THR takes us inside the end of The Wendy Williams Show
Inside the final days at #TheWendyWilliamsShow
Wendy Williams was one of daytime’s most successful personalities. Then, one day she was gone. Now, insiders reveal for the first time what really happened https://t.co/6j99lTpzj0 pic.twitter.com/vD2n6ZBxBr
- The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) August 17, 2022
• Back in June, The Wendy Williams show went off the air after 13 seasons on the air. Williams was not present for the final episode and in fact hadn't been hosting the show since season 13 launched in September 2021. Instead Sherri Shepherd, who stepped in to guest host and who would be taking over the time slot with her own talk show in September 2022, thanked the show's staff and crew, and also thanked Williams before throwing to a tribute reel for the host.
• The Wendy Williams social media feeds and YouTube channel were deleted and fans were left with questions and concerns about Williams' well being. Now THR has released a long piece on what led to the end of The Wendy Williams Show.
[september 2021 meeting that led to revolving door of guest hosts in season 13]
• The article begins by describing a September 30, 2021 meeting between Williams and Debmar-Mercury co-presidents Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein. Debmar-Mercury was the production company and distributor of The Wendy Williams Show.
• The meeting took place ten days after the season 13 of the show was supposed to premiere, but was pushed back after Williams (who struggles with Graves’ disease) contracted COVID. Marcus and Bernstein were trying to, "assuage the fears of the talk show's 100-person staff," who had been reading about Williams' health struggles in tabloids.
• According to Williams' then-manager Bernie Young, the meeting was organized because, "the staff had questions. So the idea was, 'Look, they haven't seen you or spoken to you, so let's do this for the staff and let everybody know where things are.'"
• Around 50 staffers (some working in person at the studio where the show is taped, others logging in from home) were present for the Zoom call which fell apart quickly after it began. THR states that "multiple people present" said that Williams did not seem like herself and was unable to communicate a clear message. They say that, "her speech quickly became muddled and disconnected," and executives ended the call shortly after it began. A Debmar-Mercury executive quoted in the piece says the meeting was about three minutes long and that staffers, "were sort of freaked out," about it.
• The Debmar-Mercury executive says that Williams told staffers that she would be back in studio very soon but that, "it was obvious to anyone watching that she was not going to be back really soon."
• This section of the article ends with this sentence: "By February, with Williams effectively AWOL, Debmar-Mercury decided it had no choice but to announce that the 13th season of The Wendy Williams Show would be its last."
[2017-2021: personal crisis and health issues]
• The article states that Williams collapsing live on the air during the 2017 Halloween episode of the show was the moment that first sparked fears for her health. Though Williams told her audience that she fainted due to "overheating" in her costume, it was not an isolated incident and her health struggles would "snowball" from there.
• The article goes on to discuss how open Williams would become about her personal life over the next four years of the show. They say that she, "spoke openly and unapologetically about her ongoing struggles with substance abuse...Williams also discussed on the show the demise of her marriage of 20-plus years to Kevin Hunter and the baby he was having with his mistress." On one show in 2019, Williams shared that she was staying at a sober living facility and the article reveals that Debmar-Mercury had paid for a stay at a high end rehab in Florida. Kevin Hunter (who was a producer on the show) was fired in April 2019 and has since filed a wrongful termination suit against Debmar-Mercury.
• Insiders tell THR that Williams was "unraveling" behind the scenes and that everybody on the staff and crew for the show "witnessed all kinds of things." Two sources say that during the four year period from 2017 to 2021, producers sent preshow texts to higher-ups at the company "questioning Williams' sobriety" on "at least 25" separate occasions.
• When this happened the higher-ups would have to make a fast judgement call on whether they could go live at 10 am. Williams would always insist that she was fine to go on.
• The article mentions that some of these texts would get sent to higher-ups on two show days, between taping of the first and second episodes. In those cases executives had time, "to rewatch the [first] hour to see if Williams appeared inebriated." Williams was cleared to go on air by execs "all but one" time. A repeat had to be aired in place of a new episode in spring 2021.
• Another source claims that staffers would, "find bottles [of alcohol] up in the ceiling tiles and other weird places in the office."
• Williams declined to comment on the piece but her spokeswoman Shawn Zanotti offered this statement on the claims that staffers made to THR: "It has been no secret that Wendy has battled with addiction over the years but at this time Wendy is on the road to recovery and healing herself from her chronic illnesses and her grievances of the past.”
• According to multiple sources Williams was "in and out of hospitals and doctors' care" by the summer of 2021 trying to figure out what was causing symptoms like, "nonlinear speech, brain fog, memory loss and even hallucinations."
• Young, Marcus and Bernstein worked to get Williams to top doctors in Manhattan to try and find a diagnosis which could lead to a solution for her health struggles.
• During this time the staff at her show were getting ready to launch season 13. A photoshoot was scheduled for September 2, but the night before the shoot Young informed the crew that Williams was not well enough to make it to the studio. Williams would go on to miss more promotional appearances the following week as well.
