Wendy Williams is speaking out publicly following her dramatic plea for help, which led to her being taken from her assisted living facility to the hospital on Monday.
The former daytime talk show host, 60, has been living in the facility’s “memory” unit against her will, she reiterated Tuesday, following her diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia and aphasia and subsequent placement into a conservatorship.
Williams phoned in from the hospital to speak with her friend and former lead-in host Rosanna Scotto on Good Day New York. During their conversation, she revealed that she’d completed a mental capacity test with “independent doctors” and “passed with flying colors,” in her words—a result that would contradict the court appointed conservatorship that labeled her too “incapacitated” to handle her own affairs.
Williams described her living situation to Scotto, from which she escaped Monday after dropping a note from her window that read, “Help! Wendy!!” Police officers arrived to do a wellness check and took Williams to the hospital.
“I’m on the fifth floor, and it’s called the memory unit,” Williams said of the New York City assisted living facility, where she’s surrounded by patients who “don’t remember anything.” She lives under tight restrictions, she added, and isn’t even allowed to go outside. “In order to go to the gym, which is on the third floor, I have to be permitted,” she told Scotto.
Williams was joined on the phone call by her friend Gina, who helped the former TV and radio personality carefully choose her words amid the legal battle to free her from the conservatorship.
The friend told Scotto that the mental capacity test Williams took this week will “open up a lot of doors” toward proving that she does not need the arrangement. “I did make a report myself, and I brought APS [Adult Protective Services] in,” Gina added. “We brought NYPD in. I feel like we have the city agencies involved as well, and they are allowed to go into this case.”
Courts named Sabrina Morrissey, an elder law attorney, as Williams’ guardian in 2022. Morrissey has since claimed Williams was “permanently incapacitated” due to her dementia diagnosis. Williams told Scotto that her “guardian person,” as she referred to Morrissey Tuesday, has total control of her money and phone. Williams has previously made allegations of emotional abuse while under the conservatorship.
Morrissey responded to Williams’ allegations against her in Vanity Fair last week. “Can she speak? Yes, she’s a professional speaker,” Morrissey told the magazine. “But when I speak to her, and it’s not scripted and it’s not repetitive, do I see issues with her speech? Yes, I do, but the public isn’t having conversations with her the way I do.” Morrissey added, “I can’t let whatever happens in the public affect how I respond to her and how I continue to help her.”
Williams did not share when she would be discharged from the hospital back to the assisted living facility. She is scheduled to make a much-publicized appearance on The View this Friday.
