Wendy Williams Breaks Down About ‘Prison’ Conservatorship in Rare Interview

Wendy Williams attends a dinner in New York in February 2023.
Johnny Nunez/WireImage/Getty Images

Wendy Williams is being held against her will in a high-security treatment facility in New York, the former talk show host said Thursday during an emotional interview with the Breakfast Club.

“I feel like I’m in prison. I’m definitely isolated,” Williams, 60, said.

Williams has been in a conservatorship with a court-appointed guardian since 2022. She was diagnosed in 2023 with frontotemporal dementia and aphasia, and in November 2024, her guardian Sabrina Morrissey wrote in court filings that she was “permanently incapacitated.”

But during Thursday’s interview, Williams was adamant that she was able to make decisions for herself.

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Asked by host Charlamagne tha God if she was cognitively impaired, she replied, “Do I sound that way, goddamnit?”

Morrissey had filed the documents as part of a lawsuit seeking to block Lifetime from releasing a documentary series called Where is Wendy Williams? that followed Williams as she dealt with alcohol addiction and health issues. Morrissey claimed the documentary was exploitative, but Williams and her family say Morrissey wanted it blocked because the show was critical of the conservatorship.

The Daily Beast has reached out to Morrissey for comment.

During the Breakfast Club interview, Williams and her niece Alex, who joined her aunt on the line, described how Williams lives in a room with a bed, a chair, a TV, and a bathroom. She can make phone calls but can’t receive them, and she doesn’t have a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. The elevator to her floor is locked.

Visitors must be approved by Morrissey, and Williams’ only regular human contact is with the orderlies who bring her pills every day. The other people living are her floor are so unwell she can’t have conversations with them, she said.

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“I keep my door closed,” she said. “I watch TV, I listen to the radio, and I watch the window. I sit here as my life goes by.”

In December, she was allowed to take a rare trip to Florida for her son’s graduation, but Williams said she wants to move to Miami to be near her family. Her niece agreed that the family wants her with them, echoing comments her son made on social media shortly before Christmas.

“Let’s get her home,” Kevin Hunter Jr., 24, wrote in the comments of a video shared by Charlamagne tha God on Instagram. “She’s sober and wants to come home. We’re fighting to make that happen because isolation is killing her faster than anything else.”

About 20 minutes into Thursday’s interview, Williams burst into tears talking about how her guardian might not let her to go to Miami next month for her father’s 94th birthday.

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“I’m exhausted thinking about, ‘What if I can’t see my dad for his birthday?’ You know, at 94, the day after that is not promised,” she said, breaking down.

“My life is like f---ed up,” she added.

Williams and Alex had discussed the possibility of her guardian retaliating against her for doing the Breakfast Club interview, including denying her the trip or taking away her phone, but she decided to do it anyway, Alex said.

“What if they take my phone?” Williams interjected, her voice breaking again. “I won’t be able to talk to anybody.”

She only has $15 because she can’t access her money, she said, and all of her stuff is in storage. Her guardian has had her cellphone with all her contacts for the past three years, and she even sold her two cats without telling her, Williams said.

Charlamagne promised to stay on top of the issue and said he hopes she will soon be celebrating her father’s birthday and living in Miami. Her family has created a GoFundMe to “help expedite” her return.

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Before she hung up, Charlamagne told her she couldn’t just end the interview by saying, “We love you.”

“You know what you’ve got to end with,” he said.

That prompted Williams to launch into her signature saying: “How you doing? Shout it out!”