The first part of Lifetime’s ‘Where Is Wendy Williams?’ documentary aired on Saturday night and it was a truly heartbreaking watch.
The documentary — which was filmed between August 2022 and April 2023 — is broken down into four episodes. The cameras captured not only Wendy’s after-show journey, but also her battles with alcohol and health issues.
Read below for the biggest takeaways from the first two episodes via People:
Wendy addresses her alcohol abuse: ‘I love vodka’
In the first episode of the documentary, Williams candidly states: “I love vodka.” She adds that her sister Wanda “hates that I love alcohol” and her son, Kevin Hunter Jr., 23, “hates liquor.”
In the scenes shot during the documentary’s start in August 2022, Williams appears to be drunk, and she enters a wellness facility a month later.
After a two month stay at the facility, Williams resumes filming. She’s shown a clip where she’s drunk, and after producers ask her thoughts, she starts crying, only to reveal moments later that her tears are because of her outfit and wig choices.
In the second episode, Wendy’s manager and jeweler Will Selby finds a mostly empty bottle of vodka in her home and asks Williams if she had a liquor lunch, to which she replies, “F— you.”
“I need help,” Selby admits. “I can’t do this alone.”
Alex says she’s fearfully googled Williams’ name every day for a year and a half, scared she’ll find something we “can’t come back from.”
At several points, Williams attempts to order an alcoholic drink while out to dinner, and each time Selby intercepts by telling the waiter to give her a mocktail instead. Selby says he’s found bottles in Williams’ bathroom cabinets and in closets.
Asked why she likes to drink, Williams states: “Because I can. Just because I care for it.”
When Williams was in Florida with her family, Kevin Jr. says he kept her sober, had her eating a vegan diet and working with a trainer.
“I helped her heal by one, eliminating all alcohol, [and two] keeping her occupied, whether it’s going to the beach, working out,” he says.
“I feel like her being down here with family was the best situation for her because she wasn’t able to self-sabotage,” he adds. “If there should ever be someone who should help her manage that, it should be the ones around her, her loved ones, her family.”
At the end of episode two, Kevin Jr. says he’s afraid his mom “could die” without the right help.
Wendy says she can only feel about “6 percent” of each foot due to her lymphedema
Williams starts crying as she mentions her lymphedema, which her family says she was diagnosed with in 2019. She says that she “should be in a wheelchair.”
During a workout with Selby’s friend, Williams tells him “no thank you” three times as he tries to get her to do an exercise. She says she can only feel about “6 percent” of each foot, which are swollen due to her lymphedema.
Along with lymphedema, Williams has long had Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disorder that can cause bulging eyes.
Wendy’s manager Will Selby says he’s noticed her become “more aggressive”
Selby says in the first episode he’s noticed Williams has become “more aggressive, demanding … [but she’s] one of the biggest personalities we’ve seen in quite some time.”
“Wendy being pissed off is normal,” Selby adds. “She changes her mind all the time.”
That’s clear in a scene where Williams gets her nails done. Shortly after the nail tech puts polish on her, she tells her to remove it all.
At one point, Williams calls her publicist Shawn Zanotti a “dumbass” and tells her that she needs liposuction. Zanotti brushes off the comments and says that she has a thick skin.
For Williams’ nephew Travis Finnie, he says he’s noticed a change in Williams over the past 10 years. While living with Williams while he was in college, he says she would take her vape pen and a bottle of liquor and they wouldn’t see her until 5 a.m. when it was time for her to go to work on The Wendy Williams Show.
“I just knew she had a problem,” he says.
Wendy says she would get high five days a week in the 90s
In the first episode, Williams says she would get high “like five days” a week in the 90s, as she rose to fame as a radio shock jock. “I wanted to experience everything,” she says of why she did drugs.
After meeting her now ex-husband Kevin Hunter, 52, Williams says she stopped doing drugs because she “wanted to have a baby.”
After two miscarriages, Williams and Hunter welcomed their son in 2000.
“My son Kevin is very important to me,” Williams says through tears.
Wendy says she doesn’t “care” about the baby her ex-husband Kevin Hunter had during an affair
Williams filed for divorce from Hunter, 52, after 21 years of marriage in April 2019, when it was revealed that he’d had a baby with another woman.
“I don’t care about him or that baby,” Williams states.
Though Travis says he wasn’t “the biggest fan” of Hunter, he credits him for making sure Williams showed up on time to work.
DJ Boof says he found Wendy unresponsive in 2020
After Williams’ divorce, her show deejay DJ Boof says he replaced Hunter as her “protector.”
When the COVID shutdown began in March 2020, Williams did several virtual episodes of her talk show with Boof but was largely isolated in her luxury New York City apartment. He would hold up cue cards for her, but he says there were “times she showed no emotion.”
“This is not COVID doing this,” Boof recalls thinking. “[It’s the] damage of using alcohol for so long … I got to see the lowest of lows.”
In May 2020, Boof says he found her unresponsive at home and she was rushed to the hospital, where she needed several blood transfusions.
“She just wasn’t the same person anymore,” Boof says.
Wendy’s son Kevin Jr. responds to scrutiny he spent her money
In early 2022 Wells Fargo froze Williams’ accounts after her financial adviser at the time alleged that she was of “unsound mind,” according to Williams’s court filings. The bank successfully petitioned a New York court to have Williams placed under a temporary financial guardianship.
Kevin Jr. came under scrutiny for his spending but strongly denies in the documentary that he exploited her: “I’ve never taken [money] without her consent.”
“I’ve always spoken to her, and she’s always wanted me to spend her — let’s spend her money,” he says. “She’s always told me, like, ‘Kevin, if you ever need something or whatever, just ask me, and, like, you know, it could happen.’ She would always communicate with me.”
Williams herself says at one point: “I’m luxurious and gorgeous, and I care for my family.”
Wendy wants to be back on TV
After the Wendy Williams Show was cancelled in June 2022, Alex says it took months for it to sink in for Williams.
In the second episode, Williams cries on the steps of her childhood home in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and tells Selby, “I really want to be back on television.”
“She’s overcome a lot,” Selby says. “She’s still in this fight.”
The final two episodes of Where Is Wendy Williams? will air on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.
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