{"id":2072068,"date":"2025-10-06T11:13:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T11:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2072068"},"modified":"2025-10-06T11:13:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T11:13:05","slug":"wendy-williams-trapped-in-a-dementia-facility-wants-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wendy-williams-trapped-in-a-dementia-facility-wants-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Wendy Williams, Trapped in a Dementia Facility, Wants Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n At LaQuan Smith\u2019s New York Fashion Week show in September.
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This article was featured in New York<\/em>\u2019s One Great Story<\/a> newsletter. Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the last night of New York Fashion Week, in September, Wendy Williams, the former talk-show host and onetime gossip queen of New York, given permission to leave the locked floor of her assisted-living facility, where she is held against her will, was seated in the front row of designer LaQuan Smith\u2019s runway show, showing the world just how well she was doing. She was polished up in long lashes, makeup perfectly set, dirty-blonde hair in smooth, loose waves. Smith had dressed her in a cropped black-and-white fur jacket over black shorts and fishnet stockings.<\/p>\n

Williams, 61, had begun reappearing in public early this year after a long stretch of silence: In 2022, she was placed under court-appointed guardianship; then, last year, her guardian announced that the star had dementia, an assessment Williams vehemently denies. On her way into the show, she\u2019d waved to fans who cheered and shouted that they loved her. Inside, she was surrounded by celebrities of her heyday: She\u2019d been hip-hop-radio royalty in the \u201990s and early aughts and made her name talking shit about everyone in the scene. A few seats to her left was Busta Rhymes, who once tussled with her friend Charlamagne Tha God over an interview she had conducted. She chatted with Lil\u2019 Kim and asked for her number \u2014 Kim, who\u2019d called her a \u201chating bitch\u201d after Williams critiqued the rapper\u2019s nose job. The children of Diddy \u2014 Williams\u2019s longtime nemesis, who she\u2019d frequently implied was closeted and who had once gotten her taken off air \u2014 were milling nearby.<\/p>\n

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Wendy Williams Wants Out<\/h2>\n

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A few days later, on Friday night, she arrived in a black SUV at Tucci, the upscale Italian spot on the busy corner of Broadway and Bleecker. In a white mini-shirtdress, the top buttons undone and cinched at the waist with a wide Gucci belt, Williams stepped down to the curb, with her bodyguard\u2019s assistance, in heavy-soled black boots. She was escorted inside to a corner table by a window, where she could be seen unobstructed from the street, visible to photographers who\u2019d been alerted in advance, by her friends, to expect her presence. Joining her at the table was Laura Geller, the makeup artist, and Max Tucci, Williams\u2019s friend and the restaurant\u2019s owner, who leaned toward her, phone in hand. He swiped through photos taken at the LaQuan Smith show, showing her pictures of herself.<\/p>\n

Anyone who watched her, wondering what was true, looking for signs that she was off or disoriented, would have noticed that her eyes were open unusually wide, as if alarmed or confused, and seemed to bulge \u2014 but this was a symptom of her Graves\u2019 disease, an autoimmune condition that strains the ocular muscles. They would have seen her teeter a bit on her feet on her way inside, holding on to her bodyguard with one hand \u2014 a Birkin-like croc bag in the other \u2014 but this could be explained by her lymphedema, which causes swelling in the feet and ankles and trouble balancing.<\/p>\n

An hour or so into the evening, Tucci, in a crisp button-up, stopped by the table where I was eating with a friend one floor down. \u201cShe looks amazing,\u201d Tucci said when I asked how Williams was. \u201cShe\u2019s doing great.\u201d I asked about the Coterie, her high-end assisted-living facility in Hudson Yards. \u201cShe calls it a dump,\u201d he replied, shrugging and chuckling. \u201cShe says the people there are like\u201d \u2014 he slumped his head to the side and stuck out his tongue. \u201cThis is, like, where billionaires send their grandmothers. But, you know.\u201d His tone became serious. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t need it. Wendy doesn\u2019t lie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019s guardianship had begun when her bank, Wells Fargo, filed a petition stating that she was not competent to manage her financial affairs and was at risk of exploitation. The arrangement was at first temporary, and Williams has said she agreed to it. In court proceedings, she was referred to as the AIP, the \u201calleged incapacitated person,\u201d and records of the case were sealed to protect her privacy. But the news leaked almost immediately, and a wild ecosystem of rumors grew around her: Fans theorized that the COVID vaccine had triggered a neurological decline; that the guardianship was a plot by the bank to steal her money; that photos of her looking ill or disoriented \u2014 in blue hospital socks and no shoes on a wet Manhattan street, for example \u2014 were pictures of body doubles; that Diddy, her forever adversary, was somehow responsible.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2024, more than a million people saw footage of Williams appearing addled and often bedbound in a Lifetime documentary. But what exactly ailed her was unclear: She was shown frequently drinking, andGraves\u2019 disease, a diagnosis she\u2019d revealed publicly in 2018, can trigger cognitive problems. The cast of characters orbiting her in the doc, in her $4.5 million Fidi duplex, was also confusing: a new manager who was in fact her jeweler; a new publicist who oddly had come to her through her estranged ex-husband\u2019s attorney (an attorney who would later falsely claim to represent Williams); very few members of her family; and only one visiting friend, the model Blac Chyna. They spoke about what was happening to Williams in vague terms, referring to \u201csome kind of memory issues going on\u201d and the idea that \u201cshe needed rest.\u201d In response to the documentary, herguardian publicly revealed that doctors at Weill Cornell Medical Center had diagnosed Williams with frontotemporal dementia \u2014 a neurodegenerative disease that affects behavior and language more than memory \u2014 and progressive aphasia, a related condition affecting speech.<\/p>\n

