Savannah Guthrie was recently crowned co-anchor at “Today,” but she revealed she wasn’t always the well-put together, go-getter she comes across as on morning television.
The journalist told Billy Bush and Kit Hoover on Monday’s Access Hollywood Live that she was a bad student in high school.
“As my mom says, I was a little bit of a slacker in high school,” she revealed. “I really was just kind of unmotivated, a little bit lazy, so my grades weren’t that good.”
Savannah, who was raised in Arizona, admitted she nearly flunked a math class.
“My grades were very average. In fact, I think I got a D in geometry,” she said. “I just didn’t care that much. I sort of just goofed around. I ditched a lot of class. I had like 30 unexcused absences in my junior year. I just wasn’t that great of a student, and actually, it’s a sad thing, but I think after my dad died, I think I just got to be more serious, I went off to college…”
The “Today” co-anchor said losing her father, who passed away when she was 16, just before she became a senior in high school was extremely difficult.
“That was definitely the biggest hardship I’ve ever been through,” she said.
Savannah credits her family – her mother, and an older brother and sister – for pulling together after the loss.
“We just all really rallied each other,” Savannah explained. “I just have a ton of respect for my mom for all of a sudden being a single mom and having these three kids. She had been a stay at home mom. She ended up going back to work and she was only 46 years old. And when I think about that now, her having to face all that, it kind of blows me away how she did it with such grace and class.”
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