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The producers of the Where Is Wendy Williams? documentary got down to inform a really totally different story.
Mark Ford and Erica Hanson are the manager producers of Wendy Williams’s 2019 Lifetime documentary, Wendy Williams: What a Mess!, and their aim with the second documentary — filmed from August 2022 till manufacturing was halted in April 2023 — was to choose up the place they left off.
Ford tells Yahoo Leisure: The intention was to “observe her trustworthy journey reclaiming her profession, overcoming her divorce and getting her life collectively. However progressively, because the story revealed itself to us, it turned obvious there was a deeper story right here that we as filmmakers needed to inform.”
Viewers watched it over the weekend and were alarmed. The “Queen of Media,” together with her scorching takes on celeb gossip delivered from her purple throne, was within the throes of habit. She was residing alone with insufficient care. She was confused and nonsensical. The guardianship she was underneath, in addition to her group, had seemingly failed her. We now know — introduced in a press launch by the guardian simply earlier than the documentary aired — that Williams has primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). She’s been in a therapy facility since April.
“If we had recognized of her analysis earlier than the movie began, nobody would have rolled a digital camera,” Ford says amid backlash that Williams was exploited. “We had been on a journey to find the reality of: What was happening with Wendy,” who within the yr prior abandoned her hit talk show, was put into a guardianship over her funds and well-being and was photographed in public wearing her bathrobe.
Ford says it was “a gradual course of” throughout filming Williams’s conduct turning into “extra erratic” and he or she was remoted in her residence. That’s after they introduced in her household — together with Williams’s son (Kevin Hunter Jr.), sister (Wanda Finnie), father (Thomas Williams), brother (Tommy Williams) and niece (Alex Finnie) — asking them, “What’s actually happening right here? Why aren’t you guys round? Do you need to be round? Why is she alone on this residence with out entry to alcohol? Why aren’t there caregivers serving to each day? Why is not there meals in her fridge?”
Over time, they reached the belief, “There was one thing improper with Wendy that was greater than alcohol,” Ford says.
Hanson was there for the day-to-day filming with Williams. She’s heard talking to the star within the documentary at instances as issues unraveled.
“It was a really advanced and delicate story to inform,” Hanson says. “It was a fragile stability to know: When ought to we cease filming?”
These moments — just like the vape scene, a seemingly innocuous shoot throughout which Williams spun out and so they halted manufacturing — began taking place each day.
“We actually wished to make clear what was taking place throughout this era of her life when she wasn’t together with her household, when she was in New York,” Hanson explains. “The isolation she was in. The loneliness she was going by means of. Her struggles with habit. We really turned involved: What would have occurred if we weren’t there. May she have fallen down the staircase? By the top, we pressed Will [Selby, Williams’s manager], who was our conduit to the guardian, and he or she did get right into a facility, due to the guardian. Nevertheless it was harrowing at instances to see what she was up in opposition to. We wished to inform it in probably the most considerate manner we may, however to be trustworthy — and generally the reality is uncomfortable.”
Ford says that “there’s many variations of this documentary that by no means would have seen the sunshine of day” had there not been what he calls a “hopeful” ending, which noticed Williams be put into care and her relations have the chance to lift questions in regards to the guardianship.
“Simply to be very clear, this complete chapter that we documented of Wendy within the movie, she was underneath a authorized guardianship, which is court-appointed and purported to be entrusted together with her each monetary and medical well-being,” Ford says. “Individuals can watch the movie and resolve for themselves if that was an applicable degree of care.”
Hanson hopes the documentary raises questions on how a guardianship works “or doesn’t work.” On this case, Williams’s relations have stated they’ve been prevented from seeing and calling her. They had been saved in the dark about her diagnosis.
“How is it {that a} son cannot name a mom?” Hanson asks. “It has been what number of months? It is actually arduous to know that, so I hope that we had been in a position to increase some actually necessary questions by means of the household by sharing their expertise and considerations.”
The guardian filed a lawsuit in opposition to A&E Community, the mum or dad firm of Lifetime, on Feb. 22 to halt the documentary from airing in a two-night occasion. Whereas Ford stated they’re “not aware of the ins and outs of the lawsuit,” he did level to the momentary restraining order being efficiently fought on the grounds of the First Modification. They “could not prohibit the documentary from being launched and Wendy’s and her household’s voice and their proper to talk out.”
As for his or her hopes for Williams now that her story and analysis are out, they hope that she will get the care she wants. (Williams’s brother stated Wednesday that the household is making an attempt to get her out of the treatment facility to take care of her themselves.)
“If I had been in a position to converse to her, I simply want to hear her voice,” Hanson says. “Even within the movie, on the very finish when she calls and also you simply hear a glimmer of her voice on the opposite finish, she sounds totally different, even to me. She sounds stronger. And I simply would like to know that she’s in a greater, stronger place and getting the suitable therapy.”
Ford provides his personal message to Williams, saying, “I hope you might be getting the remaining and care you want. We all know the documentary just isn’t simple to observe, however I hope you’re feeling the love your hundreds of thousands of followers are sharing with you at this tough time.”
