,” Guthrie brought up a “very embarrassing one.”
“Khloe was on. There had been these stories circulating in the press that her father, Robert Kardashian, wasn’t really her father,” she began, to which Cohen chimed in, noting how many speculated that Khloe’s biological father is OJ Simpson.
“Who knows? I can’t even remember the details,” Guthrie continued. “But I know the producers at the time — none of whom are here today — really wanted me to ask, and I was very embarrassed to ask such a question.”
“And I was very embarrassed to ask such a question,” she added.
The TV personality then shared how she approached the task.
“I did what any naive, green anchor would do, which is leave it to the last,” she joked as Melvin laughed, before she continued, “Well, at the Today show, we have a thing called the ‘hard out.’ And the hard out means you have to be done, the show is going to black at such and such time.”
Guthrie noted that the show’s hard out is only 10 seconds, and she waited until the final moment to ask Khloe the cringe-worthy, personal question.
“Andy, I said, ‘Khloe and just real quickly, in the seconds we have, there’ve been some stories that Robert Kardashian is not your father. Is he?'” she recalled. “And she’s like, and God bless her, and I will always, if I saw her today, I’d hug her for this. I don’t know if she’s such a pro that she saw them counting down like ‘three, two…’ And she said, ‘Yep, I know. Nothing to it.’ And I was like, “And we’ll be right back.'”
“She saved my butt.”
At the time, Khloe stopped by the morning show to promote her E! reality show, Khloe and Lamar, in which she starred with her now ex-husband Lamar Odom.
In the last few seconds of Khloe and Guthrie’s conversation, music began playing to signal the end of the interview, with Guthrie quickly throwing in the question about Khloe’s father.
“Actually, I think we’re out of time. Nothing more to say about what people said about your father, your biological father?” she asked, slightly stuttering.
The screen cut to the promotional art for Khloe and Lamar, but Khloe can be heard replying to Guthrie, “I don’t know who my daddy is, I guess. I don’t know,” she joked.
“Yes, you do,” Guthrie said, laughing.
Khloe has previously shut down rumors that her father is anyone but Robert Kardashian, maintaining that Robert is her biological dad.
