Wendy Williams ‘permanently incapacitated’ due to dementia, guardian says
Wendy Williams has become “cognitively impaired and permanently incapacitated,” according to a memo filed by her guardian’s lawyers.
The former US talk show host, 60, was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia in 2023, the same form of the illness as actor Bruce Willis.
Her guardian Sabrina Morrissey has now launched a lawsuit against A&E Television Networks, Lifetime Entertainment Services, and others in connection with the release of the docuseries “Where is Wendy Williams?” in February.
The two-part series started filming in 2022, at a time where Williams had been absent from her self-titled talk show due to health reasons.
The series stopped filming in April 2023 when her son informed the crew she had been diagnosed with a form of dementia, according to the filmmakers.
Williams’s guardian tried to block the series from airing in February, but a judge ruled in the broadcast’s favour.
In the suit filed this month, her guardian claimed that those involved with the docuseries took advantage of a “vulnerable” Williams “in the cruellest, most obscene way possible for their own financial gain”, according to Sky’s US partner NBC News.
It claims that Williams “was highly vulnerable and clearly incapable of consenting to being filmed, much less humiliated and exploited”.
The complaint said profits from the series should go to Williams, who “will need significant funding to provide for proper medical care and supervision for the rest of her life”.
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Williams hosted her self-titled show from 2008 to 2021, before it ended in 2022 due to her health issues.
She had previously been open with the public about her struggles with addiction.
Williams said in 2018 that she had been diagnosed years before with Graves’ disease, which leads to the overproduction of thyroid hormones and can cause wide-ranging symptoms that can affect overall health.
A&E did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday by NBC News.
However, the docuseries filmmakers told NBC in February they were not aware of Williams’s diagnosis during production.
Erica Hanson, an executive producer on the docuseries, told the Associated Press in February that the objective of the show was to document Williams making changes in her life, facing obstacles, and coming out the other side.
Brie Bryant, Lifetime’s senior vice president of non-scripted programming, added: “The only thing that we care about at Lifetime is that she had a platform to tell her story, and that we feel we did so responsibly, and that she gets well and hopefully gets to be with her family.”
