Willie Geist fetes 10 years of 'Sunday Today,' Savannah Guthrie's return

Erin Jensen, USA TODAYFri, April 10, 2026 at 12:01 PM UTC

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April marks 10 years of NBC's "Sunday Today with Willie Geist."

Willie Geist and his eponymous weekly news program are celebrating a major milestone: a decade on air.

“Sunday Today with Willie Geist” debuted on April 17, 2016. Then, NBC executives gave Geist “a blank canvas” on which the journalist, also a co-host of “Morning Joe,” envisioned marrying two concepts, kicking the program off with a news discussion and then moving to a format more similar to “Today,” with a sit-down interview as its centerpiece.

“It's certainly evolved and changed since then,” Geist, 50, tells USA TODAY. The hourlong show includes a brief news overview, a thoughtful, in-depth obituary spotlight called A Life Well Lived and the playfully-dubbed Mug Shots, which highlights viewers posing with yellow “Sunday Today” cups. The interviews themselves spun off a podcast: “Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist,” introduced in 2018, extends his conversations with noteworthy guests like Jamie Lee Curtis, Viola Davis, Ina Garten, Michael B. Jordan and Matthew McConaughey.

Willie Geist hosted actor Ryan Reynolds for a Sunday Sitdown Live on April 7, 2026 at City Winery in New York.

Sunday Sitdown Live, launched in January 2025 with comedian Nate Bargatze, puts Geist and a guest in front of a live audience. On April 7, he hosted Ryan Reynolds.

“That was our 10th anniversary party in that room,” Geist says. The April 12 show will give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at production and revisit interview highlights.

“I just look back at this list of people I love,” Geist says, “whose work I admire, who I've looked up to my whole life, and now many of whom I've built relationships with personally. It's been an amazing decade, and I feel very, very lucky to be on this ride."

Ahead, Geist reveals his pinch me moment with Al Pacino, his dream guests, and what it’s like to be a member of the “Today” show family. “I just feel like, now more than ever,” Geist says, “especially with everything that's going on, we've never been closer.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Willie Geist, center, with "Today" colleagues past and present, from left: Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Jenna Bush Hager and Dylan Dreyer

You and Savannah Guthrie are good friends. How have you supported her these past few months?

Willie Geist: To watch someone you love and someone you care about that much in such agony and suffering was very, very painful. And to not be able to do anything to change that for her… We're the kind of people, who feel like, “We're going to fix this. Let's get our heads together. Who are we going to call? What are you going to do? Let's go fix this.” And to not be able to do that in this case, it was a feeling of helplessness. All we could do was pray and pray and pray and send our love every single day…

And we're all just overjoyed that she's back (as of April 6). To see her in that radiant yellow dress on Monday morning, it felt like a blessing that she was back, and to see her doing what she's so good at, and back in that chair when, who knew, as we're going through this, if she would be able to do that. But, of course she could, because she's Savannah, and she trusts her faith, and she's so strong and smart and good at what she does. I think she in some ways needed to come home a little bit too, and we were so happy to have her there.

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1 / 0Savannah Guthrie returns to the 'Today' show after mother's kidnapping

Savannah Guthrie returns to the "Today" show on Monday, April 6 for the first time since her mother, Nancy Guthrie, was reported missing on Feb. 1.Savannah Guthrie has been a main co‑anchor of NBC’s "Today" show since 2012.

Turning back to “Sunday Today,” who are your dream guests?

Sorry to be obvious, but Taylor Swift. Have a good relationship with her team. They're never anything but nice and respectful, and they've been great with us, but we just haven't landed that plane yet.

I grew up in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s in New Jersey, during the dawn of hip-hop going mainstream. So for me, Jay-Z is kind of like a God. I would love to talk to him. He just did that big interview with GQ, and I was very jealous of it (laughs). I was like, “This is so good. They got to everything.” And if he would like to bring his wife with him (Beyoncé), that'd be great, or if she wants to come separately.

When you think of doing the show for 10 years, what moments stick out?

I always think of my interview with Al Pacino. When I think of the ones that stand out to me, it's people that you don't see a lot of, (so) it’s a unique conversation. And we sat in a red leather booth at an Italian restaurant he likes in Beverly Hills. And then after the interview, we had rented a car that wasn't exactly but close to the one that Tony Montana drove in “Scarface.” And the idea was that we'd just get some shots of us driving around.

And it was one of those situations where the publicist says, “All right, just drive around the block and come back. He's got to go.” So I'm driving. Al Pacino's in shotgun, and 30 minutes later he's going, (Geist slips into impressive Pacino accent) “All right, take a left up here, Willie, I want to show you something. Brando and I and De Niro…”

And people would pull up next to us and go, “Oh my gosh, is that Al Pacino?” And there's one scene where he looks up and goes (adopting Pacino accent once more), “Yeah, we're making a new movie. It's called ‘Willie and Al.’ And I'm just like, “This is a dream. How did I get in this car?”

Willie Geist launched his Sunday Sitdown Live series with comedian Nate Bargatze in 2025.

You received an Edward R. Murrow Award in 2020 for coverage of back-to-back shootings in El Paso and Dayton in 2019. What is it like to cover such tragedies as a journalist?

I'm very: just tell the audience what you know, don't speculate, do it with humanity, understand that there are real victims, there are grieving families, there are people praying that their family member will survive the day.

On those mornings, you get people calling in who lived through it, and you go, ‘Oh my gosh, you were in the Pulse nightclub. What did you see?’ And they are going through this incredible trauma that will affect the rest of their lives. My philosophy is: just be a person. Don't be a news anchor. If you were talking to this person as their friend or a stranger who'd come up to them on the street and were trying to hear their story and maybe calm them a little bit, or if it was a family member, what would you do? How would you act? What would you say? How sensitive would you be about certain things? I think bringing facts and humanity in some combination, in some balance is the key to terrible mornings like those.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Willie Geist fetes 10 years of 'Sunday Today,' Savannah Guthrie return

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