TODAY show Halloween 2026 went live with four hours of costume reveals, special guests, and NBC trivia, turning the morning broadcast into a scheduled holiday event instead of a quick bit. Jack McBrayer joined the team on air, and Sheinelle Jones used the stretch to pay tribute to The Rockettes.
Jack McBrayer and Savannah
Jack McBrayer, known to many as Kenneth Parcell from 30 Rock, joined the TODAY team in a game of NBC trivia and appeared at the end of Savannah’s NBC tour. He called the tour, “That was quite the tour!” and later told Savannah she was “proud as a peacock to wear it.”
The trivia setup fits the broader structure of the broadcast: four hours gives TODAY room to treat Halloween as live programming, not a single reveal. That format lets the show stack costume moments, guest appearances, and throwbacks without rushing the payoff for viewers following along in real time.
Sheinelle and The Rockettes
Sheinelle Jones went with a tribute to The Rockettes, a group that has been performing for more than 100 years and has long been part of NBC’s holiday history through the Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In the week before the reveal, she said, “I think that so many people underestimate the athletic and dance abilities of The Rockettes.”
Sheinelle added, “We see them as these beautiful ladies. They’re showgirls. They have high kicks.” She then drove the point home: “Let me tell you something — these women are incredible and I am learning that in real time.”
Her preparation was the harder part. She said she had stopped ballet in seventh grade and that The Rockettes were “very much so precise and technical and ballet-adjacent,” calling the routine “the most difficult, technically, that I’ve ever tried to attempt” before the reveal. That is the kind of wrinkle live holiday TV needs: familiar faces, but with enough difficulty to keep the segment from feeling prepackaged.
Four hours, one live event
The live format also gives TODAY a way to revisit its own Halloween archive without turning the morning into nostalgia alone. Sheinelle has already channeled Tina Turner, Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, and Janet Jackson for TODAY’s Halloween show through the years, so this year’s Rockettes tribute sits inside a pattern of increasingly elaborate on-air reveals.
Jack McBrayer’s appearance extends that same logic. A guest, a trivia game, a costume reveal, and a long live run all make the broadcast feel built for audience participation rather than passive viewing. For viewers, the practical value is simple: if they tune in during the four-hour window, they are watching the full reveal package as it unfolds, not a clipped highlight after the fact.
The unanswered piece is the costume itself. Sheinelle has already tied this year’s reveal to The Rockettes, but the exact shape of the look beyond that tribute remains the detail that completes the segment.
