Where is Wendy Williams? That question has animated fans—and even some celebrities—since the popular media personality took a leave from her polarizing talk show The Wendy Williams Show in 2021. Over the past three years, Williams has abstained from television appearances and has only rarely been spotted out in the wild, prompting memes, speculation over her absence, and fond remembrances of her legacy of dishing (sometimes rather harshly) on other celebrities on her show.
Recently, the question came to a head with the release of a Lifetime documentary, Where Is Wendy Williams?, which aired in four parts over the weekend. The documentary had drawn skepticism when a promotional clip posted before the project’s release showed Williams—who looked relatively unwell—having an emotional conversation with pornographic-actress-turned-socialite Blac Chyna. Simultaneously, Williams’ management publicly announced that the host was dealing with some startling health issues. Newly abreast of the news regarding her medical condition, and troubled by the candid footage promised by the docuseries, onlookers began to question whether Williams had truly consented to being shown in this light. Then, on Thursday, Williams’ legal guardian filed a suit against Lifetime’s parent company, A&E Television Networks, in an attempt to halt the broadcast of the series.
If all this sounds messy, upsetting, and hard to follow, that’s because it is. Let’s parse out what we know about what’s going on with Wendy Williams.
So, what’s the deal with this documentary? Reviews are calling it “devastating” and “exploitative.”
The docuseries takes place over nearly two years, primarily after Williams underwent court-ordered financial guardianship in 2022, and chronicles the television personality’s struggles with health and alcohol abuse. In the lead-up to the documentary’s premiere—perhaps in an attempt to beat it to the punch—Williams’ team reported that the talk-show icon had been diagnosed with aphasia, a language disorder that affects communication, and frontotemporal dementia. This most recent health update comes a few years after Williams’ disclosure, in 2018, that she has struggled with the autoimmune disorder Graves’ disease for many years, then, in 2019, that she suffers from a thyroid issue called lymphedema, which causes swelling that affects the feeling in her feet.
Whew, that sounds like a lot of “material” for a documentary to either be respectful or not so respectful about.
It’s safe to say that Where Is Wendy Williams? paints a pretty distressing picture of its subject. Promotional clips made waves last week for the documentary’s depiction of Williams, which many criticized as invasive and exploitative. In one clip, Williams, in a rare occurrence from her, appears vulnerable while having a heartbreaking conversation without her hair and makeup done. Since the premiere of the documentary, clips of Williams harshly criticizing her assistant and forgetting names of family members have circulated and been made the subject of mocking memes.
The documentary also details other facts about Williams’ medical history, including more complicated information about her health, as Williams’ family introduces a diagnosis of alcohol-induced dementia that differs from the aforementioned aphasia and dementia diagnoses that were formally announced. Additionally, there is mention of a medical emergency in 2020 for which Williams allegedly needed lifesaving attention.
Mostly, though, the documentary focuses on Williams’ family’s attempts to reclaim guardianship over her—currently, Williams’ guardian is someone named Sabrina Morrissey, who filed the suit against A&E. Williams’ family explains that, though the arrangement is supposed to be purely financial, her guardian actually has control over all other major aspects of her life. The family members interviewed for the documentary acknowledge their severe distrust of those who have been put in charge of Williams’ life, from her legal guardian to her publicist.
Let’s back up for a minute. You keep mentioning a court-ordered guardianship. Is this a Britney Spears situation?
Though conservatorships and guardianships are legally different, they function similarly, and parallel themes occur in both Williams’ and Spears’ stories. Per the Hollywood Reporter, this guardianship started in 2022 when Williams requested her bank statements, which she needed because she wanted to switch bank accounts in fear that a financial adviser from Wells Fargo was guilty of misconduct. Instead, Wells Fargo submitted a petition for guardianship, referring to Williams as an “incapacitated person” and arguing that she is a “victim of undue influence and financial exploitation.”
Williams’ lawyer told THR that the TV host “doesn’t agree with a financial guardian being appointed,” adding that Williams would not accept a court decision to “have one appointed over her affairs for the long haul.” In an affidavit, Williams accused Wells Fargo of lying about her ability to care for herself as a way of fraudulently locking her out of her accounts, which she claimed had led her to “default or risk defaulting” on multiple bills.
