With the release of the Lifetime docuseries, Where Is Wendy Williams?, concerned fans and the media were shocked to learn about the radio and television icon’s struggles with alcohol-induced dementia and aphasia.
After months of public speculation about her health and well-being, her placement under legal guardianship, and the cancellation of The Wendy Williams Show, Wendy Williams’s care team released a statement detailing Williams’s diagnosis just days before the documentary aired on February 24, 2024.
“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,” her team said.
Wendy Williams’s Diagnosis: Primary Progressive Aphasia and Frontotemporal Dementia
“In 2023, after undergoing a battery of medical tests, Wendy was officially diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD),” Williams’s team said. “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 [these conditions].”
What is Frontotemporal Dementia?
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, frontotemporal dementia is a neurological disorder that causes deterioration in behavior, personality, and communication. There are two major forms of frontotemporal dementia: behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and primary progressive aphasia (PPA).
Behavioral variant FTD is typically associated with significant changes in one’s personality and behavior due to nerve cell loss in areas of the brain that control judgment, empathy, and other abilities and behaviors.
Primary progressive aphasia affects a person’s communication skills, particularly speaking, writing, and comprehension. People with PPA may struggle to understand or articulate sentences, or their speaking may be broken, labored, or incomprehensible.
Signs of FTD and PPA typically begin to occur in people in their 50s and 60s, but these conditions may develop earlier or later in life, though they are rare nonetheless. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that 50,000 to 60,000 people in the United States live with frontotemporal dementia and primary progressive aphasia, most of whom are between the ages of 45 and 65.
Williams’s Other Health Issues, Battles with Addiction
In recent years, Williams has been open with the public about her struggles with lymphedema and hyperthyroidism caused by Graves’ Disease, which led to a brief hiatus from The Wendy Williams Show in February 2018.
Williams has also been candid with fans and the media about battling cocaine addiction and alcoholism over the years. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the radio host used cocaine to stay awake during late nights and early mornings on the air.
In her 2021 Lifetime documentary, Wendy Williams: What a Mess!, Williams credits her ex-husband for helping her get clean from cocaine. Though she did not seek professional treatment for her drug addiction, she revealed on The Wendy Williams Show in March 2019 that she had been in treatment for alcohol addiction and was living in a sober home.
Filming Where Is Wendy Williams? Before and After Alcohol-Induced Dementia Diagnosis
In August 2022, Williams entered a “wellness facility, seeking help to manage her overall health issues,” her publicist Shawn Zanotti said in a statement. Before Williams entered treatment, Where Is Wendy Williams? had begun filming, and upon her return home in October, filming resumed.
Lifetime executives told the Associated Press that producers and crew did not know about Williams’s frontotemporal dementia and aphasia diagnosis until her son Kevin Hunter Jr. told producers when they visited him in Miami, Florida in April 2024.
“I think they said it was alcohol-induced dementia,” Hunter Jr. said in the docuseries. “[Her doctors] said that because she was drinking so much, it was starting to affect her headspace and her brain,” Hunter Jr. said.
Throughout Where Is Wendy Williams?, the TV and radio personality shuts down the conversation at any mention of alcohol or suggestion that she has a problem, despite openly admitting how much she enjoys drinking in the first episode.
The documentary features numerous scenes of Williams confused, unsteady on her feet, and belligerent, with her manager finding liquor bottles stashed around her New York apartment.
Return to Treatment in 2023
After learning about Williams’s diagnosis from her son, producers left Miami and returned to New York, where they found Williams in her bed crying, seemingly drunk, and stopped filming altogether. Shortly after, Williams was placed in a treatment facility for her alcohol addiction through her guardianship.
“The only thing that we care about at Lifetime is that she had a platform to tell her story and that we feel we did so responsibly, and that she gets well and hopefully gets to be with her family,” said Brie Bryant, Lifetime’s senior vice president of non-scripted programming. Lifetime currently has no plans to continue filming with the former talk show host.
According to her niece and goddaughter Alex Finnie, Williams has remained in treatment since April 2023. In an interview on Good Morning America, Finnie said that the family has heard from Williams during treatment and that she sounds “much better.”
“Wendy is still able to do many things for herself,” Williams’s team said. “Most importantly she maintains her trademark sense of humor and is receiving the care she requires to make sure she is protected and that her needs are addressed.”
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