The family of Wendy Williams is breaking their silence around the former talk show host's spiral from her gossiping spotlight. Appearing in the new Lifetime documentary, Where Is Wendy Williams?, which premiers on February 24, 2024, her family sits down and opens up about the drama that has ensued in the 59-year-old's life. “We've all seen the images over the last few months — and, really, few years — of what has seemed like a spiral for my aunt,” Alex Finnie, Wendy's niece said. "It was shocking and heartbreaking to see her in this state.”
The Lifetime documentary team began filing in August 2022, but they were intending to capture the story of the broadcaster's comeback into the media realm when she was preparing to launch a new podcast. But what they ended up capturing was her battle with alcoholism and other health conditions, including Graves' disease and lymphedema.
One moment captured in the documentary showed Wendy asking her personal driver to take her past the former Wendy Williams Show studio, yet he had already done so just moments earlier. "I don’t know what the [expletive] is going on," he said. "I think she’s losing memory. She doesn’t know who I am sometimes.”
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The final episode of Wendy's talk show aired on June 17, 2022. According to the executives, she had to be reminded multiple times that her show had been canceled. "I said, 'We haven't heard from you, and we had to make a decision,'" Ira Bernstein, one of the co-presidents previously said. "We should have made one in November, but we pushed it to January or February, and by then, it was like, 'Make a decision or lose the time period.'"
In 2023, the documentary team stopped filming Wendy, who entered into a facility to get treatment for "cognitive issues,” according to her manager and jeweler Will Selby. Her son explained that the doctors connected the issues to her alcohol use.
As of today, she remains in that facility. However, the only person that has access to her is a court-appointed legal guardian. Her family doesn't know where she is and aren't allowed to call her, but she is allowed to call them.
"The people who love her cannot see her,” her sister, Wanda, said. “I think the big [question] is: How the [expletive] did we get here?”
In 2022, Wendy had her accounts frozen after her former financial adviser claimed she was "unsound." She was then placed under a temporary financial guardianship due to being at risk of financial exploitation because of her cognitive issues.
In the documentary, she says that her guardian stole money from her. Neither her guardian nor her bank responded to requests for comment.
“How did she go from this aunt or sister that we love and is healthy one minute to this person who’s in and out of the hospital?” Wanda asked. “How is that system better than the system the family could put in place? This system is broken.” She went on to add, “There is not a person in this family who doesn’t want the same thing for Wendy, and that is her health."