• The missed promo appearances along with photos of Williams in hospital booties and rumors that she was being hospitalized surfacing on the internet meant that execs were getting ready to delay the launch of season 13. Due to Williams contracting COVID just a few days before season 13 began airing, execs had about two weeks of time to think about what to do. An hour before the Zoom meeting mentioned at the beginning of the article, the show announced another two-week delay on Instagram with a message that mentioned that Williams was "under a doctor's care."
• According to the article stations which ran the syndicated show all over the country began getting impatient. Marcus says that these stations, "started calling, saying, 'Guys, if you don't [put on new episodes] , we're going to pull it.' So, what could we do? We started saying, 'Let's just do a couple of weeks of guest hosts until she's better.'" Bernstein adds: "For the first four, five, six, eight weeks, we think we're putting a Band-Aid on it and Wendy's coming back."
[guest hosts and the sherri shepherd show]
• Producers knew that they were facing a big hurdle by airing The Wendy Williams Show without Williams, as she had spent decades gaining a loyal audience. Leah Remini was chosen as the first guest host since her reps had reached out to Debmar-Mercury about launching her own talk show earlier that summer. The show had sixteen guest hosts overall, but the article states that "no one popped in the ratings like Sherri Shepherd," who Debmar-Mercury had been close to closing a deal with on a talk show a few years earlier.
• Burstein says that they, "were battling for the life of the show," during this time. They not only had to excite the stations airing the show, but the staff had "effectively produce a new pilot every week, live and in the middle of a pandemic." The hosts were also asked to do something daunting: they had to, "deliver for the Wendy audience, which is vociferous and loyal."
• During this time producers were still waiting on Williams. Her manager, Bernie Young was by her side until Thanksgiving 2021 when Williams went to Florida to be closer to her family (which includes her son, brother, sister and her ex-husband who all declined to comment on this story). Young says that, "things got really fuzzy around that point. Her family wanted to take over and do the things that they wanted to do for her and with her and it's like, 'All right, OK. Look, I don't agree, look at the progress...'" Communication between Young and Williams ended shortly after Thanksgiving. From that point forward Marcus and Bernstein were no longer able to reach her. They say her phone would ring and ring, and it wasn't all that clear whether she still had a cell phone with her at all.
• Back at the show, stations were trying to finalize their fall 2022 schedule (according to the article, these line ups are done a year in advance in syndication). The stations and Debmar-Mercury were all eager for Williams to return and they didn't want to renew the show if she wasn't coming back.
• On February 22, 2022 Debmar-Mercury had an official plan. They would end The Wendy Williams Show after it completed its 13th season in the spring, and in the fall they would launch a new show starring Sherri Shepherd in the same time slot.
• Young had hired a crisis PR specialist for Williams back in September and released a statement in her behalf which claimed that Williams understood the situation and was, "grateful to Debmar-Mercury, to Sherri and everybody else who supported the show through this time." Williams, who launched a new Instagram feed responded to this statement and made it clear that she did not authorize any statements being made on her behalf about the situation.
[post cancellation behavior, legal troubles and new representation]
• After months of radio silence, Marcus and Bernstein heard from Williams again after the announcement that The Wendy Williams Show was being cancelled. According to them, Williams asked why her show was cancelled and Marcus and Bernstein responded that they had pushed off making a decision as long as they could in the hopes that Williams would return.
• They go on to say that Williams asked about pushing her show to 11 am since Shepherd was taking over her original 10 am time slot. Bernstein was open to the idea but told her that she needed to come back. He recalls that he said, "we need to know that you're OK. You can't just call after nine months and say, 'I'm ready.'"
• Apparently the conversation would take place several more times over the next four months. The duo claims that, "Each time, Williams appeared to be having the discussion for the first time."
• Marcus and Bernstein made a point to tell Williams that it was important that a doctor clear her before she returned to TV. "We said, 'Wendy, we need to have a diagnosis from a doctor - whether it's the TV stations or a network or a new producer, anyone who’s going to do business with you, after you didn’t show up for a year, needs to know that you’re OK. [Without that assurance,] no one’s going to risk money or finance things.'”
• Williams has been "either unable or unwilling to present" clearance from a doctor.
• During the course of these conversations, Williams was having other issues. She hired LaShawn Thomas (an attorney with close ties to her ex-husband Kevin Hunter which raised some eyebrows though Thomas claims she only represents Hunter for "entertainment-industry related matters") to represent her in her legal fight against Wells Fargo. The case was sealed, but before that details surfaced that Wells Fargo claimed that Williams was an "incapacitated person" and "the victim of undue influence and financial exploitation." In May, a New York judge appointed a guardian over Williams' finances which was originally supposed to last until July but has apparently been extended. The judge in that case prohibited Thomas from representing Williams in the matter due to "a conflict of interest."
