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Wendy Williams, in one of her first interviews in years, spoke out against her court-ordered conservatorship and the claims from her own team that she’d been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and aphasia.
Calling intoThe Breakfast ClubThursday, Jan. 16, Williams was adamant that her mental condition had not deteriorated at all and said she felt trapped in the care facility where she’s been living: “I am not cognitively impaired, you know what I’m saying? But I feel like I’m in prison.”
A few minutes later, when host Charlamagne the God mentioned the reports that Williams was cognitively impaired and incapacitated, Williams fired back, “Do I seem that way, God dammit?” She added: “Who I naturally am, is who I naturally am, you know what I’m saying?”
Williams has been under a court-ordered guardianship since 2022. In February of that year, it was announced that Williams would be unable to return to her long-running talk show amid reports of her deteriorating health (The Wendy Williams Show officially ended a few months later). In September, she checked into a “wellness facility” with the aim of making a “major comeback.” But nothing ever materialized, and in early 2024, Williams’ care team revealed the dementia and aphasia diagnosis.
That news came right before the premiere of the two-part Lifetime documentary, Where Is Wendy Williams? which explored the past few years of Williams’ life, leading up to the start of her guardianship. Williams’ guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, eventually sued Lifetime and the makers of the documentary, claiming the series was made “without a valid contract” and that Williams was “highly vulnerable and clearly incapable of consenting to being filmed, much less humiliated and exploited.”
Lifetime and A&E eventually countersued Morrissey, alleging she only brought the suit when she realized the documentary would raise questions about her work as Williams’ guardian. And now Williams herself has spoken out against Morrissey on The Breakfast Club, claiming she was the one who wanted Williams to do the documentary.
“She was the one who wanted to do that, you understand what I’m saying?” Williams said of the documentary. She added: “What do I think about being abused? Listen, look, this system is broken. This system that I’m in. This system has falsified a lot.”
Williams’ niece, Alex, also called into The Breakfast Club to back up her aunt’s claims. Alex said she’d seen Williams “in a very limited capacity, but I’ve seen her and we’re talking to her. This does not match an incapacitated person. And that’s why we say she’s in a luxury prison because she is being held, and she is being punished for whatever reason that other people are coming up with as to why she has to be kept in this position.”
On The Breakfast Club, Alex said she and her aunt expected some kind of retaliation over the interview. “We talked about that. You know, my aunt, even with her wanting to come, we talked about all scenarios. I said, ‘You know, we do this, you’re ready for what’s on the other side?’ And as she said, ‘I have to do this. There’s nothing else I could do at this point.’”
Roberta Kaplan, one of the lawyers suing A&E, Lifetime, and the makers of Where is Wendy Williams?, said in a statement, “Wendy Williams suffers from frontal lobe dementia, a degenerative brain disease that has no cure. As a result, a state court found her to be legally incapacitated, meaning that she is not capable of making legal and financial decisions on her own. Unfortunately, because of her diagnosis, Wendy’s condition will only get worse with time and she will require care for the rest of her life. But as anyone who has had a family member with dementia knows, Wendy has both good days and bad days. It is truly a shame that there is so much voyeuristic attention to this right now, since it only leads to the same kinds of exploitation that we saw in the so-called documentary, as alleged in our complaint.”
This story was updated at 5:15 p.m. ET with a comment from Roberta Kaplan.
