Only one person could really dish on a hot topic like the nightmarish downfall of a TV talk show host who loses everything and winds up a ward of the state.
But Wendy Williams, who made a big career out of saying the quiet parts out loud, can’t explain much about what has happened to her — because most of the time she’s allegedly stuck in a locked ward at a luxe Hudson Yards assisted living facility, with a phone that can only make outgoing calls.
Lately, though, she has been getting out when possible.
Williams, whose life has gone frighteningly downhill since she got divorced and then walked away from her popular talk show in 2021, looked and sounded good during a lunch with two friends at Michael’s in Midtown Friday. She told Page Six she was doing well and hoped to get out of her court-ordered guardianship soon.
“I am fabulous. I’m better than good, but have been accused to being otherwise,” Williams said as she got onto a motorized scooter to leave the West 55th Street restaurant. “I am very much alive. I deserve freedom, darling.”
In response to compliments about her sleek figure — she was wearing a short jacket with puffy fur trim, black leggings, and her customary furry boots — Williams cracked:
“I got the liposuction and breast implants when I was 31. I’m 60 now and my body’s holding up well!”
Williams played slightly coy, however, when asked direct questions about the guardianship she’s been under since 2022 and referred questions to her advocate, Ginalisa Monterroso, who told Page Six: “Don’t believe everything you read.”
Williams and Monterroso did not respond to other questions.
Williams’ sighting at Michael’s was just the latest in a recent campaign to rally whatever troops she can to get the word out about how she is not mentally incapacitated.
She’s waved in desperation outside her fifth-floor window at the facility, done phone interviews — with TMZ, “The View” and old pals like Rosanna Scotto from “Good Day New York” and Charlamagne Tha God — and persuaded the NYPD to bring her to a hospital for a psych evaluation. (Sources told TMZ she “scored 10 out of 10.”)
For three years, Williams has been a prisoner of a guardianship she says she doesn’t need — and reportedly loathes her guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, who wields considerable power in the secretive world of judges and conservatorships in New York City.
The TV host is in the locked memory-care unit because even she admits she “celebrated” at the facility’s eatery on her birthday last year. One person with knowledge of the situation told Page Six Wendy got “roaring drunk” and was transferred to the memory-care floor for her own safety.
Friends and associates are divided, however, on whether or not she has ongoing progressive neurological problems or if her years of drinking could have caused a condition that mimics dementia.
Williams is very pointed in her blame.
“I am a college-educated woman, global international person from radio to television,” Williams said in a phone interview with “The View” earlier this month.
“I’ve been doing important things all of my life and these two people don’t look like me, they don’t dress like me, they don’t talk like me, they don’t act like me… They will never be me. I need them to — with my knees — get off my neck,” she added. “I can’t do it with these two people again. I can’t. And I’m speaking of the guardians and the judge.”
Williams was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and dementia in 2023, but she maintains that the diagnosis is false and she’s fine.
A source close to the conservatorship disagrees, saying Williams was evaluated by top doctors at Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Morrissey, who rarely gives interviews, did not return a call from Page Six. Earlier this month, her lawyer hit back at Williams’ recent claims that she was in a “prison” in a letter to TMZ, calling them “untrue, inaccurate, incomplete or misleading.”
But the close source said that a new cognitive test has been ordered and will be conducted on Williams sometime within the next few months
Still, others wonder if Williams’ cognitive problems could have been caused by her years of heavy drinking, which led to a 2019 stay at a sober house while she was still hosting her daily talk show, which ran from 2008 to 2021. (Williams has long been open about a cocaine addiction she had when she was much younger.)
Serious alcoholism can sometimes cause a type of vascular dementia. It can also cause lymphedema in the feet — which Williams told Page Six Friday that she suffers from and is why she uses a scooter.
Williams sounded cogent during the recent interviews she’s given, and Page Six spoke to three separate sources who say they’ve had lengthy conversations with her this month. All said she sounded like her old self.