• Williams' former manager, Bernie Young, claims that nobody ever officially fired him and that he found out after reading the news in a tabloid. Williams' current camp refutes this claim. In March, Williams took to Instagram to accuse Young of charing $10,000 to her American Express account without her consent so he could hire a lawyer to, "file a petition against [her]." Young confirms that he spent the money to hire Carolyn Wolf, "a leading mental health lawyer, whose official bio says she 'specializes in guiding families through the complex landscape of legal issues that impact loved ones with serious mental illness and/or substance use issues,'" to protect Williams. Young also refutes claims that he filed a petition to be Williams' guardian.
• Williams has since replaced Young as a manager with William Selby, "a high-end jeweler who says he met the host through a DJ five or six months ago." He says he stepped in to manage Williams after seeing guest hosts take over her show. He tells THR, "Wendy’s a very strong woman, she’s positive and optimistic, so in her head, she’s thinking she’s going to get better and everything’s going to go back to normal. And I was just looking at it from a business standpoint and saying, ‘Hey, it doesn’t look too good, so let’s start thinking about some other options.'” The other options include opening a restaurant and launching a podcast called The Wendy Experience.
• Back in May, Williams began teasing these new ventures on Instagram. This included an IG Live with Fat Joe where she had trouble staying on topic and "declared that she's 'absolutely' going to be back on The Wendy Williams Show. She also appeared on TMZ Live for an interview where she "spoke erratically" and claimed that her lymphedema caused her to lost 95% of feeling in her feet and even lifted her foot up to the camera as proof. Those interviews reportedly left former colleagues "horrified" and the article notes that only Burstein says what others will only say off the record: that the interviews were "total exploitation" of Williams.
• Selby, her new manager, admits that these early interviews were "shaky" and that he's learned that, "trying to muzzle his client is a fool's errand."
• In August Hollywood Unlocked reported that Williams called up its CEO Jason Lee and told him that she'd gotten remarried, this time to an NYPD officer. Selby would walk that claim back and told Page Six that Williams was in a new relationship but was not married. Williams would go on to call Lee back for a follow up and stated that she was married, "even if everyone seems to have a problem with that." Selby still denies these claims.
• Despite this erratic behavior (which also includes photos of her asleep in a Louis Vuitton store and doing interviews out of a car window) causing extreme concern amongst fans, Selby asks fans to have patience with her. "In going through so many things, she's going to have off [moments]. Doesn't mean she's about to die, doesn't mean she's going crazy, it just means maybe she's not feeling well today." Selby also insists that he cares about Williams and that no one in her life is trying to take advantage of her.
[the final episodes]
• Debmar-Mercury had many meetings on how they should end the show. A source says they didn't want the final episode to feel like an "in-memoriam" or like they were mourning, but that planning something celebratory didn't feel right either. One option was to air the final episode without acknowledging the fact that it was the end of the show, but execs decided the best way to honor Williams and her legacy was with a seven minute highlight reel which would be introduced by Shepherd in the middle of the episode.
• Sources tell THR that execs never seriously considered bringing Williams back on air for the final episode. One producer on the show (THR notes that the producer would only speak to them on the condition of anonymity) says, "To put her on as a guest or to do a video message from her would be a disservice to Wendy, who is so much bigger than that." Executives and even stations agreed that she was in no position to appear on television. Williams and her ex-husband both expressed their anger at the choice with Williams saying the finale was "ick" and her ex-husband saying her absence was "a travesty")
• The team was also considering Shepherd when they made their decision and thought that having Williams return, "would have been incredibly awkward. It would have stolen the spotlight and, at this point, our chips are all on Sherri." Shepherd was being unfairly blamed by fans for a myriad of reasons (with many claiming that she had stolen Williams' show), and would go on to face more misplaced blame when Debmar-Mercury decided to delete The Wendy Williams Show's YouTube channel and shut down its social media accounts.
• Marcus tells THR, "it honestly wouldn't have mattered who we chose, because it isn't actually about Sherri, except now she's taking the brunt and she shouldn't."
• Marcus says that the day before the final show, Williams called him after watching a promo on Fox and that she asked him, "'Wait a minute, what do you mean it's cancelled? What are you talking about?'" Marcus says that he had had this conversation with her before, and Selby claims that this time it was due to the fact that Williams didn't think the show was actually ending. He says, "no matter how many people could have told her...she's thinking 'I'll be ready in a week and I'm coming to shoot.' So, it kind of happened all of a sudden for her, even though it was unraveling before her eyes."
• On June 17, Williams watched the final episode of her show as it aired live at 10 am. When Shepherd introduced the highlight reel the entire audience rose to their feet and chanted her name. When the show ended, the staff held a small party in the studio. Many of the people still working at the show had been with it since the beginning, so speeches were given and toasts were made. Marcus and Bernstein both remember how emotional they were as they thanked the staff for "hanging in there" as many staff members and even Debmar-Mercury started their careers with the show.
• A Debmar-Mercury vice president says that in her thirty years of working in daytime TV, Williams was lightning in a bottle and that "doesn't come through very often." She ends her thought by saying, "I can speak for everybody in saying that we all feel so lucky to have been along for the ride. So, yeah, the final show was really hard, and it was really hard, to a large degree, because Wendy wasn't there."
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