This January, Williams began a type of campaign on her own behalf, twice calling in to \u201cThe Breakfast Club,\u201d hosted by Charlamagne Tha God. \u201cI\u2019m not cognitively impaired,\u201d she said. She sounded purposeful and angry, describing the guardianship as \u201cdisgusting\u201d and the Coterie as a \u201cluxury prison.\u201d She was especially offended by being kept in the memory unit. \u201cThese people,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s something wrong with these people here on this floor.\u201d Williams\u2019s fans united in a Free Wendy movement \u2014 far smaller than the crusade on behalf of Britney Spears (a petition on change.org garnered 26,000 signatures) \u2014 and that spring held sparsely attended protests on Hollywood Boulevard in L.A. and on 35th Street outside the Coterie.<\/p>\n

In her conversations with Charlamagne, Williams jumped from topic to topic, at times trailed off, and made a few outrageous comments \u2014 referring to her former manager, whom she no longer trusted, as \u201cthe Black man\u201d and asking Charlamagne how her breast implants looked by the light of a window in a recent TMZ appearance. But she\u2019d always been that way to some degree: impulsive, chaotic, risqu\u00e9. To her fans, it was what made her fabulous. \u201cI love when you call,\u201d Charlamagne told her, \u201cbecause I think people are reminded of how erratic you are. This has nothing to do with anything other than Wendy Williams being Wendy Williams.\u201d<\/p>\n

A month later, Williams appeared at a full-length, fifth-floor window of the Coterie, waving to paparazzi below \u2014 in turns frantic and placidly posed for the cameras. By then, what was both known and definitively true was that Williams could have no visitors in the facility, that she needed the permission of both her guardian and Coterie staff to leave, that she was not allowed to have a cell phone. On the landline in her room, she could make only outgoing calls \u2014 she could not receive any contact from anyone. In a long brunette wig, a white T-shirt, and gold bangles, Williams raised her left arm and pressed her palm against the glass, as if to demonstrate her enclosure. At some point, she dropped a handwritten note from the window to the street below. It read HELP! WENDY!!<\/p>\n

That September night at Tucci, she sat with her friends for three hours. At the end of the evening, her bodyguard ushered her outside and hoisted her, by her underarms, a bit like a child, into the back of another black SUV.<\/p>\n

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\n In her studio at WBLS in 2005.
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\u201cThis whole thing is about money, money, money, money.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was August, and on the phone was Joe Tacopina, the celebrity lawyer known for representing A$AP Rocky in an assault trial and defending Donald Trump against sexual-assault accusations. \u201cI speak to this woman almost every day,\u201d he said. \u201cWendy is in control of her faculties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tacopina had begun identifying himself as Williams\u2019s \u201cpersonal lawyer\u201d in the spring, making the rounds on TMZ, Extra,<\/em> and Sirius radio, calling the guardianship \u201cunjust\u201d and \u201cdespicable\u201d and demanding a jury trial. \u201cGet me in front of a jury for five minutes,\u201d he told me, \u201cand I\u2019ll get the quickest verdict of my life.\u201d Technically, or at least according to the court, Tacopina doesn\u2019t represent Williams in any capacity. But he\u2019s one of many keeping near the star, circling the affair, waiting for an opportunity to arise.<\/p>\n

Vanishingly few people close to Williams believe her life should be restricted as it currently is; many believe the guardianship in its current form is inhumane. Multiple close friends, as well as her publicist and niece, have denied she has dementia at all. Many close to her have accused the guardian, an elder-care attorney named Sabrina Morrissey, of serious failings; some allege neglect and cruelty. Members of Williams\u2019s family say Morrissey has kept them from having any contact with her for months at a time; has denied them basic information about her well-being and her whereabouts; and at times has failed to even make sure Williams is safe.<\/p>\n

Some, including Williams herself, have alleged that Morrissey \u2014 who is paid between $250 and $450 an hour \u2014 is corrupt, knowingly profiting from the forced dependence of a capable adult. Other Williams contacts have said the star is the victim of a larger conspiratorial scheme. One of the people closest to her told me that \u201chigh-level, high powerful individuals\u201d are responsible for keeping Williams contained: \u201cIt\u2019s way bigger than it looks.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet it doesn\u2019t take much to peel back the layers of self-interest among those pushing for Williams\u2019s freedom. Some stand to profit from her potential ability to return to work: Her publicist, Shawn Zanotti, and former manager Will Selby both pursued projects for Williams while she was obviously not well. The scandal itself also appears to be lucrative: Both Zanotti and Selby asked how much this magazine was willing to pay for an interview with Williams. (New York<\/em> does not pay subjects for interviews.) Tabloid publications have consistently paid for access to her.<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019s ex-husband Kevin Hunter, who says his former spouse is competent, has alleged that the judge in the case is crooked \u2014 accepting political contributions from Wells Fargo and Williams\u2019s court-appointed attorneys to fund her reelection campaign. In June, he filed a lawsuit in federal court describing the guardianship as \u201cfraudulent bondage,\u201d accusing 48 parties of wrong-doing, and demanding Morrissey\u2019s immediate firing. For years, Hunter had received $37,500 a month from his ex-wife in alimony, according to sealed court documents \u2014 money he has not collected since shortly before guardianship proceedings began. His lawsuit asks for $250 million in damages to be shared between his ex-wife and himself.<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019s three guardianship attorneys, the only lawyers recognized by the court \u2014 who are supposed to represent Williams\u2019s interests as they see them \u2014 are not authorized to speak to the media. One suggested, however, that my investigation into the case should become an article about the lawyers themselves and followed up with a highly edited photo portrait of herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like this big pack of losers,\u201d one longtime friend of Williams\u2019s said: so many scrummaging over the case, fighting for a reward.<\/p>\n

