I’ve never been a fan of Wendy Williams. I don’t like catty, petty or vicious people or talk. However, I am well aware of her platform. I’ve watched several episodes of her talk show. Overall, when I see her on tv, I think about the one time I saw her in person.
It was at the Harlem AMC theater for a red carpet. I was walking pass, heading home. I saw this extremely busty slim woman get out of a car. Her curves were barely covered by scraps of cloth. A somewhat shorter man got out with her to escort her to the carpet. I don’t remember if I came to the realization that she was Wendy Williams or if people were screaming her name or if someone answered an involuntary, “Who’s that?” But her identity became clear almost immediately after trying to figure out who the man was that brought his escort to a red carpet event.
That’s how she presented: cheap and available for payment. It doesn’t make it better knowing her husband, the man escorting her, was the cheap one hanging around for her money.
Wendy’s fall from her gilded megaphone is a cautionary tale for today’s image-obsessed attention-mongers. She didn’t gradually slide into her current life stage. She tumbled violently into obsolescence so immediately, the public was still looking for her in her incapacity.
Though, I’m not a fan of Wendy’s, I do admire a woman, especially a Black Woman, who’s able to make a name for herself while living life on her terms. She exploited some of the worst characteristics of humanity and exposed people to ridicule in their low moments. She did it with a flair and panache that attracted a following. I can’t speak on what other’s get from watching her, but one thing I did enjoy about her show was the infectious, very New Yourk way she greeted her audience, “ How yoou doin’?”
I haven’t been paying much attention to her current troubles, but she’s been all over my social media feeds. So, I decided to look for the documentary released about her in February on Lifetime. I came across, “Wendy Williams: What a Mess!” from 2021 first.
Wendy Williams: What a Mess! (2021)
I had to pause within the first five minutes to write the above intro because she had already dropped nuggets that I wanted to provide solid context for.
In the opening scene, Wendy is lounging on her sofa in a lymphedema suit covering her feet to upper thighs. She says she has to sit in the suit for up to two hours a day.
Lymphedema is a tissue swelling disorder “caused by an accumulation of protein-rich fluid that’s usually drained through the body’s lymphatic system.” As Wendy states her medical condition and tells the viewers to look it up, she pulls out a can of caviar and reaches into a bag of fiery Doritos and continues with how she loves her caviar.
I’ve had caviar once or twice and all I remember is the salt. If you’re prone to swelling and certainly if you’re in a machine to bring your swelling down, the last thing you should be eating is something high in sodium.
But Wendy lives unapologetically in her mess. Perhaps that’s why people love her the way they do. I hope they are receiving the lessons her life is demonstrating for the world.
“This has been a year from hell – in a good way,” she says. “This is not my fault. It is a circumstance I created for myself out of a bad circumstance. What matters to me is that I tell my story.” She starts crying. “I don’t want sympathy from anyone. Don’t feel sorry for me. It’s just that, you know, through they years, if you’ve watched me or listened to me enough, you know I’m an emotional person. And I’ve never been scared of sharing my vulnerability, but I think that my vulnerability is in a way maybe an inspiration to somebody. Like, you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. There’s nothing special about me – except that I am my own best friend. That’s the most special thing.”
On starting out from New Jersey
Wendy grew up in a small town in New Jersey. She’s one of three children in a lovely, close-knit family. Unfortunately, her parents were very image and weight conscious. She developed a dislike of her body early on due to her parents constantly putting her on a scale. She may have developed social anxiety from this.
She talks about how radio kept her company and people not being able to see her through the radio. She could be anything. “I wanted to make my mark on the world. I wanted to do something where I could be fun. And have an interesting, glamourous life. I’m tall. I’m fat. I’m black. I can’t wait to get out of this house. Out of this town. I want to deliver on my own terms. And make my mark on the world. It all worked out. And then Kevin came along.”
She met Kevin. Fell in love. He became a huge supporter of her work, image and brand.
“I worked on this. I was a made woman before I ever knew him! And I would’ve been this without him!”
Eventually, he became her muscle, manager, controller and husband.
“What I loved about the mic, is that it didn’t matter what you looked like. And the storytelling. Being so intimate with people.”
The beginning of her famed Hot Topics was on the radio. She would bring in a tote bag full of the gossip magazines and read through the headlines with her commentary. This was the beginning of her brand and niche. “When opportunity presents itself, you have to get ready to hop on it. That’s me.”
“I had a great career on the radio. Although, it’s a lonely path. I was overwhelmed with overwhelmedness. Even with all those people, feeling solitude, which has been a theme throughout my life. Just… no one really understanding….”
She then flowed into a story about being raped by an artist who invited her up to his hotel room after drinks. She didn’t speak his name or confront him at the time. She buried it and moved on. This happened before she met her husband and may explain why she completely gave over to sheltering herself in his protective presence. She had already been using drugs to cope with life. After being sexually assaulted, she went on a deep binge and began using cocaine and drinking heavily on a daily basis. In her words, she was doing fine with her “five-day-a-week” cocaine use, until she wasn’t.
When Kevin came along, he made me feel loved, comforted and supported. According to a co-worker, “Kev became her protector.”
