It was announced this week that “The Wendy Williams Show” would end after its 13th season. The host has been plagued by a sad series of health woes, heartache, and substance abuse issues.
Wendy Williams has struggled with addiction, Graves’ disease, and a cheating husband, and she is currently being investigated for allegations that she is unable to manage her own finances.
To add insult to injury, the wild doyenne of daytime TV lost her show on Tuesday.
“The Wendy Williams Show” has been canceled after its 13th season – a season in which Williams never made it to the air due to her health issues.
Williams, 57, is currently in Florida with her 21-year-old son, Kevin Hunter, Jr., and her friends are concerned.
“Wendy is missing her medical appointments down in Florida,” claimed a longtime friend. “People are very worried about Wendy and her wellbeing … We want to get Wendy back to New York City to get her back on track.”
Williams is reported to have recruited attorney LaShawn Thomas in her fight against Wells Fargo, according to Forbes. Williams was paid $15 million per year, according to Forbes. Her assets have been frozen by the bank, which claims she is a “incapable individual” who requires guardianship.
Williams vehemently contested the charges in court filings signed in his name, and earlier this month filed an affidavit in New York Supreme Court seeking a temporary restraining order against Wells Fargo. Lori Schiller, a financial consultant who said the singer was of “unsound mind,” is a “disgruntled” former employee, she insisted. Wells Fargo and Thomas both declined to comment.
“A lot of people are concerned about Wendy right now, but it seems like things are getting worse,” a show insider told The Post, citing how Sherri Shepard went from being Williams’ permanent guest host to taking her time slot. “Wendy is pissed right now. You have to understand her talk show was pretty much all she had. It was her passion, so now what?”
According to The Washington Post, two camps are competing for the privilege to assist Williams. Howard Bragman, her longtime publicist, and Bernie Young, her longtime manager, are in one corner, together with her longstanding New York doctors and attorneys.
Thomas and Williams’ rumored new publicist, Shawn Zanotti, are on the other side, and both have worked with Williams’ ex-husband, Hunter.
Following Bragman’s statement on Williams’ behalf early this week, a response popped on her Instagram account, claiming to be from Wendy herself: “Mr. Bragman although I appreciate your concerns and respect you immensely I have not authorized you to make any statements on my behalf.”
According to People magazine, Bragman isn’t sure if Williams penned the remark herself.
“The statement that was put out by the guy Howard was not in the best interest of Wendy. You wouldn’t refer to your client’s show as the ‘Maybe Wendy Show,’ which was shade directed towards Wendy,” Zanotti told The Post. “To further go on to question the validity of her verified IG page, is even more proof that this was not in the best interest of Wendy — knowing he hasn’t spoken to her.”
She continued, “He is attempting to insert himself into the conversation for his own recognition. I never release her statement without Wendy approving it first. I am giving you my personal opinion right now — her focus at this time is on her health and the case … The focus right now should not be on the public shaming of Wendy Williams or the production company making a decision from ‘a business point of view,’ it should be on uplifting her while she is going through a very human experience.
“So, please send prayers and positivity to Wendy and her legal team who have bigger fish to fry!”
Williams last hosted her daytime talk show in July 2021 and was due to return in October. However, a series of guest hosts were brought in while she worked with “holistic health professionals to help her reach optimal health during her treatment of Graves’ disease and thyroid concerns,” Zanotti has said.
Williams first sparked fears for her health in 2017 when she passed out on air while dressed as the Statue of Liberty for a Halloween episode. Williams blamed it on menopause: “I’m a 53-year-old, middle-aged woman going through what middle-aged women go through, if you know what I mean…The costume got hot. All the sudden right before passing out, I felt like I was in the middle of a campfire.
“No, I wasn’t stroking out,” she insisted. “Nope, I’m here for a long time.”
When Wendy Williams slurred on air in 2018, a former senior staffer at “The Wendy Williams Show” told The Washington Post that producers were panicked. Later, the host apologised on social media, claiming that the slurring was caused by pain medication she was taking for a broken shoulder that “hurt like hell,” as well as Graves’ illness. Tremors, heat sensitivity, and anxiety are all symptoms of this condition, which is caused by an overproduction of thyroid hormones.
