Wendy Williams Gives Lucid Interview Begging for Her Freedom

Wendy Williams, the legendary talk show host and entertainer, is being forcibly confined to the dementia unit of an assisted living facility under the terms of a restrictive conservatorship, despite being just 60 and appearing in full control of her mind in a new documentary.

She was initially placed in a financial conservatorship after her son allegedly accessed her bank accounts and spent her money.

However the financial conservatorship was then extended to cover her health and personal life after a judge declared she had irreversible dementia and aphasia.

Her allies argue that this was a misdiagnosis based on the fact that she was an active alcoholic at the time of the hearing, and was consuming vast quantities of booze, as seen in a 2024 documentary which horrified her fans when it was screened.

Incredibly, the judge used as part of their evidence for the finding that she was suffering from aphasia the fact that the famously effervescent Williams often used the phrase, “Do you know what I mean?” instead of accurately describing how she was feeling. Her supporters say this is patently absurd as Williams was famous for the vocal tick, “Do you know what I’m saying?” along with her meme-worthy catchphrase, “How you doin’?”

Now sober, she is seen in the new film, TMZ Presents: Saving Wendy, which is on Tubi, holding forth in her signature style on matters ranging from Taylor Swift to Donald Trump. She is not considered a danger to herself or others.

The hashtag #FreeWendy is now trending on social media, much as #FreeBritney did from 2019-2021.

Williams has been locked in the New York City facility, with no access to an iPad or computer, for at least six months, according to the new TMZ documentary. She has a landline—via which the interview with TMZ was conducted as she stood behind a window in her room—but no smartphone.

She can leave her room, but not her floor. She is not allowed outside or to use an onsite gym. Visitors can only come by arrangement with her guardian, which is such a complex procedure that she has had almost no visitors. In the 30 days before the documentary was filmed she only left the unit twice, for trips to the dentist.

Her niece, Alex Finnie, who is battling to get her released from the conservatorship, says she was tricked into believing she would be living in an apartment but is in fact spending 24 hours a day into a “glorified hotel room.”

Williams was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, which is a progressive and incurable disease. However a neurologist is quoted as saying the disease has significant overlap with alcohol-induced dementia, a condition from which the brain can recover if the subject stops drinking.

Her friends and supporters, who include Finnie, TMZ’s Harvey Levin, who conducted the interview, and former TV colleague Rosanna Scotto believe that is what has happened to Williams. They say that if Williams really did have frontotemporal dementia, it would be getting worse not better.

To make the point, Levin at one stage asks Williams “to talk about things you would have talked about on your television show.”

Asked, “What do you think of Trump becoming president again?” Williams replies: “Good for him. Take the four years and then can we start over with a younger president. I’m talking about somebody in their 50s? You know what I’m saying?”

Williams then added: “I first met him at a movie in New York, and it turns out that I sat to the right of Donald Trump, like, literally next to him. And so we got in conversation, and I had some candy, you know, and I’m saying ‘I love Werther’s Originals, and I love Jolly Ranchers.’ That’s the first time that I met him, the second time that I met him, he actually came to the show. You know what I’m saying?”

She then holds forth on Jennifer Lopez, quipping: “What a good girl, until she’s not. And right now, it’s the knock time for Jennifer Lopez, sorry, not sorry.”

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce also get the Williams treatment, which segues into a discussion about cheating, where Williams reduces Levin to tears of laughter by declaring that in her own marriage, “I cheated, but I cheated up.”

In other, more heartbreaking scenes, Williams is seen crying at the window she is being filmed through as she says: “Where I am is this place where the people are older. You know what I’m saying? They are in their 90s. In their 80s. They call this the memory unit. I am part of the memory unit, a memory unit! In other words, somebody who doesn’t remember c--p? Are you serious? This is my life. You know what I’m saying?

“The memory unit is suffocating. I mean, like I literally, I eat lunch and dinner in my bedroom. I don’t eat out there with the people that live here, just because it’s so goddamn depressing. There’s a bathroom, there’s a closet and the TV, which was purchased by me through the guardian person.”

Asked, “Are you allowed to go out?” she replies, “No, no, I am not allowed to go out. I can call you, but you can’t call me.”

“Can you take the elevator down to the lobby on your own?” No, no, no, no, because somebody has to have the keys to open it, open the door, press the bell to go downstairs or upstairs. You understand what I’m saying? I want my life back.”

Williams fronted her eponymous talk show from 2008 to 2021, winning multiple awards in the process.

The documentary concludes on a potentially hopeful note, that Williams’ guardian is now allowing her to have “a medical re-evaluation of her condition” although the guardian said they “doubt the diagnosis will change.”