The costs for Williams, meanwhile, are astronomical: An apartment on the memory floor of the Coterie, where she does not want to live, costs $25,800 monthly. Her estate is responsible for paying for the guardianship lawyers, Morrissey\u2019s fees, and an attorney for Morrissey on a $10,000-a-month retainer. Although the exact state of her finances is unknown, lawyers have said in court this year that she needs money, and in 2024, Morrissey sold the star\u2019s 2,400-square-foot apartment, reportedly at a loss. (Somewhere along the way, Morrissey rehomed Williams\u2019s two beloved rescue cats, Chit Chat and My Way. On \u201cThe Breakfast Club,\u201d Williams said she was shocked to learn they were gone.)<\/p>\n

In the coming weeks and months, a new medical report is expected to be presented to the court, which could reaffirm the court\u2019s previous decisions and the guardianship as it stands. But Williams wants out, and the judge, Lisa Sokolov, could decide to reconsider Williams\u2019s case overall. She could rule that the restrictions on Williams are too severe and should be eased or that Morrissey should be replaced. The court could also choose to end the guardianship altogether.<\/p>\n

Sources close to the case said the last outcome is unlikely \u2014 Williams would need to prove that she no longer requires any supervision at all. But the truth is that her actual needs and abilities may no longer matter. \u201cMost people subject to guardianship do not have it terminated,\u201d said Nina Kohn, a legal scholar who specializes in the system. You may enter the arrangement voluntarily, she told me, but you cannot leave it of your own free will. Williams cannot get out the same way she came in. In August 2024, according to previously unreported documents, Williams formally revoked her consent for the arrangement and made an adamant plea for its termination. Instead, the guardianship was recategorized as \u201cindefinite.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Williams asked to be released, Sokolov reported that Williams had been \u201cvery direct,\u201d exhibited an \u201cexuberantpersonality,\u201d and was \u201cfull of ideas.\u201d But it was clear, the judge wrote, that her aphasia had worsened over the prior two years, and Williams allegedly expressed a desire to give her family more money than she had to her name. She was not capable, Sokolov said, of \u201cplanning for her future, handling her money, and protecting herself from exploitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, the judge noted that Williams \u201cis not the typical AIP \u2026 She can accomplish many of her activities of daily living on her own.\u201d But inexplicably, and in direct contradiction of New York State law, which requires that those in guardianship have as much autonomy as possible, the guardian remained in complete control of Williams\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

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\n Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs on The Wendy Williams Show in 2017.
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By her own telling, Williams has always been over the top, and her great trick was in embracing it. Born in Asbury Park, New Jersey, but raised in the largely white suburb of Wayside, she grew up in a family, she\u2019s said, that was like the Cosbys, and she was like Denise, Lisa Bonet\u2019s character, the troubled middle child. \u201cI was the thing that did not fit in my family,\u201d she told New York<\/em> in 2005. As she grew, her parents developed codes to attempt to manage her in public. TL meant she was being \u201ctoo loud.\u201d TF was \u201ctoo fast.\u201d TM was simply \u201ctoo much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her parents prized education: Her father was a high-school principal who later taught English literature at a local college, her mother was a special-education teacher, and her younger brother would eventually teach as well. Her \u201cperfect\u201d older sister, Williams has said, excelled in school and became a lawyer. Wendy graduated high school 360th out of 363 students. But she had her sights set on a different kind of life.<\/p>\n

Williams began DJ-ing while in college at Northeastern University in the mid-\u201980s and then \u2014 after a brief stint in the Virgin Islands \u2014 rose through the ranks of New York radio before landing the afternoon-drive slot at Hot 97, the storied hip-hop station that gave rise to a generation of DJs including Funkmaster Flex. She quickly made a name for herself, spinning the hits but also serving up celebrity gossip and sex and dating advice. In 1993, she was named Best on Air Radio Personality by Billboard. <\/em>The next year, she met her future husband, Hunter, at a skating rink in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

