Lifetime’s new docu-series “Where is Wendy Williams?” debuted two days after her care team released a statement saying she has been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia. Its two episodes aired after attorneys for Lifetime successfully fended off an effort by Williams’ guardian to stop the broadcasts.
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00:00 You might be the center of attention and having people wonder.
00:03 I demand. Six years old. That's all I wanted.
00:06 The center of attention. Six years old.
00:09 Well, you got it.
00:11 Of course. And I always will.
00:14 We started out with a very different idea of what we were going to do.
00:17 We thought we were going to film Wendy, you know, a woman who's 58 after...
00:23 at a real turning point in her life.
00:25 You know, we thought we would film her embarking on a new career with podcasts.
00:31 We were doing a podcast, perhaps finding, you know, after recovering from a very difficult divorce.
00:36 All these things, sort of the next chapter of a middle-aged woman and what that would look like.
00:42 And once we started filming, it really went into a very different direction.
00:46 And we did not know at all that she had dementia.
00:52 [Music]
00:54 [Music]
01:23 Why can't you access your money right now? That seems really unfair.
01:27 I have no idea.
01:28 One judge and three doctors say, "My money is still stuck at Wells Fargo.
01:37 And I'm going to tell you something. If it happens to me, it could happen to you."
01:41 In the meantime, I have no money.
01:44 The timeline that the viewer experienced is a little bit different than ours
01:48 because there was a diagnosis that was announced prior to the airing of the doc.
01:54 It wasn't the experience of any of us as producers as we went into it.
01:58 I'm just trying to understand, like, what, you pay her and she's your friend?
02:02 I pay her.
02:03 Okay.
02:04 Because I'll be honest with you.
02:07 It's no secret that there have been random people around you,
02:13 getting money, getting paid, whatever the case may be.
02:16 Stealing money from me.
02:17 I'm just trying to figure out, your friends, that you're saying is your friend, that you're also paying.
02:22 I was so concerned she would fall down those stairs.
02:25 And for numerous different reasons, whether it's the lymphedema or the alcohol.
02:30 I think we realized that we were shedding a light on the reality of what it was like for her
02:38 to live in this period of time in her life where she was under a guardianship.
02:44 She, and how that looked.
02:47 These filmmakers were embedded with Wendy for over a year.
02:50 And, you know, on and off, these filmmakers became advocates, you know,
02:55 pushing Wendy's management to go to the Guardian and get her put into someplace
03:02 where she could be taken care of in the right way.
03:04 I think that she's just, right now, she's weak and vulnerable.
03:08 And she needs to be around people who aren't going to take advantage of that.
03:10 I've talked to her a lot about her staying in Florida and how much it would benefit her,
03:16 where she can't harm herself.
03:18 When she's in New York, I think in the back of her mind,
03:20 she knows she'll be able to still drink up there and do things that she shouldn't.
03:25 I feel like my mom should never be by herself or alone.
03:28 I think we're encouraged to see that people are understanding now more about
03:34 what these guardianships are and can be, and what can happen to a family member
03:40 when they're placed into a guardianship and removed from the care, you know,
03:44 and communication of their family and their loved ones.
03:48 And this was an incredibly emotional journey to watch, but also for us to make, you know.
03:56 And so we hope that people can see why we aired it, you know, and produced it,
04:03 and that the intention is to shine a light on, you know, the difficulties
04:09 and the secrecies, you know, in these guardianships.
04:13 You had people in the family from the beginning saying that we would take responsibility
04:18 with regard to guardianship and personal needs to ensure that she was healthy and taken care of.
04:25 I'm not talking about her money. You put money over here.
04:29 There are people in this family that care more about the well-being of my sister than anyone.
04:38 All I want is for my sister to be healthy.