“Where is Wendy Williams?” shocked viewers this weekend when it aired on Lifetime, with several scenes of the former daytime talk show host in an erratic emotional state as she faced physical and cognitive health problems.
Mark Ford and Erica Hanson, executive producers for the documentary, said they were similarly surprised and concerned with their findings over the eight months of filming. In producing the 4½-hour special, they were presented with the challenge of portraying Williams’s life in an honest and sensitive way while unaware of her dementia diagnosis. Williams’s care team recently announced that she was diagnosed last year with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which can impair communication skills.
“It was a labor of love for us to tell Wendy’s story with dignity and responsibility,” Hanson said.
Even now, with the knowledge of her diagnosis, the producers said in a Tuesday interview with The Washington Post that they stand by their decision to air Williams’s discomforting moments, hoping it will spark conversations about guardianships.
The response has been overwhelming, [with] an incredible amount of polarizing opinions. We always knew it would be. But we think it’s raising an incredibly important topic, which is what can happen to someone when they’re placed under a guardianship outside of their family’s purview.
We spoke to the family before the documentary and after it aired. And they’re, of course, overwhelmed by the amount of support and commentary. But they were and remain really supportive of the topic.
We know that there are times that it’s hard to watch. It can be painful and sad, and it was that way filming, too. But to be able to shed light on the reality of Wendy’s life during that period of time under the guardianship was so important to us. And it’s been really interesting to see viewers have that same kind of reaction of empathy and understanding.
Initially, it was the continuation of the documentary that we did with her, “Wendy Williams: What a Mess!” It was just intended to pick up the story where that left off and follow Wendy [as she] gets her career back on a trajectory and gets back in the public eye via a podcast. It became apparent over the months of filming that she wasn’t going to be in a place to launch a podcast. The story was revealing itself as something else. We had no choice but to keep going towards this truth.
In the film, you can see the filmmakers wrestling with a lot of [unanswered] questions and concerns. We wanted to understand why Wendy was alone in this New York apartment, kind of on her own volition without a lot of care, without a lot of food in the fridge, and access to alcohol. Why was this happening, and why was the family not a part of this? As we got into filming, the family’s point of view became front and center.
I was drawn to this story originally [because] Wendy is