Wendy Williams called into The Breakfast Club radio show on Thursday morning to speak out against her guardianship, saying “I feel like I’m in prison.”
The former daytime TV host, 60, has been under guardianship since 2022. Last year, her care team announced she had been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia.
“Do I seem that way, god damn it?” she asked hosts DJ Envy, Charlamagne Tha God and Jess Hilarious on Thursday.
“I am not cognitively impaired, you know what I’m saying? But I feel like I’m in prison,” she said of the care facility where she has been living.
“I am definitely isolated. To talk to these people who live here, that is not my cup of tea… I’m in this place where the people are in their Nineties and their Eighties and their Seventies… There’s something wrong with these people here on this floor.”
“I keep the door closed,” Williams added of her daily life at the facility. “I watch TV. I listen to the radio. I watch the window. I sit here, and my life goes by.”
Williams was the subject of a Lifetime docuseries that aired last year, which featured numerous scenes of the ex-host unsteady, belligerent, confused, and also drunk.
“She was the one who wanted to do that, you understand what I’m saying?” Williams said of her guardian, Sabrina E. Morrissey, adding: “What do I think about being abused? Look, this system is broken, this system that I’m in. This system has falsified a lot.”
The Independent has contacted Morrissey’s office for comment.
Wendy Williams denied being ‘cognitively impaired’ in a new interview (Getty Images for New York Women)
Williams is best known for her eponymously titled chat show, The Wendy Williams Show, which she hosted from 2008 to 2021. She stepped away as host due to medical issues, with numerous guest hosts filling in. It was later cancelled in 2022.
Williams’s niece Alex also called into The Breakfast Club to support her aunt, encouraging fans to use the hashtag #FreeWendy and sign a Change.org petition.
“My aunt sounds great,” Alex said. “I’ve seen her, in a very limited capacity, but I’ve seen her and we’re talking to her. This does not match an incapacitated person. And that’s why we say she’s in a luxury prison, because she is being held and she is being punished for whatever reason that other people are coming up with as to why she has to be kept in this position.”
In a press release last year, Williams’s care team wrote: “Over the past few years, questions have been raised at times about Wendy’s ability to process information and many have speculated about Wendy’s condition, particularly when she began to lose words, act erratically at times, and have difficulty understanding financial transactions.
“The decision to share this news was difficult and made after careful consideration, not only to advocate for understanding and compassion for Wendy, but to raise awareness about aphasia and frontotemporal dementia and support the thousands of others facing similar circumstances,” the release added.
“Unfortunately, many individuals diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia face stigma and misunderstanding, particularly when they begin to exhibit behavioral changes but have not yet received a diagnosis.”
Williams made a rare public appearance to attend her son Kevin Hunter Jr.’s graduation in Florida last month.
The 24-year-old graduate subsequently wrote on Instagram that his mother is “sober” and wants to “come home” since “isolation is killing her faster than anything else.”