On air, Williams was brutally honest about herself, describing hating her body and her choice to get liposuction and a breast augmentation (from an A\/B to larger than a double D); her yearslong addiction to cocaine; and learning of her husband\u2019s infidelity shortly after their son, Kevin Jr., was born in 2000. In interviews, nothing was off-limits. Williams advised Mary J. Blige to pull a \u201cTina Turner\u201d and \u201cfind a nice white man\u201d overseas. When she spoke to O.\u2009J. Simpson after his criminal and civil trials for the killings of his wife and Ron Goldman, she didn\u2019t mention the murders but asked him, \u201cWhen was the last time you slept with a black woman, O.J.?\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1998, Williams had been immortalized in a Jay-Z lyric and an entire Tupac Shakur diss track. She would later feature in a Mariah Carey song and a diss track by Will Smith. Both Smith and Tupac were subject to Williams\u2019s most controversial radio pastime: outing rappers she believed were gay or down-low. (She thought Smith was gay; Tupac, she suggested, had been raped in prison.) That same year, Diddy, according to her 2003 memoir, Wendy\u2019s Got the Heat,<\/em> successfully pressured her bosses at Hot 97 to push her out, leading to a three-year exile at a radio station in Philadelphia. As she would put it later in an interview with Philadelphia Weekly,<\/em> far more subtly than she\u2019d said it on air, \u201cPuffy has the secret \u2026 Listeners know if they listen to the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was in Philadelphia that Wendy introduced her signature catchphrase \u201cHow you doin\u2019?\u201d \u2014 a greeting, in an exaggerated lilt, that was also code for reading someone as gay. Her fans loved it, shouting it at her on the street.<\/p>\n

In 2001, Williams returned to New York radio with her own syndicated show on WBLS, a Hot 97 rival, and there, in 2003, landed what she would later call the \u201ccrowning jewel\u201d of her career: a playful, testy interview with Whitney Houston when the singer was at the height of her drug use. Off the bat, Williams suspected Houston was high and suggested they had something in common \u2014 cocaine \u2014 then asked about her husband, Bobby Brown\u2019s, recent stint in jail for drunk driving. Williams eventually made her way around to telling America\u2019s former pop princess that she could imagine her and Brown having \u201cwild, circus sex.\u201d \u201cYou nasty-ass bitch,\u201d Houston responded with a laugh. \u201cYou\u2019re nasty, boo.\u201d A few years later, Williams was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

The first episode of her daytime TV talk show, The Wendy Williams Show, <\/em>aired live on Fox in 2008 and quickly gained mainstream traction with a mix of high drama and vulnerability. She wore loud prints, flashy rhinestone and diamond jewelry, and extra-long false lashes and rotated through a collection of around 50 wigs, which she talked about often and sometimes adjusted on air.<\/p>\n

The members of her audience were her \u201cco-hosts,\u201d she used to say, and she made the studio feel like a boisterous family gathering. From her purple velvet armchair, she opened each show with a 21-minute riff, a campy sermon \u2014 funny and judgy \u2014 on the day\u2019s celebrity news (Lindsay Lohan\u2019s arrests; Nicki Minaj\u2019s marriage). It was all seemingly made for the social-media era \u2014 Williams provided endless clip fodder \u2014 and in 2014, Wendy<\/em> beat out more established talk series like Ellen<\/em> and Dr. Phil,<\/em> reaching more than 2 million homes.<\/p>\n

As her celebrity grew, Williams\u2019s personal life remained small and restricted. Hunter, then her manager, her producing partner, and an executive producer, despite having no TV experience, was seen by many, according to several former employees of The Wendy Williams Show,<\/em> as a menacing presence, including in the studio. Arrivingin a green Ferrari and often wearing a fur coat, he traipsed through the set with a bottle of tequila, smoked weed in his office, and frequently berated staff and Williams. It was rumored he controlled his wife\u2019s personal life and prevented her from spending time with the people who might otherwise have been her close friends.<\/p>\n

According to previously unreported testimony from her sister, Wanda Finnie, it was in the late 2010s that Williams\u2019s cognitive abilities began to decline and in 2017 specifically that she began to have memory problems. Former staffers on Wendy<\/em> noticed changes too. Though they said the host\u2019s memory remained sharp throughout her years on the program, by the mid-2010s, she seemed to get easily confused, sometimes trailing off mid-sentence during meetings and having trouble reading her cue cards. The latterissue was so marked that producers developed new ways of communicating with the host, including color-coding cues, limiting them to a few words per line, and flashing a red light to signal that Williams should use the word allegedly.<\/em><\/p>\n

These tools seemed to work. If staff gave her cues like KIM K \u2014 PLASTIC SURGERY\u2009\/\u2009BRITNEY \u2014 DIVORCE, Williams would know exactly how to fill in the story. And when she messed up \u2014 as she often did \u2014 it was usually charming. \u201cMessiness was part of her brand,\u201d said one former producer. \u201cIt was part of the reason why so many people related to her.\u201d It also made it very difficult to know if Williams was unwell or just being herself. \u201cShe was so eccentric, and so fun, and so quote-unquote messy,\u201d another former staffer said, \u201cthat it was a hard line to differentiate.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the fall of 2017, Williams fainted on air while wearing a glittering Statue of Liberty Halloween costume. She claimed she\u2019d simply overheated, but the incident fueled speculation among staffers about her health. Her behavior had become erratic \u2014 she would be sharp in the morning and \u201cloopy\u201d by the afternoon, as one producer put it. According to a later investigation by The Hollywood Reporter, <\/em>staff began finding alcohol bottles hidden in ceiling tiles around the studio. In early 2018, Williams revealed her Graves\u2019 disease on air and announced on the show that she would be taking a three-week hiatus.<\/p>\n

She took another leave the following year, which she again said was due to Graves\u2019, as well as to vertigo, though she spent the time at a rehab facility for substance abuse in Florida. When she returned to the show, she informed viewers that she was living in a sober house. The next month, the news broke that Hunter had impregnated another woman, and Williams filed for divorce.<\/p>\n

