'The Wendy Williams documentary is the most disturbing thing I've ever seen.'

Wendy William's new documentary was supposed to document the next steps in the talk-show host's life and career, following the cancelling of The Wendy Williams Show in June 2022.

By the end of filming, it had become a tragic chronicle of her cognitive decline.

The four-part Lifetime series Where Is Wendy Williams? was shot between August 2022 and April 2023. Three days before the documentary was set to air this year, Williams' guardians announced she had since been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia — the same condition affecting Bruce Willis. 

This information makes watching the series especially uncomfortable and potentially unethical.

And to be brutally honest, it's one of the most disturbing things I've ever watched. And yes, I've seen all four episodes.

At first, Where Is Wendy Williams? sets out to document the controversial host's career comeback, as the former The Wendy Williams Show star sets out to start a podcast.

But very quickly, the plan is derailed by Wendy's dwindling mental state.

This is not the confident, witty, and effortlessly iconic Wendy Williams fans know and love. This documentary introduces a vastly different Williams.

The star is in the grips of legal and financial issues that have sprung from her being placed under legal guardianship in May 2022, after her then-financial advisers claimed that she was unfit to manage her own funds. In the years since, Williams has lived under the guardianship of lawyer Sabrina Morrissey, who declined to be interviewed in the docuseries.

Wendy's health is clearly in its most fragile state in the doco. The host is showing early signs of dementia and also struggling with alcoholism and addiction. Throughout the countless interviews filmed in her New York City penthouse, Williams cannot form coherent sentences. She's caught with half-drunken bottles of vodka, she's abrasive and volatile, and her appearance is noticeably dishevelled and frail.

By the end of her first interview, she is sobbing uncontrollably into the arms of her manager, Will Shelby.

Wendy Williams bursts into tears. Image: Lifetime. 

This is just the beginning of the upsetting scenes that unfold throughout the four-part documentary.

In one scene, she forgets her address, instead referencing the home she grew up in. In another, she can't remember the location of a tobacco store near the studio where she filmed for 14 years. 

"I think she’s losing memory," her driver admits, sharing that despite working with her for years, she rarely remembers who he is when he picks her up.

In several scenes, Shelby removes alcohol from Wendy's apartment or prevents the former host from ordering a cocktail. Then there's the moment she shouts at a nail technician, before verbally abusing her publicist, Shawn Zanotti, in the middle of a meeting, telling her that she should get liposuction and calling her a 'dumbass'.

When reunited with her niece Alex Finnie after a year apart, Williams asks her how to work the TV remote.

These disturbing moments take on a more concerning meaning in light of Williams' diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, conditions that may cause mood and personality changes and effects parts of the brain responsible for language.

In an episode that was particularly ethically dubious, Williams flees New York to go to Los Angeles for a meeting Zanotti set up with NBC, despite Williams clearly not being in a suitable state of mind to meet with TV executives. 

In a baffling moment in the car on the way to the meeting, Zanotti suggests that Williams attend the Oscars while in the city. 

"What are the Oscars?" she replies, all the while wearing a wide-eyed, vacant expression. 

Wendy Williams' in the docuseries. Image: Lifetime. 

The docuseries ends with Williams entering a facility to treat her cognitive issues, with the former host reportedly still in treatment to this day.

Considering her extremely vulnerable state throughout, it's hard to comprehend how this documentary ever saw the light of day. Some reviews have described the docuseries as 'exploitative' and seeking 'to profit off her pain'. Even Williams' publicist spoke out against it airing.

"I felt that [Williams] was being exploited," Zanotti told NBC News. "She would be mortified. There's no way you can convince me that she would be okay with looking and seeing herself in that way."

Series producer Mark Ford has admitted that if they knew about Williams' dementia diagnosis, the series never would have been made. "Of course, if we had known that Wendy had dementia going into it, no one would've rolled a camera," he told The Hollywood Reporter.

This is despite Williams' son, Kevin Hunter Jr, stating in the documentary that he thought his mother had dementia. 

Ford noted that while Williams is executive producer of the documentary, he doesn't think she's seen it. "We simply have had no way to get it to her to see it," Ford said. "No way to screen it with her, because she’s locked down in a facility and we haven’t been able to speak to her since we wrapped filming." 

While it's unclear what Wendy thinks of the series airing or whether she is in a state to consent to anything right now, the position of her guardianship is clear: they didn't want the series to air. USA Today reported that Williams' temporary guardian, Morrissey, filed a lawsuit under seal against Lifetime in a New York state court to block the premiere from airing. 

However, a New York appellate judge ruled that Lifetime could release the documentary as any blocking "violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution".

For Williams to serve as executive producer on the same documentary her guardian is seeking to stall speaks volumes about how complicated and chaotic the talk-show host's life has become since her show was cancelled in 2022. 

As a viewer who tuned into Where Is Wendy Williams? I'm not so much wondering where she is, but rather why we're pointing a camera at her, instead of offering a helping hand.

Feature: Lifetime.