Why Willie Geist Was 'Shocked' By Turnout for 1st Live Sunday Sitdown — and What He Thought Fans Really Came to See (Exclusive)

• Sunday Today with Willie Geist will air its first-ever Sunday Sitdown Live on Feb. 2

• Host Willie Geist interviewed comedian Nate Bargatze in front of a live audience on Jan. 22 at City Winery in New York City

• "I still am a little bit overwhelmed," Geist tells PEOPLE exclusively

Sources say Willie Geist is a "natural." (Sources being his Today colleagues Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Jenna Bush Hager and Dylan Dreyer, that is).

Backstage at City Winery in New York City on Jan. 22, the ladies of Today — Geist's honorary "sisters," as they call themselves — tell PEOPLE that they're excited for him ahead of the first-ever "Sunday Sitdown Live" interview he's conducting with comedian Nate Bargatze. (The interview will air on Sunday, Feb. 2).

"Willie is an incredible interviewer," says Guthrie. "He's beloved. He's adorable. And he has a vision, and he's executed this vision."

Geist laughs days later when he learns what his coworkers said about him — and when he's asked how exactly one gets to be such a natural.

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"My dad was in the business. He was a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent, but we never had a formal conversation like, 'Son, you should get into TV news,'" he tells PEOPLE. "I could tell my dad was having fun, and I saw the product of his work on television every Sunday, which I thought was cool. So, that sunk in somewhere without question, but not because he sat me down and told me I ought to do it."

In the nearly nine years since the inception of Sunday Today, Geist has conducted more than 500 interviews with countless A-list celebrities (in fact, he's nabbed Mariska Hargitay, Glenn Close and Cynthia Erivo for conversations in the last month alone).

So, when the idea began cropping up that the team should try and bring the beloved Sunday Sitdown interview to their loyal fanbase, Geist was excited. Sponsor (and venue) City Winery was game. All they'd need was an audience.

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Geist's first-ever Sunday Sitdown Live sold out 500 tickets in under 10 minutes — a feat he admits he "was shocked by," never mind the fact that people flew to N.Y.C. from all across the country (California! Iowa! Michigan!) for the chance to be in the room.

"I still am a little bit overwhelmed by that. You do a show and you know how many people watch, and that's a lot of people, but you don't see them, really," says Geist. "You interact with them on social media, and then when they're in the room? I literally was saying to them, 'Oh, are you in town for work or are you here to see Wicked?' And they're like, 'No, no, I got the ticket for Christmas. We bought plane tickets and a hotel room and we flew here to see you.' I was so touched by that. It was really beautiful."

Geist laughs again when told yes, he really was the main attraction.

"Well, Nate wasn't too bad either," he says. "He's got some fans."

Related: Nate Bargatze Makes SNL Hosting Debut with Cameos from Christopher Walken and Padma Lakshmi: Watch

As a beloved comedian with a skyrocketing career, Bargatze was a natural choice for Sunday Today to kick off a first-of-its-kind event. To Geist's credit, however, he's not one for cue cards, and his intimate interviews aren't the type where he can have teleprompters on stage or following him down a bustling street with a big star in tow, either.

"I try always to just be a hundred percent authentic, and hopefully people who know me would say, 'He's the same person on and off TV.' When I sit down, I want it to actually be a conversation," he says. "Now, [it's] one that I've prepared for and have a million things to ask and [I] hopefully know where the good subject areas will be, but I just try to really take out as much of the artifice of a TV interview as I can, knowing that there's still cameras and lights and it makes it a little weird for everybody, but hopefully we can just sit and chat," he says.

Geist likens the experience to heading to "a bar with a friend, or to dinner," where he doesn't have a list of prepared questions he plans to inquire about.

Instead, part of the key to being such a natural actually is to be over prepared, says Geist. It takes work to make something hard look so easy.

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"I've told my kids this as they get into their teenage years: the thing that neutralizes anxiety, whether you're interviewing somebody or making a speech or a presentation in class, is preparation. So, I just lean into the preparation because I know if I've done the work, then there's nothing to be anxious about," says Geist. "I know everything about this person. I know where I hope the interview will go. I'll be able — if they take it to another direction — to react with more on that area that they want talk about. Preparation is the anxiety killer."

Sunday Today airs Sundays at 8 a.m. ET on NBC.

Read the original article on People