The Tragic True-Life Story Of Wendy Williams

Wendy Williams built a career on being a fearless radio and TV personality, known for pulling no punches when it came to discussing her fellow celebs. She locked horns with many famous people over the years, calling out big-name musicians and actors in her signature tea-spilling style. However, she was also open about her own flaws, which is one of the reasons viewers came to love her.

If you're a Wendy Watcher (the nickname Williams has for her fans), then you'll know that she's been through a lot of trials and tribulations across the decades. Her recent health issues have been well documented in the press, but the truth is that Williams has had plenty of brushes with tragedy in her lifetime. From her school days to the recent drama surrounding her controversial Lifetime docuseries, this is the true-life story of Wendy Williams.

Wendy Williams had to overcome a lot during her climb toward the top. When the New Jersey-born TV personality was in elementary school, her parents convinced her that she was overweight and put her on a strict diet that had a long-term impact on her mental health, and she experienced racism during her high school years. "I never went to the prom, because that was before you could ask a Black girl to the prom — but I saw the boys looking," she once said (via The New Yorker).

While promoting her lifetime biopic "Wendy Williams: The Movie," Williams said that she had been date raped by the late R&B singer Sherrick when she was in college, adding that incidents like these were all too common. "Those types of things happen to girls all the time," Williams said (via People). "And they've been happening a lot, to a lot of our mothers, grandmothers, great-great-grandmothers and their great-great-grandmothers, too."

Drug addiction and alcohol abuse became an issue for Williams even before she got famous, and continued to plague her after her radio show took off. She managed to get sober at the age of 29, which changed everything for her. "I think the biggest achievement in my life was getting off cocaine," Williams told The New York Times in 2003. "No matter what the rest of it is now, and it's pretty good, it would be just a mess if I were still doing coke." 

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Wendy Williams worked her way to the morning talk slot on WRKS in New York City. She instantly began to attract attention for her gossip segments, which drew the ire of multiple celebrities — both Bill Cosby and Russell Simmons tried to get her fired. As she moved between stations, Williams often drew attention to her gossip by claiming certain rappers were gay, including Q-Tip, who was the then-boyfriend of station colleague Angie Martinez. "I lost my f*****g mind," Martinez later recalled (via Essence). "Before I knew it I was swinging at her. It was a quick scuffle. It took only a few seconds for me to realize that she wasn't really hitting me back — she was just trying to get me off of her."

Williams also claimed that Tupac Shakur had been raped in prison, which led to the rapper hitting back at her with an insulting verse. In the song "Why U Turn on Me," which was released after Tupac's murder in 1996, he rapped: "Anybody ever seen Wendy Williams's fat a**? Why you always wearin' Spandex, you fat b****?" Given that she had also been body shamed by her parents as a child, the insult likely stung, but if it did, then Williams didn't show it. In fact, she claimed that she enjoyed the attention it brought her. "I love anytime somebody mentions me," she said in response to the song (via The New Yorker). "Thank you, Tupac."

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Wendy Williams has never been one to shy away from being bare-bones honest about her life. She devoted plenty of time to talking about the alcohol and drug abuse she lived through during her time on the air. She has also opened up about the miscarriages she had before she and former husband Kevin Hunter successfully conceived and delivered their son. "I fought tooth and nail to be a mother," Williams said in the PBS special "American Masters: The Women's List" (via Essence). "I suffered several miscarriages including two at five months. That's when you have the clothes already picked out, the nursery is already painted."

Williams went on to say that she wanted a bigger family, but it wasn't written in the stars for her. These painful experiences made her love her son Kevin Jr. all the more. "Our Kevin is a hard-won child," she said. "I would've loved to have had more children but I don't want to test my blessing. Being a mother is for me. It's not for everybody. It's for me." The TV personality also revealed that motherhood had presented plenty of challenges, including trying to stop her son from using drugs — Kevin developed an addiction to synthetic marijuana in his teens and needed to attend rehab. By the time she sat down for her interview for the PBS special, he had managed to kick the habit and was "on the good side of good," she said.

After making a living out of commenting endlessly on the romantic lives of hip hop stars and other celebrities, Wendy Williams suffered through a relationship disaster of her own when her second husband, Kevin Hunter, cheated on her with another woman. Hunter fathered a daughter with the woman, which was something that Williams could not forgive. "Kevin had a major indiscretion that he will have to deal with for the rest of his life. An indiscretion that I will not deal with," Williams said (via People). "I'm a very forgiving person, but there's one thing that I could never be a part of, and that one thing happened."

Williams found out that Hunter was cheating on her after she hired a private investigator to follow him, having become suspicious of his behavior. This was how she found out that Hunter's mistress was carrying his child. "The P.I. followed her to her GYN appointments," Williams told E! News. Their 20-year marriage broke down after this, with Williams filing for divorce. She also severed professional ties with Hunter, who had been her manager for many years. He was axed as an executive producer on "The Wendy Williams Show" and the non-profit organization the two ran together was unceremoniously dissolved.

Around this time, Williams decided to move into a sober house as a pre-emptive move. Speaking to The New York Times Magazine about the scandal, she said: "I knew what was about to happen, and I was like, 'Let me go someplace where you're not allowed to have the whole bottle of wine.' When you see your husband's mistress with a burgeoning belly and you're a blabbermouth on TV with a successful show, you know what's about to happen. I needed to go someplace quiet."

Wendy Williams scared her staff and her audience when she suddenly fainted during a Halloween episode of her show in 2017. While dressed like the Statue of Liberty, she began looking shaky. She then grasped her head and fainted, causing staff members to scramble to pick her up and the program to cut to a commercial. When the commercials ended, Williams was back on stage and explaining what had happened. "That was not a stunt," she said (via the Independent). "I'm overheated in my costume and I did pass out."

