Did the filmmakers behind the Where Is Wendy Williams? docuseries purposely try to exploit the TV star?
That question is at the heart of a civil lawsuit filed by Wendy Williams’s court-ordered guardian, Sabrina Morrissey against Lifetime and the production companies involved in the four-part series, which came out in February. Morrissey has been overseeing the TV host’s care since May 2022, after her bank deemed her an “incapacitated person” in need of a guardianship.
In the case’s latest court filings, obtained by Yahoo Entertainment, it’s revealed by Williams’s legal team that the Wendy Williams Show host has become “permanently disabled and incapacitated” amid her dementia diagnosis.
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The argument made on Williams’s behalf is that the filmmakers — who shot the doc between August 2022 and April 2023 — were “fully aware” that Williams was incapacitated and “nonetheless sought to film and exploit [her] cognitive and physical decline … for their own financial gain.” The series, for which Williams was also a producer, looked at her life after her daytime talk show was canceled in February 2022.
The defense’s legal team, which has filed a counterclaim against Morrissey, said they didn’t know Williams had dementia, which was officially made public in February. They point fault at Morrissey, claiming that she “isolated” Williams from her family, a topic that was part of the narrative of the docuseries, and “[failed] to protect” her client.
What’s the lawsuit about?
Williams’s guardian first filed a lawsuit against A&E Networks, the parent company of Lifetime, and Entertainment One Reality Productions, on Feb. 22 to halt the “blatant exploitation of a vulnerable woman” in the four-and-a-half-hour documentary that was set to premiere two days later. Executive producers Mark Ford and Erica Hanson said the docuseries was showing Williams’s experience in a guardianship, and how she was detached from her family and living alone — with access to alcohol, amid her addiction recovery, and no food.
While a New York judge initially granted a temporary order to halt the airing of Where Is Wendy Williams?, it was reversed on appeal, with the judge citing the First Amendment, and aired as scheduled.
In September, Morrissey refiled her lawsuit, adding defendants Lifetime Entertainment Services, Creature Films and the producer, Ford. In addition to exploitation claims, it alleged that there was “no evidence” Williams had signed the contract to film the project, and that Williams had only been paid $82,000 for the docuseries, while the network made “millions.”
What are the latest developments in the case?
Morrissey’s legal team wrote in a Nov. 15 filing that filmmakers “deliberately and cruelly took advantage of [Williams’s] cognitive and physical decline by” filming the project when she “was highly vulnerable and clearly incapable of consenting to be filmed.” They claimed “defendants were fully aware at all relevant times that [Williams] was incapacitated,” as her health problems were in the news in 2021 and it had been widely reported in 2022 that a temporary guardian had been appointed by a court to manage Williams’s affairs.
The docuseries depicts Williams “in a humiliating and degrading manner,” Morrissey’s legal team wrote. “It opens with [her] stating ‘I love vodka!’ after being pressed about alleged alcohol abuse by the Defendants. Shortly thereafter … [Williams] states she is glad that she can ‘show my boobs’ and then pulls down the front of her top, grabs her nipples, and gives the middle finger. The remainder of the four-hour Program does not improve.”
Morrissey’s attorneys questioned the validity of her contract for the project, saying that the signature presented does not appear to be Williams’s. They argued that while Williams was touted as an executive producer of the project, she did none of the work that an EP should do, and had not approved the film. They also claimed filmmakers didn’t get Morrissey’s consent for Williams to be filmed and that Morrissey didn’t know about a talent agreement “until March 2023, seven months after the start of filming.” When Morrissey told producers that Williams was in no position to be filmed, they “provided assurances that [Williams] would be shown in a positive light.”
In response, lawyers for the network and filmmakers said the documentary “was conceived of with [Williams’s] consent, input, and participation, well before she was diagnosed with any form of dementia and before she had a guardian with any authority over her professional contractual obligations.” They denied Williams was paid $82,000, saying she was “generously compensated” $400,000. They also said Morrissey was “aware” of the talent agreement and “took no step to stop [it] from being executed.”
The defense said the case stems from Morrissey’s own “misguided efforts … to excuse her own failure to protect her ward.”
What did we learn about Williams’s health in the filings?
Morrissey’s legal team says Williams — who was officially diagnosed with dementia in 2023 and resides in an in-patient treatment facility — “has become cognitively impaired, permanently disabled, and incapacitated” due to the dementia.
The lawyers said producers “intentionally manipulated and goaded” Williams — who is “unable to effectively self-regulate her emotions due to her dementia” — during on-camera interviews “to trigger strong emotional reactions and acquire embarrassing footage.”
What happened in Where Is Wendy Williams?
The docuseries was supposed to update fans on what had happened to the TV star — who didn’t host the final season of her eponymous talk show, leading to its cancellation in June 2022 — amid a comeback. Leading up to it, there had been nonstop headlines about Williams’s divorce, vague stories about treatments in “wellness centers” and Williams being put into a guardianship in 2022 after her wealth manager at Wells Fargo deemed her an “incapacitated person.”
However, the documentary turned out to be a sad look at Williams’s post-show life, and a Variety review, calling it “unsettling and exploitative,” noted, “it’s clear that something is very wrong” with Williams. It was shot over seven months, when the star was living alone. Bottles of alcohol were hidden around her apartment (even in her bed), and she was clearly confused and exhibited slurred speech. However, Williams’s team took the incoherent star to business meetings and she talked about her comeback.
In the docuseries, Williams’s son revealed that she was diagnosed with alcohol-induced dementia, but she continued to drink. The timetable of that initial diagnosis was vague.
Williams was moved into an in-patient treatment center in April 2023, ending the filming of the docuseries. In February 2024, her guardian announced Williams had officially been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in 2023.
Williams’s sister Wanda Finnie, an attorney, told People in February that she had been asked to serve as the star’s guardian at one point. However, after she said yes, “the wall came down,” and she was shut out. The family has complained of having limited access to Williams due to the court-ordered guardianship.
Where Is Wendy Williams? reportedly drew over 6 million viewers on the weekend of its debut. Lifetime described it as the biggest nonfiction debut in two years.
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