Wendy doesn’t necessarily speak of her dreams or ideals for her marriage. She doesn’t expound on having the ideal partnership and 2.5 children in the suburbs. She speaks of how these things seemed to try to develop in her life and denigrated before her eyes. With no understanding of why or reflection on how her habits and behaviors may have contributed to her inability to sustain life.
She had two miscarriages at five months each, back-to-back.
For her third pregnancy, she was put on complete bed rest. Since the show must go on, she did her radio show from bed. “Being a mother is everything I wanted to be. Now I’m a wife and a mother in what I think is a successful relationship.”
She learned her husband was cheating on her two months after giving birth. He told her he would end it. She believed him. About this she says, “This is my husband. And we had a baby. And I don’t know how to be a mother. What do I do with this?” She cradles her arms as if cradling a baby. “I wanted this! But what do I do now? You’re not going to leave me alone. Hold on,” she tells the cameras as she begin to cry. “Let me straighten up. This is disgusting. Let me get myself together.”
My heart truly aches for her. She reached the pinnacle of her career on the radio and had national recognition. Yet the idea of being a single mother in the face of marital betrayal, was something she didn’t think she was capable of. She has consistently said that she could forgive his cheating, but she would never forgive an outside child.
Wendy filed for divorce years later when she learned her husband fathered a child with the same woman he said he had ended the affair with. He supported his mistress on Wendy’s money while also giving her access to Wendy’s assets. I can’t even wrap my mind around the levels of betrayal Wendy needed to process just to breathe. Unfortunately, I don’t think Wendy processed any of her emotional trauma from childhood to the filming of her documentaries. She talks about how she buried, ignored and moved on in almost every instance of harm against her.
Her malice, although not excusable, is understandable. The hatred she didn’t want to internalize, she turned onto the world. She glamourized it by targeting famous people. Everything she’s ever vomited up, corroded her.
She ends this first documentary with, “You’ve got to have a plan!”
Where is Wendy Williams? Episode 1 & 2 (2024)
Disclaimer: I don’t have Lifetime. I watched the first two episodes online. The last two episodes were locked. Now all four are locked on Lifetime (play.mylifetime.com).
Wendy is under court-ordered financial guardianship. She opens this four-episode series in perhaps one of the saddest states I’ve ever seen a current celebrity. She’s extremely pale. Her eyes are bugged out to an alarming degree. Her body looked wasted away with skeletal thighs, legs and rear. She seems to have aged a decade or more in a couple of years (filming began in 2022). She showed her feet. They were disfigured and discolored. She said she only had 2% feeling in them left.
I had to pause the video and stare. All I could say was, “You are not taking care of yourself.” This assessment was confirmed a couple of minutes later when she said her sister, Wanda was the problem because she didn’t want Wendy drinking alcohol. Wendy wanted Wanda to understand how much she loves alcohol.
What do you say to that?
She has multiple illnesses, addictions and ailments, but she also has the resources to properly care for herself and chooses to continue the worse debilitating habits. As self-aware as she plays, she extremely delusional. Looking directly into the camera after showing the affects of her illnesses and addictions on her body, she says, “I’m very healthy.”
The producer asks form off-camera, “Are there any relationships in your family or friends that you want to repair? Or heal?”
“Yes,” Wendy responds, “My son, Kevin.”
“So, what’s the tension between you and Kevin?”
“Nothing, except for he hates liquor.”
“When do you drink? When do you like to drink?”
“When I want to.”
They showed a clip of Wendy in court regarding her financial guardianship. The judge asked her if she wanted her son present, she said, “No. I want him to leave because he won’t allow me to have liquor and a whopper.” That doesn’t sound like much, but it tells me she gave away control of her fortune and life to vultures for a drink and a burger. Esau and Jacob certainly comes to mind. Her son now has no standing or say in her care, finances or life. The court gave financial guardianship of her money to her bank, Wells Fargo. Imagine that. Wendy has long financially supported family members including her son. The bank has cut them off.
Somehow, she gets bottles of hard alcohol in bed. No one claimed delivery. Her current manager drops off wads of cash for her to hold and searches her apartment for hidden bottles. He collects them all over. He shares that her son has a no alcohol policy. That’s what she’s against.
The off-camera producer asks, “Do you want to stop drinking?”
Wendy says, “No.”
Her son, Kevin Jr, now in his mid-twenties, is aware that she prefers her addiction to him, even though he’s the person she loves most outside of herself. Because of his standing no-alcohol policy for her, she feels she’s not welcome in his space. He lives in Miami and has been trying to get her to move there with him. She prefers the illusion of her freedom in Manhattan where she thinks she can still do what she wants to do. Tragic that she stands against her son even as he’s trying to stand up for her despite being stripped of the legal support to do so.
At one point, Wendy says, “I weigh 138 pounds. Pretty, right?”
The camera records several interactions where Wendy was extremely rude, offensive and nasty to film crew, employees, consultants and her manager. Horrendously so. One of her closing comments in Episode 2 is, “When you say like you mean it, you have to be prepared for people to not want to be around you because you are a pariah.”
My Overall Take-away
How you live and every choice you make matters so much. How you treat people will determine, to some extent, the quality of people who will choose to stick around when you aren’t able to care for yourself. I’m certain the people Wendy see most often now, the people who keep returning despite her verbal abuse, are not showing up for her. They are showing up for whatever they can get form the situation. That’s so incredibly sad to me.
Harvest Life 