Fans took to X (which was still known as Twitter at the time) to show their support for Williams after the incident, with one writing, "Wendy Williams overheated in her costume and fainted on her show, but came right back like a champ!" Williams would later reveal that the added stress of what was going on in her personal life played a part in the shocking moment. "I was in the process of the early stages of my divorce," she told The New Yorker. "My son was going to college, so I was now free to pack up the house, to fight."

In 2018, Wendy Williams revealed via interviews with "Good Morning America" and People that she has Graves' disease and that she would be taking a three-week hiatus from her show to recover. Graves' disease is "an autoimmune condition that causes your thyroid to become hyperactive, making it work harder than it needs to," according to WebMD. "It is one of the most common thyroid problems and the leading cause of hyperthyroidism, a condition in which the thyroid gland produces too many hormones."

Williams was already aware that she had thyroid issues, but the Graves diagnosis was news to her. She told People that Graves "squeezes the muscles behind the eyeballs," and this checked out, as many of her fans and viewers had pointed out that there seemed to be something not quite right with her eyes prior to her diagnosis. In typical Williams fashion, she pushed back against the medical advice to take three weeks off from work, saying that she couldn't afford to be absent for so long. "I'm not an heiress — who is going to pay my bills? Are you serious? I'm just saying, I come from working class."

Wendy Williams disappeared from our screens altogether in 2021. At first, the public were led to believe it was due to her catching COVID-19, but reps later revealed that she was dealing with some "ongoing health issues" in a statement, adding that she would be back for the opening episode of her show's thirteenth season. This came as paparazzi photos of Williams wearing a robe and hospital booties stepping out of a black car and being led to her apartment building by her manager hit the press. Before long, news that Williams was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation broke and it became clear that she would not be able to continue her show anytime soon.

A handful of celebrities filled in for Wendy Williams during the turmoil, bolstering the show throughout its thirteenth season. "For the first four, five, six, eight weeks, we think we're putting a Band-Aid on it and Wendy's coming back," producer Ira Bernstein told The Hollywood Reporter, though she never would. Leah Remini, Michelle Visage, Whitney Cummings, Michelle Buteau, Michael Rapaport, Kym Whitley, Jerry Springer, and Sherri Shepherd were among those who helped out, with the latter getting the gig permanently when it was announced that "The Wendy Williams Show" had been cancelled in 2022.

Bernstein also revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that it was hard to replace Williams on the show because of her reputation as someone who stirred up trouble. According to her, plenty of people turned down offers to guest host. "'Wendy' comes with a stink to it," she said. "It's the same reason for the 12 years preceding we struggled to book guests. She was tough on many celebrities, and a lot of celebrities hate her. It's also why she had success, she's no holds barred. But even people who were interested in doing a talk show wanted no part of [hosting it]."

In 2024, it was announced that Wendy Williams had been diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, the same health condition that led Bruce Willis to retire from acting. "The nerve cell damage caused by frontotemporal dementia leads to loss of function in these brain regions, which variably cause deterioration in behavior, personality and/or difficulty with producing or comprehending language," says the Alzheimer's Association. The 2024 Lifetime miniseries "Where Is Wendy Williams?" detailed the now-retired TV personality's health struggles, showing the effects of her conditions. Williams displays erratic behavior in a number of scenes, which didn't sit right with her guardian Sabrina Morrissey.

Morrissey has argued that the creators of the documentary exploited Williams. According to her, the people behind the show made Williams an executive producer and used this to take advantage of her. "This blatant exploitation of a vulnerable woman with a serious medical condition who is beloved by millions within and outside of the African American community is disgusting, and it cannot be allowed," Morrissey said in a complaint filed at the New York State Supreme Court (via NPR). Despite Morrissey's efforts to stop the doc from coming out, Lifetime was given the green light to release it.

It's a messy, sad situation, and no one came away from it smelling like roses except for Williams herself. Shawn Zanotti, who was working as Williams' publicist when the show was filmed, defended her role in the controversial doc after she was shown taking Williams out for a drink, despite her past issues with alcohol. Zanotti claims that she only ever had Williams' best interests at heart and was rarely paid for her work due to the TV star's accounts being frozen over questions about her mental state. "I just regret ever being a part of the documentary or getting Wendy involved," she told People.

Sadly, after years of holding court on both the radio and on television, Wendy Williams' time in the spotlight now appears to be over. In 2024, a legal filing shared by TMZ declared that she is "permanently incapacitated" due to her health conditions. The filing by her guardian Sabrina Morrissey states that Williams "has been afflicted by early-onset dementia and, as a result, has become cognitively impaired and permanently incapacitated." TMZ notes that parts of the filing were redacted to protect Williams' privacy and that of her family. 

Though Williams is now out of the public eye, her diagnosis doesn't mean she's been a homebody. She's been seen out and about shopping, and she's also found time to give interviews, chatting with the Daily Mail in October 2024. The tabloid reached out to Williams in the wake of the Sean "Diddy" Combs scandal, as Williams had taken aim at the music mogul decades ago over his behavior. "What is really weird is that I have been told by so many people, 'Wendy you called it,'" Williams said. "Including some people from my family who have said the same."

She may not be on TV anymore, but she's still spilling the tea, and her fans are convinced that she would have had even more to say had she still been on air. "I truly miss Auntie Wendy Williams on days like today," one fan said. "No one did hot topics like she did. No one. I can almost hear her going off on Puffy (Diddy) and telling us she told us so." Another fan said, "Because she's always known and she tried to tell us, many times," adding, "I hope she's doing better." Whether you liked Williams' show or not, that's a sentiment we can all agree with.