If you watched Lifetime’s Wendy Williams docuseries that premiered over the weekend and felt uncomfortable, you were not alone.
“The place is Wendy Williams?” premiered over the weekend and featured quite a few scenes of the previous speak present host unsteady, belligerent, confused and likewise drunk. Her supervisor would often discover liquor bottles hidden all through her condominium, conduct that producers say unnerved them whereas filming. However they are saying they did not know on the time that Williams had dementia, which the general public realized late final week.
“All of us turned very involved for her security. To be sincere, I used to be so involved she would fall down the steps and for quite a few completely different causes,” stated Erica Hanson, an government producer who might be seen and heard chatting with Williams at sure moments within the collection.
Hanson stated quickly after she and the filmmakers had been advised Williams had dementia by her son, they turned the cameras off.
“We determined to cease filming as a group. We stored hoping that she was going to get higher nevertheless it turned obvious to us that she was not and that she actually wanted assist,” Hanson stated.
“The place is Wendy Williams?” debuted Saturday, two days after her care group launched a press release saying she has been identified with major progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, the identical illness Bruce Willis has. Its two episodes aired after attorneys for Lifetime efficiently fended off an effort by Williams’ guardian to cease the broadcasts.
Learn Extra: What It’s Like Dwelling With Aphasia—and Easy methods to Help a Liked One With the Situation
In a evaluation, Selection known as the collection “an exploitive show of her cognitive decline and emotional well-being.” Danie Buchanan, a radio DJ in Atlanta posted a video response on Instagram saying, “I could not end it … It was so arduous to look at, it was so arduous to see her like that,” she stated.
All through the documentary, Williams seems unsteady on her toes and she or he has bother strolling with out help. Her feelings fluctuate between candy to abruptly irritable to belligerent to weepy or annoyed. Many occasions the previous speak present host admits to ingesting. “I really like vodka,” Williams, 59, says within the first episode.
She has been public about her cocaine habit and lived in a “sober home” in 2019. Every time somebody brings up her ingesting on digicam, Williams ends the dialog.
In April 2023, the movie crew adopted Williams to Miami to go to her son Kevin, Jr. and different household. In the course of the journey, Williams’ son advised the filmmakers that his mom suffers from a type of dementia brought on by alcohol.
“We didn’t discover out the analysis till Kevin Jr. shared that with us,” stated Brie Bryant, Lifetime’s senior vp of non-scripted programming.
Learn Extra: State Driver’s License Legal guidelines May Result in Underdiagnosis of Dementia, Based on New Analysis
After getting back from Miami, the crew arrived at Williams’ condominium to search out her sobbing in her mattress, seemingly inebriated. This was the tipping level — Hanson was filmed talking with Williams’ supervisor, Will Selby, about her situation, earlier than they stopped filming Williams altogether. Shortly after she was positioned in a therapy facility by her guardianship.
“We questioned on a regular basis, ‘Ought to we be right here? Ought to we not? How can we inform this story sensitively?’ It touched all of us deeply. It actually did,” Hanson stated.
The venture was supposed to be a follow-up to Lifetime’s 2021 “Wendy Williams: What a Mess!” documentary and biopic “Wendy Williams: The Film.” Bryant stated each the community and Williams loved their partnership and agreed to movie Williams’ subsequent chapter.
The target, stated Hanson, was to doc a lady making modifications in her life, going through obstacles, and popping out the opposite aspect. Williams’ self-titled daytime speak present led to 2022 due to ongoing well being points with Graves’ illness that stored her from filming. Sherri Shepherd, a visitor host for Williams, was given her personal present.
“We thought we had been going to movie a lady at an actual turning level in her life, embarking on a brand new profession with Wendy doing a podcast … recovering from a really troublesome divorce,” stated Hanson. “As soon as we began filming, it actually went into a really completely different route.”
Learn Extra: Air Air pollution Might Be Growing the Threat of Dementia, Research Says
Producers say in the end what was filmed and aired is sincere and unfiltered, like Williams herself.
“It’s a painful reality, and it’s a really unhappy reality,” added government producer Mark Ford, “however Wendy is among the most radically sincere storytellers within the historical past of media. Why would this documentary not echo that unbelievable legacy of of openness?”
Bryant says there’s “no dialog” about filming extra with Williams sooner or later. “The one factor that we care about at Lifetime is that she had a platform to inform her story, and that we really feel we did so responsibly, and that she will get effectively and hopefully will get to be along with her household.”
The filmmakers say they hope the collection makes individuals take a better have a look at guardianships. As a result of Williams’ funds and medical care are managed by a 3rd social gathering, her household says they’re unable to see her and have a say in her therapy.
“We hope that folks can see why we aired it, and produced it, and that the intention is to shine a lightweight on the difficulties and the secrecies in these guardianships,” Ford stated.
