Craig Melvin's Wacky On-Air Flub Is Another Blow For NBC's Morning Show Cast

We all have our off days, but luckily most of us don't have them in front of the whole world. In March 2026, "Today" star Craig Melvin did. For those who didn't experience the cringeworthy moment in real time, Melvin was interviewing Anya Taylor-Joy at the time. And, while trying to find links between two of her upcoming projects, the anchor asked the actor to find something that connected the character she voiced in the "Super Mario" films with an iconic singer she's reportedly playing in a new biopic. "You're rumored to be playing Joni Mitchell [...] one of the, arguably, most singularly important women in music over the last generation or so; Princess Peach, um, one of the most iconic women, you know, in gaming history [...] What's the connection there?" he babbled. 

Cue Taylor-Joy repeating the question, as Hoda Kotb's "Today" show replacement egged her on with an enthusiastic, "Yeah!" To the actor's credit, she tried to keep things moving as gracefully as possible, reasoning, "They're both singular. You can't touch them. They're in a league of their own." In fairness to Melvin, the question tied in with what he'd asked Taylor-Joy just a few moments prior. He was trying to find common threads between her most famous characters — though that, in itself, was clunky, too. Responding to Melvin's observation that many of her roles involved somebody stuck in a circumstance they wanted out of, she joked, "So I have a history of being trapped?" 

The host didn't take the hint, asking whether it was intentional before proceeding to the Joni Mitchell-Princess Peach gaffe even after Taylor-Joy acknowledged, "With hindsight I do see a throughline between my own personal journey and what I've been allowed to depict on screen, but they always feel very different to me." 

Although Craig Melvin's cringey questions to Anya Taylor-Joy didn't make it onto our list of the most awkward live TV interviews ever, it's worth noting that he had another awkward moment just over two months beforehand. This, after Jodie Foster made an appearance on the show to promote her fully-French film "A Private Life" and he asked her to show off her fluency in the language by shouting out "Today." First, there was an awkward Joey Tribbiani-esque attempt at repeating her French translation, and then, Foster claimed that the show was broadcast on CBS. 

"No! Not CBS! NBC! Jodie!" Melvin playfully reprimanded the Oscar winner, who jokingly shrugged it off. "You can cut that out!" she laughed, prompting another protest from Melvin. "Yeah [...] no, it's live!" he countered, firmly cementing it as one of the many awkward "Today" moments that played out in front of our very eyes. Of course, as far as those cringeworthy moments go, Melvin's mishaps with Taylor-Joy and Foster are definitely on the tamer side. 

After all, as the anchor revealed at the 2025 "Today" Fan Fest, there was one occasion when Melvin's misspeaking almost got NBC in a lot of trouble. "There was a food recall years ago [...] and I read that this particular brand's food had killed, like, eight people, and the brand had not killed eight people, they had made eight people sick," he recounted (via YouTube), prompting even Andy Cohen to wag his finger and declare, "That's bad." While it's not exactly flipping a table or smashing a wine glass in rage à la his Real Housewives, it was a massive blunder all the same.