‘Today’ Host Jokes She Trashed Hoda Kotb’s Nasty ‘S—t’ After Retirement

Hoda Kotb’s final day on Today was last week, with many bidding the longtime host farewell as she heads off to enjoy life with her daughters. But when Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin popped by The Tonight Show to celebrate the start of the new era of Today, they also revealed how they trashed the last few memories of Hoda from the studios.

“It’s a new era. It’s the Craig era. And we go in and we sit on the set, and there are these trays. It was, like, one contact and, like, expired bean dip and, like, belly button lint. So we just threw it right out,” Guthrie told Jimmy Fallon and the studio audience. They then play a clip Guthrie recorded and posted online.

“Guess you didn’t want any of this s–t,” Guthrie says in the clip, joking back live about how nasty it all was. “Look at the tray…it had rust and barnacles on it. I mean, it was disgusting!”

Guthrie and Kotb co-hosted Today since Matt Lauer was fired due to his sexual harassment and misconduct allegations. Kotb announced her exit from the daytime talk staple back in September 2024, surprising a few watching at home.

“I realized that it was time for me to turn the page at 60, and to try something new. I remembered standing outside looking at these beautiful bunch of people with these gorgeous signs, and I thought, ‘This is what the top of the wave feels like for me,’” Kotb said. “And I thought it can’t get better, and I decided that this is the right time for me to kind of move on.

“Obviously I had my kiddos late in life, and I was thinking that they deserve a bigger piece of my time pie that I have. I feel like we only have a finite amount of time,” she concluded. “And so, with all that being said, this is the hardest thing in the world.”