Wendy Williams has been one of the most popular talk show hosts for the last decade and a half. She is known to have the latest pop culture news and trends mentioned on her show. She is also known to be a producer and author. Before her talk show fame, she was born in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and moved to Ocean Township, New Jersey, with two other siblings and her parents. From 1993-1994, she was a radio show host for WRKS. Early on in these segments, she would be geared more towards a teenage girl audience and give them life advice. This only lasted a few months because another radio hip-hop company, WQHT, overshadowed her time slot, decreasing her ratings. So, WRKS changed Wendy’s time slot to evening and geared to a more adult audience.
By the mid-90s, Wendy created a website called www.gowendy.com to help support her radio ratings. During this time, Wendy was also on the radio station Hot 97. She was soon fired from that station and hired by WUSL’s station, where she was very open about her problems, including her former drug addiction at the time. She would go back and forth between radio stations for the next ten years, but everything changed in 2008. On July 14th, 2008, Wendy Williams’ talk show “The Wendy Williams Show” aired. 
The show was doing exceptionally well. Fox signed a deal to let her show air on their channel in 2009, and by 2010, BET signed for her show to be aired during the evening internationally in 54 countries. Wendy got 2.4 million daily viewers, making her share the title with Ellen Degeneres as the number one female daytime talk show host. This would allow her to host many other shows for the next decade, but her talk show was still the main focus. By 2017, Wendy was seen taking many hiatuses from her talk show. This was said to be because of health issues. Things were still semi-normal right before COVID-19 hit. She was remotely hosting her talk show from March 2020 to May 2020 and completely went on a hiatus until September that same year because of Graves’ disease. However, this didn’t last long because she decided to air her last episode in July of 2021.
This was also due to Graves’ disease. Recently, a documentary aired by CNN about her life story and where she has been these last three years. It is said that the documentary shows how low her mental health and stability have been. It shows her troubles with memory loss, mood swings, and alcohol abuse. It got so bad that the production company had to stop because they were worried about how bad it was getting. Her niece says that Wendy is currently in an inpatient treatment facility for cognitive care. She is also said to be getting help with her substance abuse issues and alcohol addiction as well. There is still work to be done, but there is hope that Wendy will receive the help she needs to get better.