When COVID came the next year, Wendy<\/em> producers attempted to film the program in Williams\u2019s apartment. But in the few episodes that made it to air, she seemed drunk or otherwise zonked out, and Wendy @ Home<\/em> was called off by May. The same month, the show\u2019s music director, Clyde Joseph Jr., known to viewers as DJ Boof, found Williams unresponsive in her apartment, and she was rushed to the hospital. Williams\u2019s nephew would later say that she had required three blood transfusions.<\/p>\n

Williams last appeared on her show on July 16, 2021. Neither she nor her viewers knew it would be her final episode. When the program was set to resume in the fall, Williams couldn\u2019t be found, and Fox ultimately began the 13th season without her. The show went on for almost another year, buoyed by a series of guest hosts. When the show was canceled in February, according to The Hollywood Reporter,<\/em> Williams was not personally informed \u2014 supposedly because no one, including her manager, could reach her. She learned the news from her niece, who read it in the paper. In repeated conversations with the show\u2019s executives that spring and in various public appearances, Williams seemed to either not understand what was happening or be in denial. In March, she told Good Morning America <\/em>that she would soon be back on air, \u201cbigger and brighter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public had not yet caught wind of it, but by then, Williams was under guardianship. It hadn\u2019t been only the show\u2019s staff that weren\u2019t able to find her in the fall of 2021; to friends and acquaintances in New York, she\u2019d seemed to disappear for long stretches. By early January, her longtime financial adviser, Lori Schiller, who usually spoke to Williams every few days, had grown alarmed, as had Bernie Young, Williams\u2019s manager at the time. Young suspected Williams was in Miami, where her 21-year-old son, Kevin Hunter, Jr., went to college. Much of her family lived in and near the city, and she\u2019d often retreated there: after her divorce, during a handful of attempts to get sober, and while dealing with the symptoms of Graves\u2019, which can cause extreme fatigue.<\/p>\n

Then, on or around January 18, at Schiller\u2019s request, the Miami Dade Police Department went to Hunter Jr.\u2019s apartment to check on Williams, according to sealed court filings. At that time, however, both Williams and her son were at a nearby branch of Wells Fargo, where Hunter Jr. was asking to be granted his mother\u2019s power of attorney. They were accompanied by an entertainment lawyer named LaShawn Thomas, an attorney for Williams\u2019s ex-husband, Hunter Jr.\u2019s father. Williams was allegedly \u201cunresponsive,\u201d \u201cdisoriented,\u201d and \u201cbarely able to write,\u201d and the bank said \u201cno.\u201d Two weeks later, Hunter Jr. returned again with his mother. This time, Thomas was on speakerphone, and the two demanded that the bank allow him to withdraw $25,000 of his mother\u2019s money. They also insisted he become the primary contact for her financial affairs. A withdrawal of this size, the bank decided, was \u201cout of character,\u201d and the transaction was blocked. In response, Hunter Jr. and Thomas allegedly berated employees. Williams, appearing weak, stood aside in silence. When staff tried to speak with her, Hunter Jr. intervened.<\/p>\n

It was days later that Wells Fargo filed its guardianship petition, in New York State court, asking for a third party to take control of Williams\u2019s finances. Among its claims, the bank wrote that it believed Williams was being \u201cunduly influenced by her son Kevin, and perhaps others.\u201d The application included a letter from an Upper East Side psychiatrist who\u2019d been treating Williams for more than a year for an unstated condition. He wrote that in the preceding six months, Williams had been \u201cunable to make reasoned decisions.\u201d \u201cHer judgment and insight,\u201d he said, \u201care severely impaired.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Arriving for dinner at Tucci in September.
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\u201cWhere are you on your journey right now, Wendy? What do you want?\u201d a voice off-camera asks. Williams is seated in her purple velvet chair, now in the living room of her Manhattan apartment. In a tight black dress, an ash-blonde wig, and pink lipstick, she is upright, blowing smoke from a vape, looking displeased. A strand of pearls hangs low on her chest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019m glad that I\u2019m free from The Wendy Williams Show,<\/em>\u201d she says haltingly. \u201cSo now I can absolutely pull this down\u201d \u2014 she begins to stretch the bodice of her dress toward her nipples, then pauses and asks if she can show them. \u201cWell, no,\u201d the off-camera voice says awkwardly. Williams snickers, then flips off her interlocutor, smiling.<\/p>\n

These are the opening moments of Where Is Wendy Williams?<\/em>, the Lifetime documentary that premiered in February 2024, nearly two years into the guardianship. Seconds later, onscreen, Williams introduces Selby, her then-manager and friend, who commissioned her trademark diamond-encrusted W<\/em> necklace. (As a jeweler, he\u2019d also worked for Drake.) \u201cMy \u2026\u201d she pauses, \u201csexy best friend.\u201d She begins to sob. In an instant, she\u2019s smiling again, telling the camera with a wink that she\u2019s \u201cgorgeous, sexy, and fabulous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The more-than-three-hour doc was shot from August 2022 to April 2023 \u2014 the last nine months that Williams lived in her own home. Her world is shown to be both extremely circumscribed and chaotic, and she vacillates between lucidity and incoherence, cheer and agitation. In a rare walk outside, as paparazzi swarm, she shouts, \u201cPlease, I\u2019m famous! Fuck you!\u201d To a nail technician, who arrives for an at-home appointment, she asks, seemingly unprovoked, \u201cAre you stupid?\u201d<\/p>\n

Selby, a fixture at her side, plays the role of caretaker, checking that Williams has eaten, hiding vodka bottles from her, coaxing her out of bed, and helping her pick out her clothes.<\/p>\n

