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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 in addition 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 discovered late final week.
“All of us turned very involved for her security. To be trustworthy, I used to be so involved she would fall down the steps and for quite a few totally different causes,” mentioned Erica Hanson, an govt producer who could be seen and heard chatting with Williams at sure moments within the collection.
Hanson mentioned quickly after she and the filmmakers have been advised Williams had dementia by her son, they turned the cameras off.
“We determined to cease filming as a staff. We saved hoping that she was going to get higher however it turned obvious to us that she was not and that she actually wanted assist,” Hanson mentioned.
“The place is Wendy Williams?” debuted Saturday, two days after her care staff launched an announcement saying she has been identified with main 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.
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In a overview, Selection referred to 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 exhausting to observe, it was so exhausting to see her like that,” she mentioned.
All through the documentary, Williams seems unsteady on her toes and he or she has hassle strolling with out help. Her feelings fluctuate between candy to out of the blue irritable to belligerent to weepy or annoyed. Many occasions the previous speak present host admits to ingesting. “I like vodka,” Williams, 59, says within the first episode.
She has been public about her cocaine dependancy and lived in a “sober home” in 2019. Every time somebody brings up her ingesting on digital camera, Williams ends the dialog.
In April 2023, the movie crew adopted Williams to Miami to go to her son Kevin, Jr. and different household. Through 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 prognosis till Kevin Jr. shared that with us,” mentioned Brie Bryant, Lifetime’s senior vice chairman of non-scripted programming.
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After getting back from Miami, the crew arrived at Williams’ condominium to seek 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 remedy 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 mentioned.
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 mentioned each the community and Williams loved their partnership and agreed to movie Williams’ subsequent chapter.
The target, mentioned Hanson, was to doc a girl making modifications in her life, going through obstacles, and popping out the opposite facet. Williams’ self-titled daytime speak present led to 2022 due to ongoing well being points with Graves’ illness that saved her from filming. Sherri Shepherd, a visitor host for Williams, was given her personal present.
“We thought we have been going to movie a girl 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,” mentioned Hanson. “As soon as we began filming, it actually went into a really totally different route.”
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Producers say finally what was filmed and aired is trustworthy and unfiltered, like Williams herself.
“It’s a painful reality, and it’s a really unhappy reality,” added govt producer Mark Ford, “however Wendy is among the most radically trustworthy storytellers within the historical past of media. Why would this documentary not echo that unbelievable legacy of of openness?”
Bryant says there may be “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 properly 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 occasion, her household says they’re unable to see her and have a say in her remedy.
“We hope that individuals 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 mentioned.
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