During a Halloween special episode seven years ago, draped in a glittering Lady Liberty costume, talk show host Wendy Williams stunned viewers when she suddenly fainted live on air.
Producers dramatically cut to a six-minute commercial break and the host reappeared on camera. At the time Williams, now 60, attributed it to overheating in her costume. But a few months later, it became apparent that the viral moment in 2017 also marked the beginning of the decline in her health that would change the course of her career.
With her iconic “How you doin?” catchphrase and larger-than-life personality, Williams was the outspoken queen of daytime TV. From 2008 to 2021, she fronted The Wendy Williams Show for 13 seasons and held favorable ratings while going head-to-head with the hugely popular The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
But a series of health setbacks plagued her final years on the hit show. Just four months after the fainting episode, Williams was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, a condition of the immune system that affects the function of the thyroid, and Lymphedema, a chronic condition that causes swelling. She defiantly carried on with the show after the diagnosis, but the condition forced her to take extended breaks. Her final appearance was in the fall of 2021. Her show was canceled in 2022 without the star even appearing in the final episode.
That same year, Williams was placed under a financial guardianship after her bank “documented a pattern of unusual and disturbing events.”
Then, there was a period of darkness until 2024, when she revealed a devastating diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia. She has been living in a Manhattan assisted living facility ever since.
This week, Williams was taken to a New York hospital after she dropped a note from the window of her assisted living facility. “Help! Wendy!!” it read.
The troubling episode is the latest in a series of struggles in Williams’s personal life over the years. She has battled drug and alcohol addiction, suffered multiple miscarriages and gone through two divorces.
Throughout it all, though, the “shock jock diva” has entertained fans with her no-nonsense and often brutal interview style since the 80s – that led to her rise into daytime talk-show powerhouse.
Early career and drug addiction
Born in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in 1964, it was clear that Williams was destined to be on the airwaves from an early age. As a girl she “spoke too loud, too fast and too much,” she wrote in her 2004 memoir Wendy’s Got the Heat.
At Boston’s Northeastern University, Williams discovered her love of broadcasting and hosted her own music show on the college’s radio station WRBB.
After graduating, Williams made a name for herself working at radio stations in New York and Philadelphia in the 1980s and 90s. Her career was just taking off and with it came a wild social life that quickly slipped into heavy cocaine use. Williams previously admitted she became “a functioning addict” during her early career. “I was a young Jersey girl turning the city upside down,” she told PEOPLE in 2014. “I wanted to live on the edge.”
“I’d work from 3 in the afternoon until 7 at night, get off and party until 7 in the morning – then sleep until 2, go to the radio station and do it all over again,” she once said.
Williams said she kicked the habit when she turned 29 after “burning up [her] insides.”
Chaotic love life and opening up to listeners about fertility struggles
Her love life was also tumultuous. In 1994, Williams was briefly married to a salesman, Bert Girigorie, but they separated five months later. That same year, she met her second husband, Kevin Hunter, and married him in 1999. Williams tragically suffered multiple miscarriages with Hunter.
“I suffered several miscarriages including two at five months,” she said in the 2024 documentary. “That’s when you have the clothes already picked out, the nursery is already painted. They ask you do you want a funeral or do you want the cremation.”
Sharing her heartbreak with her listeners became a kind of therapy for the star and it also proved successful for her show.
During a three-year stint in Philadelphia at WUSL, the radio host boosted the ratings from 14th to 2nd place because of her openness with listeners, talking candidly about her fertility struggles and previous drug addiction. In 2000, Williams gave birth to her son, Kevin Hunter Jr.
Big radio break that led to TV debut
Whilst navigating motherhood, Williams’s big career break came in New York City in 2001 at WBLS, where she was given her own show titled The Wendy Williams Experience. She spent the best part of a decade gossiping, giving readers advice on sex and relationships and grilling celebrities in what became her statement brash interview style. In one infamous exchange in 2003, she interrogated Whitney Houston about the late singer’s drug addiction.
“My bark is worse than my bite,” she later said of the interview. “By being tall and outgoing, people mistake that for being overpowering, overbearing, loud and being a bully.”
Toward the end of the 2000s, Williams was ready to move on from radio and break into TV. In 2008, The Wendy Williams Show debuted on TV during a trial run and was a hit. It was picked up by FOX in 2009 for a full season and Williams never looked back.
During its run, the show was nominated for four daytime Emmy awards and Williams enjoyed her new fame. She interviewed the biggest names, including President Donald Trump and daughter Ivanka, Jennifer Lopez and Venus and Serena Williams. She also appeared on Dancing with the Stars and had cameo roles on 30 Rock and Law & Order.
Marriage breakdown and rehab stint
In the show’s final few years, Williams struggled with more health setbacks, having to take time off, and in 2019 the tabloid press ran started to run stories that her husband was cheating on her. It became too much for Williams and she turned to alcohol to cope. Her family sent her to rehab, she revealed on her show.
That same year, she addressed rumors that Hunter had cheated on her live on air. “I want to shout out my husband,” she said. “I am still wearing my ring.”
A month later, Williams filed for divorce after it emerged the rumors were true and Hunter had fathered a child with another woman.
Financial guardianship and troubling documentary
When The Wendy Williams Show abruptly ended in 2022, the star was appointed a legal guardian to oversee her financial affairs after her bank – Wells Fargo – “documented a pattern of unusual and disturbing events” related to her welfare and finances.
It marked a dark time in the star’s life and she disappeared from the public eye until 2024, when a four-part Lifetime documentary aptly titled Where is Wendy Williams? aired.
The documentary shocked America. Williams had rarely been seen for two years and viewers were stunned to see her looking so pale and fragile, a far cry from the glamorous TV presenter they had known for over a decade. In footage, Williams often appeared disorientated and confused. The documentary moved the dial on how Williams was perceived by the public. Fans became seriously concerned and, ultimately, sad for the star.
The series also revealed she still had a drinking problem. In the documentary, her son, 24-year-old Kevin Hunter Jr, said that doctors diagnosed her with alcohol-induced dementia in 2021.
The documentary ultimately raised more questions than it answered. Her court-appointed guardian, Sabrina Morrisey, even tried to block it from airing, claiming that it took advantage of Williams “in the cruelest, most obscene way possible.” Two days before the documentary aired, Williams’s team announced she had been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, the same condition as Bruce Willis. Producers said they didn’t know she had the condition while filming.
Williams has been living in an assisted living facility in New York, which she has likened to being in “prison,” and she has questioned her diagnosis. In January this year, Williams asked The Breakfast Club hosts DJ Envy, Charlamagne Tha God and Jess Hilarious: “Do I seem that way, god damn it?”
“I am not cognitively impaired, you know what I’m saying? But I feel like I’m in prison,” she said of the care facility.
“I am definitely isolated. To talk to these people who live here, that is not my cup of tea… I’m in this place where the people are in their Nineties and their Eighties and their Seventies… There’s something wrong with these people here on this floor.”
Her family is now fighting to get Williams out of the state’s care. Her brother Tommy Williams has insisted she is “in great shape mentally and physically,” he told Us Weekly.
Looking ahead, Williams says she just wants to get “back to work.” But for now, her fight for freedom is the priority.
“Staying in New York, going back to work and…what will I do? I have options,” she told Good Day New York this week. “But in terms of getting out of guardianship, that is my number one most important thing.”