Wendy Williams Admits Being on TV ‘Was About the Money’ and Now Only Has $15 in Treatment Facility: ‘This Is My Life’

‘The Wendy Williams Show’ ran for 14 seasons until 2022, when the TV personality entered a wellness facility to deal with various health issues

Wendy Williams at The Blonds x Moulin Rouge! The Musical’s New York Fashion Weeks show on Sept. 9, 2019 in New York City. Photo: Paul Bruinooge/Getty

Wendy Williams is getting candid about her long-running daytime show as she shares an update on her life under a conservatorship.

“For me, being on TV, I’m not going to lie, that was about money,” Williams, 60, said Thursday, Jan. 16, on The Breakfast Club, her first interview since her dementia diagnosis went public in February 2024. “Radio is my root. To be on radio to me is godsend to me. And I was doing such great stuff on radio.”

The Wendy Williams Show ran for 14 seasons beginning in 2008 and ended in 2022 after Williams contracted COVID and experienced health issues tied to Graves’ disease. Williams started a career as a disc jockey after graduating from Northeastern University and worked at stations such as 98.7 KISS FM, Hot 97 and WBLS-FM, where she had her own syndicated show before launching her daytime TV program.

In May 2022, Williams entered a court-ordered guardianship after her financial adviser claimed she was of “unsound mind,” which caused Wells Fargo to freeze her accounts. The Lifetime documentary Where Is Wendy Williams? filmed Williams between August 2022 and April 2023, during which she dealt with various health issues and alcohol addiction following the end of her talk show.

In September 2022, Williams entered a wellness facility to help manger her “overall health issues.” Her medical team announced in February 2024 that Williams had been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) the previous year.

Marissa Jaret Winokur (left) and Wendy Williams on ‘The Wendy Williams Show’ on July 28, 2009 in New York City.Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic

Speaking on The Breakfast Club on Jan. 16, Williams refuted the diagnosis.

“I am not cognitively impaired but I feel like I am in prison, you understand what I’m saying,” she told host Charlamagne tha God. “I’m in this place with people who are in their 90s and their 80s and their 70s. …. These people, there’s something wrong with these people here on this floor. I am clearly not.”

“Wendy Williams suffers from frontal lobe dementia, a degenerative brain disease that has no cure,” says attorney Roberta Kaplan in a statement obtained by PEOPLE.

Kaplan, who is suing A&E, Lifetime and the producers of the Where Is Wendy Williams? docuseries on behalf of Williams, continues, “As a result, a state court found her to be legally incapacitated, meaning that she is not capable of making legal and financial decisions on her own. Unfortunately, because of her diagnosis, Wendy’s condition will only get worse with time and she will require care for the rest of her life. But as anyone who has had a family member with dementia knows, Wendy has both good days and bad days. It is truly a shame that there is so much voyeuristic attention to this right now, since it only leads to the same kinds of exploitation that we saw in the so-called documentary, as alleged in our complaint.”

Williams, who lives in a wellness facility in New York City, said she can make calls, but she does not have her usual electronics.

“I can call you, but you can’t call me, you know what I’m saying? Williams said. “I don’t even know what kind of phone this is that I have all I’m saying I that, when I call you, you listen, you don’t call me back, you can’t call me back. You understand what I’m saying? I can’t sit on the phone, you, and look at things and scroll through things. I can’t do that. I do not have a laptop. You understand? I do not have an iPad. My life is my life is my goddamn life.”

Wendy Williams and son Kevin Hunter Jr. at her the Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony on Oct. 17, 2019 in Los Angeles.David Livingston/Getty

The mother of 24-year-old son Kevin Hunter Jr. claimed she lacks the funds to buy herself a phone, as well as any other basic luxuries.

“I have $15,” Williams alleged. “I have $15, what does that do? My money is in prison.”

She continued, “The guardian has somebody get me nail polish, like the normal things that I like. ‘I need a new hairbrush; well this is not the one I want but I guess this is the one I’m forced to use.’”

According to a source familiar with the situation: “Wells Fargo petitioned a court to have a third-party guardian appointed for Wendy after the bank discovered that a family member in Florida was attempting to improperly access her money without authorization.”

Hunter Jr., whom Williams shares with ex-husband Kevin Hunter, came under scrutiny for his spending but strongly denies in the documentary that he exploited her: “I’ve never taken [money] without her consent.”

In the interview on Jan. 16, Williams said she feels “like I’m in prison.”

“I am definitely isolated, you know what I’m saying?” she said on The Breakfast Club. “And to talk to these people who live here, that is not my cup of tea. They’re good people but I keep the door closed, I watch TV. I sit here as my life goes by.”