While attending an awards consideration panel in Hollywood, Mark Ford and Erica Hanson shared that they're worried about the former talk show host's care during filming.
- May 4, 2024
AceShowbiz - Producers of "Where Is Wendy Williams?" commented on how the docuseries reveal the "dire" situation that Wendy Williams is in under a conservatorship. While attending an awards consideration panel in Hollywood on Wednesday, May 1, Mark Ford and Erica Hanson shared that they're worried about her care during filming.
They revealed that the former daytime talk show queen was seen living alone and with no food in her refrigerator. She was also limited when it came to communicating with her friends and family.
"The deeper we got into it, we didn't want to let go of Wendy until we got her back in touch with her family," Mark said. "Because we felt that at a certain point that's who's going to be there for her to care for her."
According to Mark, he and the production team were not made aware of "The Wendy Williams Show" former host's frontotemporal dementia (FTD) diagnosis. He also claimed that Wendy's legal and financial guardian Sabrina Morrissey was "not responding to any kind of calls for help" regarding the adequate care that the star should be receiving.
"You could see Erica and Michael towards the end of the documentary, very, very worried and saying to her management, who was the only other person that was coming into her apartment on a daily basis, 'Something has to be done to help her.' " he recalled. "This is getting very dire and scary."
"And because she was under a guardianship, her family couldn't just fly up and hang out and decide to get involved in her medical care," he divulged. "They were removed from that process by the courts so they could face legal ramifications if they tried to get too involved."
Erica also admitted to feeling "incomprehensible" that Williams' son, Kevin Hunter, Jr., didn't know where she was and "can't call her." She added, "I just think, in the end, you really see what happens when a guardian has complete control and the family is cut out and they don't know how she's being treated medically. And they don't know what's happened with her finances."
In February, Sabrina sued Lifetime in an attempt to block the 4.5-hour project from being aired. In her filing, she claimed the docuseries "shamelessly exploits [Williams] and portrays her in an extremely demeaning and undignified manner." She added that the network "incorrectly states that she is 'broke' and cruelly implies that her disoriented demeanor is due to substance abuse and intoxication."
Not stopping there, Sabrina pointed out that Wendy was "not capable of consenting" to the terms of her contract with A&E Television Networks, Lifetime's parent company. According to her, the show needed court and guardian approval before a documentary with privately-shot footage of the talk show host could be publicly released, but "no such approval was sought or provided."
In response to the lawsuit, Lifetime issued a statement which read, "We look forward to the unsealing of our papers as well, as they tell a very different story."