At one point, Zanotti, the publicist, takes her to Los Angeles for a meeting she\u2019s set up with executives at NBC who, she tells Williams, may want to bring back her show. The meeting is not filmed, but in one moment, Williams seems to believe she\u2019s in Miami. When Zanotti mentions that the Oscars are the coming weekend, she replies, \u201cWhat\u2019s Oscars?\u201d During lunch at a rooftop restaurant, Williams orders multiple Grey Goose cocktails. Zanotti tells the camera that Williams is fine: \u201cShe knows her limits.\u201d In a car after the meeting, Williams tells the doc\u2019s producers that she took off her boots for the executives and showed them her feet. The conversation, Zanotti says, was \u201camazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the doc, members of Williams\u2019s close family and a childhood friend express deep worry and frustration with the guardianship. Alex Finnie, her niece, tells the producers she lives in fear of seeing a headline that something has happened to her aunt. Hunter Jr. says he believes Morrissey \u201chas not done a good job of protecting my mom.\u201d In the doc\u2019s final installment, he claims that his mother was previously diagnosed with alcohol-related dementia.<\/p>\n

Hunter Jr. was an executive producer on the documentary, as was Selby, who arranged for Williams to appear in it and earned his own fee and a cut of Williams\u2019s pay. Williams, too, is listed as an EP, though it\u2019s uncertain if she ever understood the film was being made. She was paid $82,000 in total, far less than the $400,000 she was allegedly promised.<\/p>\n

Following the doc\u2019s premiere, Williams\u2019s family, friends, and associates began to talk, breaking a gag order over the case. Her niece, Alex Finnie, told Nightline<\/em> that her family had been \u201cshut out\u201d of Williams\u2019s life and that she hadn\u2019t seen her aunt in nine months. Williams\u2019s brother, Tommy, told Us Weekly<\/em> that his sister was \u201cstuck\u201d in the system: \u201cWe just want to be able to check in with her \u2026 but where do I go? No one knows anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zanotti, meanwhile, claimed she\u2019d been misled about the film \u2014 that it was supposed to be about an imminent comeback for Williams. The filmmakers themselves, facing a barrage of negative reviews and criticism for filming a woman who may or may not have been in a position to consent, claimed they were never informed of Williams\u2019s diagnosis. \u201cIf we had known that Wendy had dementia going into it, no one would\u2019ve rolled a camera,\u201d Mark Ford, an executive producer for Lifetime, told The Hollywood Reporter.<\/em> \u201cAt a certain point,\u201d he added, \u201cwe were more worried about what would happen if we stopped filming.\u201d He said the crew had often found Williams alone in her apartment, where they were concerned she might fall down the stairs, and that she was frequently without food. He also claimed they\u2019d tried to reach Morrissey at various points during production but, Ford said, \u201cwe either got a terse hang-up or a very brief, unpleasant exchange.\u201d (When contacted, Ford declined to clarify.)<\/p>\n

Morrissey, a 60-year-old widow who lives in Manhattan, immediately mounted a defense of her role as guardian, filing a lawsuit, technically on Williams\u2019s behalf, that accused Ford and his production company, along with Lifetime and its parent group, A&E Networks, of exploiting and humiliating Williams for profit and asking for an unspecified amount of damages to go to Williams\u2019s estate. Through her lawyers, Morrissey alleged that Williams, \u201ca severely impaired, incapacitated person,\u201d could not possibly have agreed to being filmed and claimed she did not consent on Williams\u2019s behalf. Contradictorily, however, she admitted she\u2019d known the documentary was taking place. She asserted she too was \u201cactively misled\u201d about its direction by both the producers and Selby. (In a counterfiling,the filmmakers denied this.)<\/p>\n

Diane Dimond, an investigative journalist who appeared in the doc and who has written a book on guardianship, told me that Morrissey certainly seemed to be in \u201carrears on her obligations.\u201d \u201cWhere was she?\u201d Dimond asked. \u201cWhy wasn\u2019t there someone there making sure Wendy wasn\u2019t getting liquor deliveries?\u201d<\/p>\n

Morrissey is barred from discussing Williams\u2019s case but in a court-approved statement said, \u201cWendy has never been neglected, deprived of food, or harmed by the Guardian.\u201d She said the family has never been denied information about Williams\u2019s whereabouts and well-being and additionally alleged that she has not received any payments for her services \u201csince the first few months of the case\u201d and that the other involved lawyers had also not been paid.<\/p>\n

The situation was worse for Williams than it appeared on film. She threw valuable art and jewelry down the trash chute of her apartment. She allegedly punched a home health aide and locked another out of the house. She routinely threw away unspoiled food and subsisted on V8 as well as the ever-present vodka.<\/p>\n

Williams received the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia shortly after the final days of filming in May 2023. According to sources close to the family, Williams\u2019s family and staff were never directly informed of the diagnosis. (Morrissey denies this.) A few months later, Williams moved into her studio apartment in the Coterie.<\/p>\n