Unfortunately, it gets even thornier. Williams’ former manager Bernie Young, whom she previously fired, moved to be the court-appointed guardian. Williams accused Young of using her own money to hire legal representation to pursue the guardianship. It is unclear how this all panned out, however. According to People, Williams claims in the documentary that her guardian had stolen money from her, though she doesn’t name names—for example, is Williams referring to Young or to her current legal guardian Morrissey?—and doesn’t provide evidence.
Yikes! So how does this lawsuit come into the picture?
Last Thursday, Morrissey, filed a suit against Lifetime’s parent company, A&E Television Networks, in an attempt to obtain a temporary restraining order that would stop Lifetime from airing the documentary, even though Williams is listed as an executive producer. According to CNN, Williams originally pitched the documentary to Lifetime as a behind-the-scenes look into her life as she made a career move from her talk show to a podcast. However, as the documentary producers began to film Williams’ life and became aware of her medical issues, the project evidently turned into something else entirely.
How have the producers and executives involved with the docuseries responded to these accusations against them?
Mark Ford, an executive producer on the doc, told CNN that “nothing was filmed without Williams’ or her manager’s approval.” According to Ford, as filming went on, the documentary increasingly became about Williams’ “dire” state of health, to the point where producers became so worried about Williams that they allegedly urged her management to seek new medical care. Ford also spoke to People, stating that they followed procedure to “get all the permissions that [they] needed to get,” citing creative integrity for their decision to focus on what they did and asserting, “Once we started seeing the truth of the situation, we couldn’t ignore it. And the film had to go in the direction of the truth.”
In an interview with Vulture, producer Erica Hanson states that they were unaware of Williams’ dementia diagnosis when production started or they wouldn’t have greenlit the project. Hanson also claims that the series “wasn’t produced” and “it was really fly-on-the-wall.” When it came to the ethics of when to stop filming, Hanson says she relied on “trusting [her] instinct.” In that same interview, Ford says that some footage ended up on the cutting-room floor, and as for what made it into the final cut, the team felt that any attempt “to sanitize” and abstain from showing Williams’ difficult reality “would be a disservice” to her and her truth.
Has Williams herself said anything about this?
It is unclear what Williams’ personal feelings are regarding the docuseries. You could read into the fact that Williams’ guardian filed a suit, although it is worth remembering that Williams’ guardian has control over that decision, and the docuseries is critical of the guardianship. In the aforementioned Vulture interview, Hanson and Ford allege that Williams entered into the Lifetime contract while under the guardianship, and that “every single frame” of the docuseries was filmed during Williams’ legal arrangement.
According to both Williams’ family and Lifetime’s reps, the producers haven’t been in contact with Williams for more than six months, as she is currently in an inpatient treatment facility. However, Williams did release a statement via her reps last Friday expressing her “immense gratitude” for the support upon the news of her diagnosis.
News anchor Alex Finnie, a niece of Williams’ who appears in the documentary, told CNN she is unaware if Williams has seen the final production. According to Finnie, due to the guardianship arrangement, Williams’ family does not know precisely which treatment facility she’s currently staying in, nor do they have a way to contact her directly. Williams’ sister, Wanda, opened up to People, saying, “I think the big [question] is: How the hell did we get here?”
This sounds awful all around. At the end of the day, how should we feel about this documentary and the whole sad situation?
Finnie told CNN that she hopes Where Is Wendy Williams? will not only help people see Williams “as a human being” but also further the public’s understanding of guardianships, conservatories, and “the entire system that really is running [Williams’] life right now—not just for her, but for so many other people that are also at the center of it.”
Despite the suit, and the spreading notion that the docuseries was an exploitative maneuver, producer Ford told CNN that the producers feel that the docuseries actually helped Williams seek better care, expressing hope that “the documentary played a role in helping her get to that safer place.” Hanson told Vulture that she worries what would have happened if the camera crew hadn’t been there, leaving Williams “in that apartment by herself, dealing with the loneliness, the addiction—all of it.” Ford, speaking to Vulture, goes so far as to say that Wendy’s story, and specifically her guardianship, is “now a matter of public interest”; he adds that if there’s more story to tell, he would “hope there’s more reporting.”
Even though Williams wasn’t necessarily the most beloved figure in the media due to the sometimes rude nature of her talk show, this news is devastating fans and detractors alike, as it has become increasingly clear that Williams doesn’t have the agency over her own life that we would expect such a television titan to have. Hopefully, she is receiving great care and can find some peace amid all of this controversy.
