Wendy Williams is signaling that she’s ready to return to daytime television nearly four years after she took a leave of absence from The Wendy Williams Show.
The 60-year-old talk show host will be making her first national television appearance since her shocking dementia diagnosis, ABC revealed on Sunday.
Williams will be joining the ladies of The View on Friday, March 14, even as she wages a legal battle to end her guardianship.
Wendy has lately made attempts to speak out via phone from her ᴀssisted-living facility, where she has been kept on a restrictive memory unit that gives her few privileges and little right of movement.
However, she got a rare breath of fresh air last month when her guardianship and the facility allowed her to fly to Miami to celebrate her father’s 94th birthday for a few days.
Although Williams will be back on TV, it’s unclear if viewers will get to see her live, as ABC’s announcement indicates that she will be doing a phone interview with the View hosts, who include Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin, Ana Navarro and Alyssa Farah Griffin.
Wendy Williams, 60, will be making her first national television appearance since her shocking dementia diagnosis, ABC revealed on Sunday; seen in 2019 in NYC
Williams will be joining the ladies of The View on Friday, March 14, even as she wages a legal battle to end her years-long guardianship; (L–R) Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Whoopi Goldberg, Alyssa Farah Griffin and Sunny Hostin pictured in May 2024
However, Wendy has recently been seen live in some phone interviews, as she has conducted them while standing against the window to her room at the ᴀssisted-living facility, which has allowed a camera to catch her reactions in real time.
According to The View’s schedule, Wendy’s phone interview will also feature Ginalisa Monterroso, the founder and president of Connect Care Advisory Group.
In its schedule announcement, ABC boasted that The View is ‘America’s most-watched daytime talk show for the fifth consecutive season.
Read More Wendy Williams’ producer breaks silence on their ‘first call in years’ as she slams guardianship
The long-running show, now in its 28th season, has had a rotating line up female hosts over the years.
Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Sunny Hostin and Joy Behar — the only holdover from the original lineup — currently host the talk show.
Back in 2022, Williams was placed under a court-appointed guardianship after Wells Fargo reported several large withdrawals from her bank account that it deemed suspicious.
She was then placed under a court-appointed guardianship, which took control of her finances and her medical decisions, with Sabrina Morrissey acting as her guardian.
After Williams was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and aphasia in February 2024, Morrissey later said the gossip monger was ‘cognitively impaired and permanently incapacitated.’
Although Williams will be back on TV, it’s unclear if viewers will get to see her live, as ABC’s announcement indicates that she will be doing a phone interview with the View hosts; pictured in 2023
Back in 2022, Williams was placed under a court-appointed guardianship after Wells Fargo reported several large withdrawals from her bank account that it deemed suspicious
Her guardianship is overseen by Sabrina Morrissey (pictured). After Williams was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and aphasia in February 2024, Morrissey later said the gossip monger was ‘cognitively impaired and permanently incapacitated’
But in recent months, a seemingly lucid Wendy has been disputing that she’s impaired and begging to regain her freedom.
Last month, TMZ reported on the circumstances in which Wendy was allegedly moved to a more restrictive part of her ᴀssisted-living facility, which may have contributed to her lack of trips outside of the building.
According to an employee who is described as having had many interactions with Wendy since her arrival, she initially was given a room on the building’s third floor, where residents are allowed to come and go as they please.
However, things went south early on in her tenure when she went up to the restaurant and bar located on the facility’s top floor for an extended lunch.
According to the employee, Wendy ordered several alcoholic drinks and was noticeably drunk for a significant amount of time.
The facility supervisors allegedly learned of the drunken escapade and were upset that she was served, as she has reportedly had issues with problem drinking in the past.
In response to the drunken lunch, Wendy was allegedly relocated to a new room on the memory unit on the facility’s fifth floor.
Because many of the occupants there suffer from dementia and other memory issues, they aren’t able to use the elevator on their own.
Wendy signed an affidavit last month in which she asked the judge overseeing her guardianship case to end the arrangement, TMZ reports; seen in 2019 in NYC
The new location meant Wendy was prohibited from going up to the restaurant and drinking, though it’s unclear if she is not supposed to leave the floor at all or if she can venture out with someone supervising.
However, there was a hiccup with the reᴀssignment, as the memory unit didn’t have any open rooms, so Wendy was allegedly forced to stay in her third-floor room while employees guarded the door and prevented her from leaving.
According to the insider, employees at the facility lied to the talk show host and told her that the restaurant was closed for renovations, despite it apparently being open the entire time.
Read More Wendy Williams makes stunning claim about dementia diagnosis
After a few days a room reportedly opened up and she was able to be moved to the fifth floor, where she has remained ever since.