In August, I visited the building in Hudson Yards; by then, she\u2019d been there about a year and a half. In the lobby were fresh lilies and a marble fireplace. A tiered crystal waterfall chandelier hung overhead. The place\u2019s amenities are impressive: an urgent-care facility and imaging lab; a rehab center for physical therapy; a 24\/7 nursing staff. The lights in the hallways were \u201ccircadian,\u201d according to a brochure, dimming in a way that can apparently minimize the confusion that plagues residents who \u201csundown.\u201d The dining room, a tour guide explained, used pottery in warm colors \u2014 copper and burnt orange \u2014 which they said has been shown to stimulate hunger. For those residents able to partake, there was a private movie theater with red velvet reclining chairs and a snack bar, a hair salon, and a spa.<\/p>\n

In a model unit on the third floor, a \u201ctransition floor,\u201d the guide said, where some residents stay while they wait for a room to open in memory care, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked 35th Street. The bathroom, all marble, with heated floor tiles, was equipped with safety bars. Williams had initially been on the third floor. Then in July, on her birthday, she\u2019d gone up to the building\u2019s penthouse restaurant and bar, where panoramic views of the Hudson River and nightly music played on grand piano might allow one to forget one\u2019s surroundings. Williams had gotten \u201chammered,\u201d as one friend put it. Soon after, she was moved to the memory unit.<\/p>\n

That floor, unlike the others, smelled of Febreze. As we walked, the guide explained that there were no locks on the apartment doors and no stoves or refrigerators for residents\u2019 safety. I tried to imagine the Williams the public knew living here. A man in a wheelchair was nodding off in the hallway; in a recreation area, a group of residents stared at what appeared to be a rerun from Shark Week.<\/p>\n

We were rounding the corner to the floor\u2019s gym, where an elderly group was practicing t\u2019ai chi, their canes resting against a wall, when I spotted Williams: She was on a treadmill, facing a row of tall windows overlooking the city. She wore a black top, leggings, and her usual sandy-blonde wig. She looked good.<\/p>\n

It was more than a year after the documentary before anyone in Williams\u2019s circle submitted any formal complaint on her behalf. A health-care advocate eventually filed one with Adult Protective Services in New York, statingthat they had serious concerns about Williams\u2019s rights and well-being. (To date, APS has not replied. When contacted, a spokesperson said the agency could not comment.)<\/p>\n

Hunter\u2019s lawsuit may not seem exactly valiant \u2014 it\u2019s unclear why an ex-husband would be entitled to damages or even to sue on his former spouse\u2019s behalf \u2014 and Williams\u2019s lawyers have called the suit \u201cdetrimental\u201d to her interests, but the case is the only known legal action taken against the guardianship by her family and defenders. This fact gnawed at me. If everyone wanted Williams freed, or at least freer, why wasn\u2019t there more of a fight?<\/p>\n

According to people close to the case, the family has considered various legal paths but has never committed to an approach. \u201cThere are family dynamics at play here,\u201d said a close source. \u201cThey cannot agree on what should happen. And the reality is as long as they aren\u2019t united, they\u2019re not going to convince the court of anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019s sister, Wanda Finnie, is said to have expressed interest in becoming the guardian early on. Some say she didn\u2019t follow through, while Finnie claimed in the documentary that she believed she\u2019d accepted the role, \u201cand then all of a sudden,\u201d she said, \u201cthe wall came down,\u201d and she was cut off from her sister and the court.<\/p>\n

Hunter Jr. petitioned to be his mother\u2019s guardian long ago, in March 2022, but was denied by the judge. The court knew Williams had allegedly raised concerns about her son in the fall of 2021, months ahead of the incidents at Wells Fargo. According to sealed documents, she\u2019d told Schiller, the financial adviser, that \u201cunder no circumstances was she to permit her family, including her son Kevin, access to her accounts or assets.\u201d Williams said she believed Hunter Jr. \u2014 at the time living in a condo she was paying for and receiving a monthly allowance \u2014 may have been \u201cstealing\u201d from her. Williams asked Schiller to \u201clock her accounts if something were to happen to her and Kevin attempted to access her account information.\u201d The two women referred to these potential circumstances as \u201cdoomsday scenarios.\u201d It was soon after this conversation that Schiller stopped being able to reach Williams. When she eventually got her on the phone, Williams said she was in her son\u2019s Florida apartment and that he\u2019d taken her cell phone and wouldn\u2019t let her speak to anyone. She said she wanted to go home to New York.<\/p>\n

Throughout the years that Williams was abusing alcohol, it was not uncommon, a source close to the family told me, for her then-husband, Hunter, to ship her down to Florida, take away her phone, and isolate her until she dried out. It was possible, this source said, that Hunter Jr. was simply emulating the approach he\u2019d seen his father take many times. \u201cBut,\u201d the source said, \u201che did it sloppy.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I reached Hunter Jr. by phone in September, there was a hint of panic in his voice: \u201cWhat\u2019s happening? Did something happen?\u201d I assured him that his mother was fine, as far as I knew. Like the rest of the family, he\u2019d had only limited contact with Williams since Morrissey was appointed more than three years before. He had not spoken publicly since the documentary.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of have my career right now,\u201d he said. \u201cI do work in education, and I\u2019m really not trying to be too caught up in this.\u201d He meant, in part, the media circus. He was soft-spoken and sounded genuine and a bit sad. In a second call, later that month, he told me, \u201cI\u2019m trying to build, carve out my own path right now, away from everything.\u201d When I asked if he would like to respond to the multiple accusations that he\u2019d attempted to steal from his mother, he replied, \u201cNone of that stuff is true. I am all for getting my mom out of the situation she\u2019s in, because I love her a lot, and that\u2019s the only thing I\u2019ve ever cared about. It\u2019s not about me \u2014 it\u2019s about her. And I just want her to get out of this. Because it\u2019s not right.\u201d<\/p>\n

