by Where Is Wendy Williams? spurred controversy even before its premiere on Saturday night. Wendy Williams’ guardian has sued A&E Television Networks, Lifetime’s parent company, with a source telling People the sealed lawsuit “appears to be filed as an attempt to prohibit the airing” of the docuseries.
A source told The U.S. Sun, meanwhile, that Williams “did not know she was filming a documentary,” adding that if the ex-TV host were of sound mind during filming, she “would have never allowed for them to tape her like that.”
And in a review, Variety says that the docuseries “feels invasive at best and predatory at worst” and an “exploitative display of her cognitive decline and emotional well-being.”
Nevertheless, Where Is Wendy Williams? debuted on Lifetime as scheduled on Saturday night, giving fans a glimpse into Williams’ life of late. Here are some takeaways from the first night:
Wendy Williams says she has “no money.”
The first part of the Where Is Wendy Williams? delves into the financial guardianship under which a New York court put Williams in 2022 after the bank Wells Fargo claimed she was a “victim of undue influence and financial exploitation.”
Kevin Hunter Jr., Williams’ son, says in the doc he never spent her money without her consent, per NJ.com.
Williams says that she had “no idea” why she can’t access her money now. “My money is still stuck at Wells Fargo, and I’m going to tell you something. If it happens to me, it could happen to you,” she says. “In the meantime, I have no money.”
She also grows upset over a question about providing for her son. “I’ve got so much money,” she says. “I want it for my son. When I die, everything is for him.”
Her son says she spurns people who want to help her battle her addiction.
Hunter tells the filmmakers about how efforts to curb Williams’ drinking backfire. “Her addiction had so much control over her life that if a person is against it or wants to help with it, she moves them out,” he says in the doc, per NJ.com.
He adds: “As long as she has people around who are ‘yes’ people, the same thing is always gonna occur, where she would ultimately just find any excuse to be by herself so she can get back to drinking.”
In the doc, viewers see Will Selby, Williams’ manager, finding a bottle of liquor in her New York apartment and throwing it away, despite her objections.
“We all drink,” Williams says in one interview in the doc. “Why can’t I?”
Her driver has noticed her memory lapses.
At one point in the first part, Williams asks driver Jammail Nesfield to take her to the old Wendy studio, but she doesn’t recognize the place and berates both Nesfield and publicist Shawn Zanotti, per TooFab. “I have no idea where we are,” she says.
“From when I first met Wendy, she had a beautiful personality. Now, it’s just like, I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Nesfield says in the doc. “I don’t know what she’s going through, but it’s getting very intense, whatever she’s going through.”
He adds: “I think she’s losing memory. … Like, you talk to her and she just blanks out. Sometimes, she doesn’t even realize who I am. I’ve picked her up many times, she’s like, ‘Hey, who are you again?’ Dealing with someone like that is very hard.”
Her deejay says he found her unresponsive in 2020.
DJ Boof, the former deejay for The Wendy Williams Show, says in the first part of the docuseries that he became Williams’ “protector” after her divorce from her son’s father, the elder Kevin Hunter, per People.
And it was DJ Boot who helped her tape Wendy remotely after the COVID shutdown of March 2020. During that time, he noticed her showing “no emotion” while filming the talk show.
“This is not COVID doing this,” he remembers thinking. “[It’s the] damage of using alcohol for so long … I got to see the lowest of lows.”
DJ Boof also says that he found Williams unresponsive at home in May 2020 and that needed several blood transfusions after she was hospitalized.
“She just wasn’t the same person anymore,” he says.