“She sounded like the old Wendy Williams to me,” said one insider who has known Williams for 20 years and worked on her talk show.
“It was a long funny emotional conversation. It’s hard to believe she has dementia and aphasia. Bruce Willis [who suffers from aphasia and frontotemporal dementia] could never pull off a conversation like that,” the insider added. “The last time I spoke to her was two years ago and she was wasted. She was drinking every day. But now she seems fine, she’s sober, and she wanted to gossip about the ‘Real Housewives of Atlanta.’”
“She sounds fantastic,” Suzanne Bass, who was executive producer of “The Wendy Williams Show” from 2008 until 2021, told Page Six after speaking to Wendy recently.
Bass was one who booked Williams for her recent phone interview on “The View.”
“My mother has dementia. Wendy doesn’t,” Bass said. “Wendy does get emotional when we talk but it’s understandable. She sees life going on without her. It’s a horrible situation. This is a very famous woman on top of the world who is living in a memory-care unit and doesn’t have access to any of her stuff and her money. A lot of hype going on but she still sits there.”
Still, sources were reluctant to say exactly what is the matter with Williams.
Her former attorney, La Shawn Thomas of Miami, told Page Six last week that she didn’t feel comfortable classifying Williams as an alcoholic — although she admitted that it was shocking to see how much vodka Williams consumed during the filming of the shocking Lifetime docu-series, “Where is Wendy Williams,” which aired a year ago.
“There was nothing but a big bottle of vodka in the refrigerator,” Thomas said about how Williams’ life was portrayed in the series, filmed while she was still living in her New York apartment.
“Drinking like that will damage or diminish your capacities until you can dry out. The Wendy they were allowing us to see on the documentary was a drunk Wendy. People who are drunk can’t speak clearly, they are a mess,” Thomas said. “I don’t know for sure but the things they are saying about Wendy would be symptomatic of alcoholism — not frontotemporal aphasia and dementia.”
Several sources told Page Six that Williams fell apart after her now ex-husband, Kevin Hunter Sr., 52, cheated on her and had a baby with his mistress. The two divorced in 2020 after 21 years of marriage and one son, Kevin Jr., now 24.
But reports are mixed about what happened after Williams, who was said at the time to be suffering from “health issues” including Graves disease, which affects the thyroid, left her show and wound up in the guardianship.
For more Page Six reality TV updates …
Williams recently alleged to TMZ that her son “overstepped his boundaries and he was inappropriately using my money without telling me crap about it.”
This reportedly set off alarms with Wells Fargo, and the bank who called in a financial advisor — which she initially believed would be a good thing and would help her manage her money.
But some sources say the financial advisor is the only one who had access to Wendy’s accounts while Kevin Jr. only had access to one American Express card.
The financial advisor then got Wendy into the guardianship.
“She had about $12 million in liquid assets at the time she was put in the conservatorship,” Thomas told Page Six. “The guardian also sold her condo at a loss. Where is that money now?”
Diane Dimond, author of 2023’s “We’re Here to Help: When Guardianship Goes Wrong,” said the world of guardianships and conservatorships can be very shady and does not think Williams’ situation is a healthy one for her.
“She’s been declared incapacitated, which means she is literally dead in the eyes of the law,” Dimond told Page Six. “She has no rights except for what the guardian says she can do. But as far as I can see Wendy’s biggest problem is substance abuse, not dementia or aphasia. Are they going to lock up every alcoholic in New York?”
Williams’ longtime friend who also worked on her show warned, however, against Wendy’s prayers of getting out of the guardianship being answered.
“Wendy’s very street smart and tricky. I remember her asking me to bring a lot of empty water bottles when I was coming to visit her so she could fill them with vodka and nobody would know,” he claimed. “She has a magic quality around her, she’s very warm and fun — but she’s also a mess and unpredictable. When it comes to Wendy, be careful what you wish for.”
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