Then, in 2019, Williams, who had previously admitted to abusing cocaine while working in radio in the 1980s, revealed that she was fighting addiction by staying in a sober house.
Hunter had fathered a baby girl with his alleged mistress Sharina Hudson, and she filed for divorce from her spouse of 20 years the same year.
Hunter stepped down as executive producer of the show. But, according to a former senior staffer at “The Wendy Williams Show,” Hunter was the one who kept a close eye on Williams – for better or worse.
“Kevin handled it all. A lot of people would probably agree that Wendy is not very good with details, but … it’s just her nature, as for all these years Kevin handled all the details so she didn’t have to,” the staffer, who worked closely with Williams, said.
“I’m not her doctor, but anybody working around her knows that she’s very capable and she personally signs checks. She has a business and she has to pay bills and meet payroll,” the staffer added.
The staffer said that Hunter was Williams’ de-facto gatekeeper, adding: “I remember not having full access to Wendy when Kevin was around. She had her hair and makeup and wardrobe in her office and the door was always closed and it was restricted to who could get to her.”
Another source who knows Hunter and Williams described him as a “tyrant who ruled by fear, who often kept important information from Wendy herself. He would overrule big bookings out of petty jealousy and never tell Wendy about it. Many people celebrated the day he left the set.”
But, the staffer said, Hunter could also be seen as having protected the host.
“Maybe Kevin was not exactly the bad guy. He kept things in order. He kept away the so called friends and hangers-on,” the staffer said. “With him gone, people were able to get close to her who should not have.”
According to the staffer, while Williams was staying in a sober house in Queens, he ordered an Uber and came back home to Livingston, New Jersey. According to the staffer, she was lost for approximately an hour before anyone realised where she was.
“Wendy went to a liquor store on the way and she was apparently totally drunk when Kevin found her,” the staffer claimed. “It makes sense as this was a tough time for her.”
A drunk Williams was found after leaving the sober house — and hours after Hudson had given birth — and taken to a hospital, according to Page Six at the time.
Almost all of Williams’ issues stem from her divorce, according to many who know her.
She claimed on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show” in January that her ex, Hunter, was a “serial” cheater, and that she was aware of his affairs “almost since the beginning” of their relationship.
“The more successful I got and he got, and we believed in each other, the more of a jerk he became — he used his good credit to purchase property that he chose to wine and dine his extramarital affairs … This girl wasn’t the only one,” she said of Hudson, who gave birth to daughter Journey in 2019. “She just happens to be the one who kept his baby.”
Hunter has not publicly acknowledged engaging in affairs or fathering a child outside of wedlock, but broke his silence in a statement after Williams’ divorce filing, admitting he was “not proud” of his actions. “I am going through a time of self-reflection and am trying to right some wrongs,” he said at the time, adding that he would continue to “fully support” Williams.
According to the staffer, Williams would leave the television studio and go home to clean while Hunter was gone with his mistress during the end of their marriage.
“She was alone a lot of the time,” said the staffer. “After she had fractured her shoulder [in 2018] and the show where she was slurring her words, she was on medication, she was drinking. It was easy for her to drink to deal with the pain of knowing that her husband was with another woman.”
Williams had to pay Hunter to quit their production firm at the end of the day. A spokesperson for Williams declined to comment when asked if she will be paid for the full year even though she did not appear on the show.
Announcing Williams’ departure, Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein, the co-presidents of the Debmar-Mercury syndication company, said they had a great love for her. “Since Wendy is still not available to host the show as she continues on her road to recovery, we believe it is best for our fans, stations, and advertising partners to start making this transition now,” they said in a statement. “We hope to be able to work with Wendy again in the future, and continue to wish her a speedy and full recovery.”
Williams also has lymphedema, which affects the circulation in her ankles and causes a build-up of fluid, according to the staffer, which could explain why she was seen in a wheelchair in November.
“I don’t know how Wendy will handle not having the show. It’s so sad,” the staffer added. “The frustrating thing is that Wendy has successfully transferred mediums from iconic radio host to TV — not even Howard Stern has done that. Wendy changed daytime TV … she’s going to leave a big hole.
“I think a lot of people would agree that Wendy could go off for a year … and if she gets another show, that would be her greatest comeback.”
