Lessons I Learned From The Wendy Williams Docuseries
LISTEN TO EP 97: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY
I watched the two part docuseries, Where Is Wendy Williams? and I am honestly a bit floored. Which is why it's now two weeks later and I am just gathering my thoughts. It was not what I expected. I was geeked to see Wendy cut up in the ways only she can. Messy, cheeky, and semi rude. But instead we got a raw, unfiltered, and highly vulnerable depiction of the media legend. If you haven't been following this story let's back up a little and if you have here's a recap.
Following her 2017 collapse on the Halloween episode of The Wendy Williams Show, her team and family quickly blamed it on Grave's disease. But we all really knew better. At least I did. I remember watching the show and before she collapsed she would kinda miss or skip over words and you could tell she was having a really hard time reading the teleprompter. I actually thought we were watching her have a stroke. She came back definitely knew it wasn't just complications from Grave's disease. Then in 2019, Wendy announced that she was staying in a sober living home, and then a month later, she filed for divorce from her husband.
Wendy last filmed her talk show in July of 2021, and the following year, a court appointed a legal guardianship to oversee Wendy’s finances, the state of her mental and physical health was unclear. This is where the docuseries picks up.
It's originally meant to document her comeback to the industry via a new podcast but the producers learn there is way more going on with Wendy. In the second part of the docuseries we learn that Wendy has progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, which affects language, communication behavior and cognitive function. And so as of the airing of the docuseries, she is in a facility to treat her cognitive issues.
I've been seeing the conversations online of how it was disturbing for many to see her in this way. At one point, Wendy and her publicist are talking and the publicist asks would you like to go to the Oscars?" Wendy inquisitively says, "Who is Oscar?" So for obvious reason I will spare you on more details. But I do wanna unpack some of the lessons I learned from watching it.
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