What happened to Wendy Williams? It’s the question that fuels most of Lifetime’s 2024 documentary, “Where Is Wendy Williams?” and one that viewers have wondered, likely since they saw the former daytime talk show host faint on live TV in 2017.
“What actually happened?” DJ Boof, a former DJ on “The Wendy Williams Show,” says in the documentary of the day Williams fainted on set. “That was on everybody’s mind.”
Here’s what we learned from the documentary about what happened to Williams, in her own words and in the words of relatives like her son, Kevin Hunter Jr., niece Alex Finnie, sister Wanda Finnie and manager Will Selby.
Wendy Williams is credited as an executive producer of the documentary, as are Selby and Williams’ son, Kevin Hunter Jr. She has no comment on the documentary at the time of publication.
She’s had a series of health issues and diagnoses, including frontotemporal dementia
The “Wendy Williams Show” host’s health has been in the spotlight since the end of her 14-year show in 2022 following Williams’ prolonged health-related absences. She was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune condition that leads to an overproduction of thyroid hormones, in 2018. Williams took time off her show in 2018, then again in 2019 and again in 2020 to manage Graves’ disease.
In 2023, Williams was diagnosed with progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, according to a Feb. 22 statement released by her medical team.
“Over the past few years, questions have been raised at times about Wendy’s ability to process information and many have speculated about Wendy’s condition, particularly when she began to lose words, act erratically at times, and have difficulty understanding financial transactions,” the release stated. “Receiving a diagnosis has enabled Wendy to receive the medical care she requires.”
In a statement given ahead of the 2024 documentary premiere but following the announcement about her diagnosis on Feb. 23, Williams thanked fans for their support.
“I want to say I have immense gratitude for the love and kind words I have received after sharing my diagnosis of Aphasia and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD),” she said in a statement. “Let me say, wow! Your response has been overwhelming. The messages shared with me have touched me, reminding me of the power of unity and the need for compassion.”
Williams added that she hopes others with the same condition “benefit from my story.”
“I continue to need personal space and peace to thrive,” she concluded. “Please just know that your positivity and encouragement are deeply appreciated.”
Williams’ progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia diagnosis doesn’t figure into the documentary.
However, dementia is mentioned in the last episode. “(Doctors) basically said that because she was drinking so much, it was starting to affect her headspace and her brain,” Kevin Hunter Jr. says. “So, I think they said it was alcohol-induced dementia.”
Morrissey, Williams’ guardian, said Williams was “cognitively impaired and permanently incapacitated” in a November court filing as part of the lawsuit she filed against A&E Television Networks and Lifetime Entertainment Services over the documentary.
Williams’ lymphedema plays into the documentary, as she shows the effect the condition had on her feet. Williams says in the documentary that she can only feel 2% of her feet, and struggles to stand.
Her family links Williams’ decline to her divorce
Williams and her husband, Kevin Hunter, split in 2019 after 20 years of marriage. That same year, she revealed to New York Times Magazine that she left her ex-husband because he fathered a child with another woman.
Williams and Hunter share a son, Kevin Hunter Jr., who was born in 2000.
Regina Shell, a friend of the former talk show host, said Williams was “devastated” by the end of her marriage. Williams’ nephew, Travis Finnie, who lived with her at the time of the split, says he thinks his aunt “had a problem” with drinking.
“If you look at the decline of my aunt, it happened after the divorce,” Travis Finnie says. “I’m not the biggest fan of my uncle, but he made sure she showed up on time, sober and ready to work.”
In the documentary, when asked about her divorce, she says it “wasn’t difficult at all.”
“Women need to grow up … and not get married so quickly,” she says.
DJ Boof says Williams’ ex-husband’s infidelity impacted her. “He was the protector. He was making sure she was doing what’s right and taking care of herself,” she says. DJ Boof says he took on that role and “became that person.”
Kevin Hunter is not in the documentary. In in a statement released at the time of their divorce, he said he is “not proud” of his recent actions.
“I take full accountability and apologize to my wife, my family and her amazing fans. I am going through a time of self-reflection and am trying to right some wrongs,” he said.
She is under a court-appointed guardianship
The documentary, which was filmed between August 2022 and April 2023, gets into the circumstances that led to Williams being put under court-appointed guardianship in January 2022.
Before the guardianship was instated, Williams was living in Florida with her family under her son’s care. She was summoned back to New York for a court case and was given a guardian, who was later identified as New York lawyer Sabrina Morrissey.
The family believes her condition declined when she left Florida. “When she went back to New York, things took a turn for the worse,” Williams’ sister, Wanda Finnie, says.
Williams’ manager, Will Selby, says the guardianship case was prompted due to finances. Wells Fargo froze Williams’ accounts and in its filing wrote that the bank has “strong reason to believe that (Williams) is the victim of undue influence and financial exploitation.”
“It looked as if someone was nefarious, close to her. Who was the person taking advantage of Wendy?” Regina Shell, Williams’ friend, asks.
An attorney representing Wells Fargo requested that the company’s petition be filed under a seal, according to a letter dated Feb. 9 obtained by NBC News.
However, Travis Finnie says the questionable charge that led to a guardianship was Williams’ son spending $100,000 — which he notes wasn’t unusual, considering her son’s birthday party, thrown by his mother, was $120,000, and his rent was $80,000 a year. Kevin Hunter Jr. says he “never” took money from his mother’s account “without her consent” in the documentary.
Williams’ family expressed their concerns with the guardianship set-up. When asked if he thinks his mother should have a guardian, Kevin Hunter Jr. says, “I think my mother should have a family.”
Wanda Finnie, Williams’ sister, says she was contacted by the court and volunteered to be a guardian. “Then all of a sudden a wall came down and there was nothing,” she says. She calls the guardianship system “broken.”
On Feb. 22, three days before the documentary premiered, Williams’ court-appointed guardian filed a sealed lawsuit against A&E Television Networks, Lifetime’s parent company.
In a statement given to TODAY, the network confirmed the documentary would air as planned.
Today, she is in a health care facility
Williams is receiving treatment for cognitive functioning at a facility. Alex Finnie told People in February 2024 her aunt’s condition has improved.
“She sounds really great. To hear my aunt now in terms of just how clear she is, just how focused she is on the importance of family and the reality in terms of facing and understanding where she’s at physically and mentally and emotionally, it is like a 180,” she said.
A year later, in January 2025, Williams went on “The Breakfast Club” and shared an update from the facility.
“I am not cognitively impaired,” Williams said on the morning show, “but I feel like I am in prison.”
Alex Finnie, Williams’ niece, compared the facility to a “luxury prison” while on the show.
“She’s there every day, all hours of the day, every week, every month … I went to New York in October to visit her. And the level of security and the level of questions that there were in terms of, ‘Who am I? Why am I here? What’s the purpose?’ I mean, it was absolutely just horrible,” she said.
Williams painted a picture of her life now. “I’m in this place where the people are in their 90s and their 80s and their 70s. … I have breakfast, lunch and dinner right here on the bed. I watch TV, I listen to radio, I look out the window, I talk on the phone,” she said.
Williams concluded that the guardianship system is “broken.” Her niece said she is trying to do “whatever we have to do to make sure that my aunt is in a place where she is living her life in dignity.”