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wendy williams.jpg

Wendy Williams Has Been In A Facility Since Last April

By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | February 21, 2024 |

By Emily Richardson | Celebrity | February 21, 2024 |


wendy williams.jpg

Wendy Williams has had a very rough few years. In 2022, she lost her talk show after rumors of erratic behavior and health issues. That same year, Wendy’s bank (Wells Fargo) sent a letter to a New York Supreme Court Judge claiming the star was of “unsound mind” and required a legal guardian because she was allegedly a “victim of undue influence and financial exploitation.” The judge sided with the bank and appointed Wendy a guardian to control her financial and health decisions.

Since then, Wendy’s gone to rehab, tried and failed to launch a podcast, and appeared in some troubling paparazzi videos. Then, she totally disappeared. Wendy hasn’t been seen in public since last August.

Earlier this month, we got an update. Lifetime announced Where Is Wendy Williams?, a two-part documentary produced by Wendy herself. It was filmed between 2022 and 2023, and airs February 27 and 28. In the trailer, Wendy is shown battling alcoholism and issues with her mental health and memory. She tells the cameras she has “no money” and claims her guardian has stolen from her. Here’s the trailer:

This week, Wendy covers PEOPLE, and the magazine interviewed her family about her current condition. Apparently, the 59-year-old is in a facility to treat her cognitive issues and has been since last April. Her sister Wanda tells PEOPLE:

“I spoke with her yesterday and I speak with her very regularly when she reaches out to me. She is, from what I understand, in a wellness, healing type of environment.”

Evidently, the family cannot reach out to Wendy; “but she can reach out to us.” Her guardian is the only person who has unfettered access to the star. On a positive note, Wanda claims Wendy is in “a healing place emotionally,” and “not the person that you see in this film.”

Wendy’s niece Alex says she’s proud of her aunt for “taking control of her narrative”:

“We’ve all seen the images over the last few months and really few years of what has been like a spiral for my aunt. It was shocking and heartbreaking to see her in this state.

So for her to actually put her voice in here and take ownership of what’s happened, where she’s at present day… I think it’s powerful.”

PEOPLE also shared some details from the upcoming doc. The film was originally meant to be about Wendy’s comeback, but that changed when Wendy’s health spiraled. She was struggling with alcohol addiction, Graves’ disease, and a declining mental state. PEOPLE writes:

A particularly gut-wrenching scene shows Williams asking her driver to take her past the former Wendy Williams Show studio, forgetting that he had done so only moments earlier.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on,” her driver says in the documentary. “I think she’s losing memory. She doesn’t know who I am sometimes.”

Shooting wrapped in April 2023, when the documentary crew found Wendy in her apartment with her eyes rolled back in her head. They worked with Wendy’s manager to convince her guardian to get her medical help. The guardian eventually agreed. Executive producer Mark Ford says:

“We asked ourselves almost every day, ‘Is this helping Wendy or is this hurting her?’ And in the end we felt like it was helping her. This is about the guardianship system and how it can be improved.”

Wendy’s son reveals that doctors have connected his mother’s cognitive and memory issues to alcohol use. Damn. Nobody knows when (or if) Wendy will be able to leave the facility. That decision is entirely up to her guardian.

This was a dark story, so let’s end it with this classic Wendy clip from 2019: