Savannah Guthrie is looking back on one of the most awkward moments of her Today show career — and it involves none other than Khloe Kardashian.
The longtime morning show anchor admitted that she still cringes over a question she asked the Kardashians star more than a decade ago, calling it one of her “most embarrassing” moments on live television.
“I asked Khloe Kardashian like, 10 seconds before we were going to break about the rumors that her father wasn’t her father,” Savannah confessed to her Today co-hosts and Andy Cohen during the October 20 broadcast. “I was so embarrassed because I felt like all this pressure — I’d just started and I felt like the producers wanted me to ask this dishy question, but I didn’t want to.”
At the time, Savannah had just joined Today and was still finding her footing as a host. Feeling the pressure to deliver a buzzy interview moment, she decided to squeeze in the uncomfortable question at the very last second.
“I asked the question. I didn’t want to,” she reiterated. “Khloe was a total class act.”
During the 2012 interview, Savannah awkwardly tried to fit in the rumor mill question before a commercial break, saying, “Very quickly, speaking of rumors, actually, I think we’re out of time, nothing more to say about what people said about who your father, your biological father?”
Khloe handled it with grace — and humor — replying with a laugh, “I don’t know who my daddy is.”
The rumor Savannah referenced had been swirling for months after Star magazine quoted Robert Kardashian Sr.’s ex-wife Jan Ashley, who claimed Robert once told her that “Khloe’s not really a Kardashian.” His third wife, Ellen Pearson Kardashian, echoed the sentiment in the same interview, saying Robert “did question the fact that Khloe was his.”
Khloe didn’t take the gossip lightly. That same day, she took to Twitter to slam the speculation, writing, “The audacity you have to mention my father’s name like this! Should be ashamed of urself! I let a lot of things slide but this one is really low… YOU ARE DISGUSTING! (yes you know who YOU are).”
Over the years, rumors surrounding who Khloe’s real father is —which were addressed on Keeping Up With Kardashians—actually spurred a response from a key person attached to them: Robert’s friend and former client, O.J. Simpson.
“Khloe, like all the girls, I’m very proud of, just like I know Bob would be if he was here,” the NFL star, who was acquitted in a 1995 trial of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, tweeted in 2019, almost five years before his death. “The simple facts of the matter is she is not mine.”
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