By late summer, as Williams\u2019s next hearing approached, many of her friends and family had gone quiet. Williams\u2019s niece Alex and her sister, Wanda, did not respond to repeated requests to speak. Neither did her nephew Travis Finnie. Her ex-husband Hunter declined to talk through his lawyer, Thomas, who also declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Suzanne Bass, a former co\u2013executive producer on The Wendy Williams Show,<\/em> was one of very few people willing to speak on the record. \u201cHonestly,\u201d she said over the phone, \u201cshe\u2019s the best I\u2019ve seen her in years.\u201d Like so many, Bass hadn\u2019t had contact with Williams during the first three years of the guardianship, and until recently, the documentary was all she had to go on. \u201cShe\u2019s vibrant now,\u201d Bass said. \u201cShe sounds clear, and she sounds excited for her future. She wants her old life back.\u201d Though Bass would not comment on Williams\u2019s diagnosis, she said she deserved at least some modicum of freedom. \u201cMy mother has Alzheimer\u2019s,\u201d Bass said. \u201cShe lives at home with help. Even if that\u2019s Wendy\u2019s condition, there\u2019s no reason for her to be locked up.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I reached Selby, the former manager, in late September, he said he hadn\u2019t spoken to Williams in a while. He would say little but told me that he loves her and cares about her well-being.<\/p>\n

Zanotti, the publicist, who said she doesn\u2019t believe Williams has dementia \u2014 \u201cThis woman doesn\u2019t miss a beat\u201d \u2014 told me she still hears from the star almost daily. Williams had been pleased that I was trying to get in touch. \u201cYou know,\u201d Zanotti said, \u201cshe doesn\u2019t want to be forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Wendy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The call came in on a Saturday night while I was out at a bar. NO CALLER ID.<\/p>\n

I headed to the bathroom \u2014 single stall \u2014 and put Williams on speakerphone.<\/p>\n

She knew I\u2019d made it into the Coterie. \u201cWell, first of all,\u201d she asked, as I fumbled to lock the door, \u201cwhat did you think about the living situation?\u201d<\/p>\n

I started to say that I was actually impressed by it, though of course I could understand what she\u2019d been saying, but she cut me off: \u201cIt\u2019s a dump! Did you see the people? The elderly people? Why do I want to look at that? This is a fucked-up situation. I can\u2019t tell you how many times I\u2019ve asked that I be moved from this floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

She brought up her landline and the fact that she couldn\u2019t receive calls, only make them. It made her furious. She\u2019d recently gotten access to an iPad, which meant she could finally read the news. \u201cSabrina,\u201d she said \u2014 Morrissey \u2014 \u201cdid not want me to have it. You have me stuck on this expensive floor with these dying people, and I can\u2019t have an iPad?\u201d She went on: \u201cThe judge doesn\u2019t like me, and I don\u2019t like the judge, but she permitted it.\u201d Williams had been using the iPad to listen to herself on her old radio shows.<\/p>\n

I asked when she\u2019d last seen her family, but she didn\u2019t want to answer. I asked about her daily life: How much was she getting out? What about leaving for dinner or to socialize?<\/p>\n

\u201cUh, excuse me,<\/em>\u201d she said, supremely irritated. \u201cYou know I\u2019ve been out. So obviously I do go out.\u201d She mentioned Delmonico\u2019s \u2014 Tucci\u2019s other restaurant \u2014 and Peter Luger. I started to tell her I live next to Luger, but she was already going: \u201cThat neighborhood is a zero!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything that I do is here in this room,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I \u2026 I try not to eat here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several of Williams\u2019s friends had told me that she was more isolated and lonely than she let on. Her social world had always been small. In interviews before the guardianship, she would often say, \u201cI don\u2019t have friends. I have a show.\u201d But \u201cif before it was a circle,\u201d one of her friends told me, \u201cnow it\u2019s a dot.\u201d Williams was also bored. Tucci had said she\u2019d been sewing her own clothes with a needle and thread. She had very few of her own things at the Coterie \u2014 most of her designer goods and everything else she owned, by no choice of her own, were in storage \u2014 but it was also a way of passing time after the elderly people on her floor, as Tucci put it, \u201cpass out at dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sundays, Williams said, she\u2019d been going to church \u2014 a new thing for her \u2014 in Brooklyn. \u201cIt\u2019s a megachurch, by the way,\u201d she told me. \u201cAnd I like that, you know? It gives me faith and keeps me very well in touch with God and myself.\u201d The pastor, she said, had been on The Wendy Williams Show<\/em> back in the day. On a recent Sunday, the massive concrete building was packed. The sanctuary looked like a studio stage, complete with a camera crane gliding over the crowd.<\/p>\n

Our call didn\u2019t last long \u2014 Williams had little patience for all the questions. But she sounded the way she\u2019d always sounded on air: confident, a little cutting, meandering, brazen. \u201cI\u2019m an icon,\u201d she said at one point, reminding me who I was talking to. When I mentioned I\u2019d seen her in the gym, she brought up her lip and breast implants. Both had been done when she was 31, she said. \u201cAnd you know what? It\u2019s still hitting and holding.\u201d But as far as the conversation wandered, she knew why she was calling.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo,\u201d she said. \u201cHow do you think I sound?\u201d<\/p>\n