The confinement and alleged falsehoods fed to Wendy are concerning, as the employee claims that her memory is not suffering.
‘Wendy doesn’t have good and bad days. She’s the same all the time,’ they claimed to TMZ.
‘You can tell her something today and two weeks later she’ll remember it. Her memory is fine.’
In February, Wendy signed an affidavit in which she asked the judge overseeing her guardianship case to end the arrangement, TMZ reported.
Williams was set to be evaluated by a new doctor to determine if she suffers from frontotemporal dementia. She claims she does not have the condition
Williams’ new attorney planned to peтιтion the judge the following day to end her guardianship, and if they don’t the attorney will request a jury trial to determine if it should be ended; seen in 2019 in Hollywood
In the legally binding document, Williams reportedly said she has ‘regained capacity’ to function independently, and she said she no longer requires a guardian to oversee her.
She has a guardianship overseen by Sabrina Morrissey, which was insтιтuted in 2022.
She still has several steps ahead of her before she can end the guardianship, however, and the judge will ultimately need to be swayed by her if she hopes to regain her freedom.
In order to do that, Williams will next attempt to prove that she does not have frontotemporal dementia, contrary to how doctors had previously diagnosed her.
She averred in her affidavit that she was not suffering from the neurological condition, and sources told TMZ that she would be seeing a doctor for a new evaluation to hopefully confirm as much.
Notably, frontotemporal dementia is a permanent and progressive condition, so the former Wendy Williams Show host hopes that her apparent improvement in functioning will indicate that she couldn’t be suffering from the disease.
Williams recently hired a new attorney to help her end the guardianship, and they were responsible for selecting the new doctor she will be seeing.
According to the publications sources, her attorney plans to file an Emergency Order to Show Cause the day after the testing, which should force the judge to weigh in on ending the guardianship.
She’s hoping the judge will agree and end things then and there, but if they deny the request and keep the guardianship as its currently consтιтuted, Williams will allegedly request that her case go before a jury who can determine if she’s able to care for herself and run her own finances without the need of a guardian figure.
Williams also revealed to TMZ that she will planned to see her son Kevin Hunter Jr. (pictured with her in 2019 in Hollywood) when she allowed to travel to Miami for her father’s 94th birthday
Williams recently delved into the circumstances that she believes led to her being placed under a guardianship during a recent chat with TMZ.
In an appearance on its 2 Angry Men podcast, she revealed that she planned to travel down to Miami — where several of her family members live — for a weekend to celebrate her father’s 94th birthday.
The trip represents the first time in months she’ll be able to spend time with family, but it will also mark a reunion with her son Kevin Hunter Jr.
Read More Wendy Williams hits back at guardianship attorney’s claims and insists she has never even met lawyer
Williams had previously revealed that her guardianship was kicked off after her bank, Wells Fargo, reported that several large withdrawals had been made from her account, seemingly without her authorization.
She has claimed that her son Kevin and others made the withdrawals, though it’s unclear if she thinks he was working with others to take her money.
For his part, her son has denied any wrongdoing.
‘My son, he overstepped his boundaries,’ Williams claimed in a video interview filmed from her window for the publication’s new documentary Saving Wendy. ‘He was inappropriately using my money without telling me crap about it.’
She said the alleged action caused the bank to freeze her account, which stopped any potential stealing, but it also left her without any access to her money.
Williams has accused her son Kevin of making large, unauthorized transactions, which caused Wells Fargo to freeze her accounts and led the guardianship to be insтιтuted. He has denied any impropriety
She mentioned a fishy transaction in which Kevin allegedly tried to rent a $1,500 boat, but instead rented one for $130K, which he blamed on the bank. Williams accused unnamed other people of influencing him as well; pictured in Lifetime’s Where Is Wendy Williams documentary
When asked who was ‘influencing’ her financially, Williams began to cry and said, ‘My son is a really good person.
‘But at this point, he is a horrible person to me,’ she continued.
Williams went on to allege that ‘other people’ might have been influencing her son and spending time with him at her apartment in Miami.
She mentioned a fishy transaction in which Kevin had allegedly wanted to rent a boat for around $1,500, before alleged renting on for $130,000, according to Wells Fargo, which he allegedly blamed on the bank, though his mother didn’t buy that explanation.
According to documents obtained by TMZ, the judge overseeing Williams case said in September 2024 that, ‘While Mr. Hunter, [her son, Kevin] apologized for past mistakes and inappropriate behavior, the court is not convinced that he can keep her safe and wouldn’t willingly or unwittingly expose her to financial exploitation.’
Williams noted that she planned to see her son at her father’s birthday — ᴀssuming he showed up.
‘I will see him at a particular place, at a particular location. I don’t want to say too much,’ she said, though she didn’t care to say more about their current relationship.