Where has Wendy Williams been, and will she ever return to her throne as the gossip queen of New York City?
Wendy Williams is an American media personality and writer best known for her sharp tongue and fearless gossip broadcasting in the early 2000s. She first began her career as a radio DJ and host in New York City, where she built a reputation for her biting and unfiltered takes on the tabloids of the day — sparking controversy with every read. Her 2003 interview with Whitney Houston remains one of her most infamous moments and proved again that she wasn’t afraid to go there when the story demanded it.
In 2008, Williams was presented with the offer to debut her own daytime talk show, The Wendy Williams Show. After a successful trial, the show premiered nationally on Fox in July 2009 and averaged 2.4 million daily viewers, with Williams often competing with Ellen DeGeneres as the number one female daytime television host.
In 2017, Williams went viral after fainting live during a Halloween broadcast — an incident she later attributed to dehydration. The following year, she revealed that she developed lymphedema and was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, which causes hyperthyroidism. Williams also opened up about her lifetime struggle with substance abuse and addiction, disclosing in 2019 that she had been living in a sober house.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, production of her show halted. She returned that fall but departed again in mid-2021, citing further health concerns. In her stead, the show saw a revolving door of guest hosts, and by 2022, The Wendy Williams Show concluded after a 13-year run.
In early 2022, Wells Fargo froze her bank accounts and petitioned a New York court to appoint a financial guardian, claiming she was no longer capable of managing her own financial affairs and was at risk of exploitation.
Following hearings, attorney Sabrina Morrissey was appointed as her permanent guardian, controlling both her financial and health decisions. Williams was initially content with the arrangement, telling The View in a 2025 phone call interview that she believed it would “keep [her] money safe.”
In February of 2024, Lifetime released a four-part documentary series titled Where is Wendy Williams? cataloguing her erratic behavior, confusion and isolation. Around the same time, her guardian disclosed that Williams had been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia.
Since late 2024, Williams has reportedly lived on the locked memory-care floor of The Coterie, an assisted living facility in Hudson Yards. New York Magazine quoted a close friend of Williams, who called it “the place billionaires send their grandmas to die.” The facility costs about $25,000 to $26,000 per month, contributing to the sale of her $4.5 million apartment.
According to those close to Williams, she has no cell phone access, can only make outgoing calls and can only leave or receive visitors with guardian approval. On The Breakfast Club podcast in early 2025, Williams described her floor as “prison-like” and added that her cats had been taken away from her leaving her completely alone.
In August 2024, Williams formally requested to terminate the guardianship. Instead, the court made it indefinite after the judge noted that her aphasia had worsened and her condition had left her unable to protect herself from exploitation.
In March of this year, small protests formed outside The Coterie in New York City, demanding transparency within Wendy’s guardianship, ratifying the online “Free Wendy” movement, modeled in part after the “Free Britney” movement that was successful in freeing Britney Spears’ from her conservatorship.
Recent sightings show her attending New York Fashion Week and dining out in Manhattan with friends; these outings are a hopeful sign to fans, though her legal situation remains unchanged. The “Free Wendy” movement remains small, but it persists and grows thanks to Williams’ longtime supporters, who hope she will one day regain her independence and control of her life.