Wendy Williams Breaks Silence on Claims of Cognitive Impairment: 'I Feel Like I'm in Prison'
Wendy Williams just dropped a series of bombshell claims about her conservatorship.
The former talk show host and her niece, Alex, called into Power 105.1's The Breakfast Club, hosted by DJ Envy, Charlamagne tha God and Jess Hilarious, on Thursday, Jan. 16, where she broke her silence on her court-mandated guardianship, comparing her life to a "prison" these days.
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Williams was first placed under financial guardianship in 2022 when her financial advisor claimed she wasn't of "sound mind." Her bank froze her accounts out of fear that her reported cognitive issues would leave her susceptible to exploitation.
She was later diagnosed with dementia and aphasia, the latter of which affects a person's ability to communicate. In November 2024, her guardian's attorney filed documents in court claiming Williams was "cognitively impaired, permanently disabled, and incapacitated."
“Do I seem that way, God damn it?” Williams countered while calling into the radio show, declaring, “I am not cognitively impaired."
"But I feel like I’m in prison,” she described, referencing the New York City care facility she's reportedly been living in since 2023. “I’m in this place where the people are in their 90s and their 80s and their 70s…There’s something wrong with these people here on this floor,” she said, not unkindly, but rather to emphasize that they require medical attention which she feels she does not.
Alex compared the facility to a "luxury prison," describing the small "apartment" with a singular window in which Williams lives. While Williams can reportedly call her family, they cannot contact her directly, and the media personality claimed she is denied internet access. There is also a high-level security presence that makes it difficult for family members to visit and impossible for Williams to go anywhere.
Williams also countered claims in a lawsuit filed by her guardian, Sabrina E. Morrissey, in an attempt to put a stop to A&E and Lifetime's docuseries about her. While Morrissey claimed the project was exploitative, Williams says it was her idea in the first place.
"Look, this system is broken, this system that I’m in. This system has falsified a lot,” she emphasized. "Who I naturally am is who I naturally am."
Parade has reached out to Williams' representative for comment.