Lifetime’s Wendy Williams docuseries let numerous folks feeling uncomfortable.
The place is Wendy Williams? premiered over the weekend within the US and featured quite a few scenes of the previous speak present host unsteady, belligerent, confused and likewise drunk.
Her supervisor would repeatedly discover liquor bottles hidden all through her house, behaviour 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.
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“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 could be seen and heard talking to Williams at sure moments within the collection.
Hanson stated 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 crew. We saved 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 within the US, two days after her care crew launched an announcement 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.
In a evaluate, 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 ft and he or she has hassle strolling with out help. Her feelings fluctuate between candy to all of a sudden irritable to belligerent to weepy or pissed off. 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 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. Throughout the journey, Williams’ son advised the filmmakers that his mom suffers from a type of dementia attributable to alcohol.
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“We did not discover out the prognosis till Kevin Jr. shared that with us,” stated Brie Bryant, Lifetime’s senior vp of non-scripted programming.
After coming back from Miami, the crew arrived at Williams’ house 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 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 stated.
The challenge was meant 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 girl making adjustments 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 tough divorce,” stated Hanson. “As soon as we began filming, it actually went into a really completely different route.”
Producers say finally what was filmed and aired is sincere and unfiltered, like Williams herself.
“It’s a painful reality, and it is a very 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 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 effectively and hopefully will get to be together with her household.”
The filmmakers say they hope the collection makes folks 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 folks can see why we aired it, and produced it, and that the intention is to shine a light-weight on the difficulties and the secrecies in these guardianships,” Ford stated.
