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Clap if you want to know what’s going on with Wendy Williams. The former Wendy Williams Show host, who has been in a court-ordered guardianship since 2022, went to a hospital on March 10 after being escorted out of her assisted-living facility by police. She later said that she passed a mental capacity test “with flying colors.” Here’s what we know.
Williams and her caretaker Ginalisa Monterroso, who is not connected to the guardianship, wanted her to get an independent medical evaluation because they do not believe she needs to be in the assisted-living facility she has previously compared to prison due to allegedly isolating and restrictive conditions.
The New York Post previously reported that the NYPD had shown up after Williams dropped several notes that read “Help! Wendy!!” out of a window in her assisted living facility in the morning on March 10. During a Tuesday interview she did with Williams on The Breakfast Club, Monterroso clarified that she personally called the police and asked them to conduct a welfare check. “I am not incapacitated as I’ve been accused, and this floor that I live on is the memory unit,” Williams recalled telling officers upon their arrival. “The people who live there don’t remember anything, unlike me. Why am I here? What is going on? It’s a cry for help.” The police ultimately escorted her from the building into an ambulance that took her to a local hospital.
Yes. While calling into Good Day New York from the hospital on March 11, Williams claimed that she took mental competency tests at the hospital and “passed with flying colors.” TMZ previously reported that she scored a “10 out of 10” on a psychiatric exam. On The Breakfast Club, Monterroso explained that Williams passed two tests to determine that she had “competency” and could make decisions, one of which involved 10 questions that she answered correctly. According to Williams, the queries included “simple things” like who the current president is and when her birthday is.
Monterroso — who alleged that Williams’s guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, was at the hospital and attempted to prevent the tests from taking place — suggested that the results can be used in court to help Williams’s case.
Williams was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and progressive aphasia in 2023, a press release announced last year. However, she later publicly denied the diagnosis and has maintained that she is “not cognitively impaired.” Morrissey, her guardian, recently affirmed to Vanity Fair that she sees “issues” with Williams’s speech when it’s “not scripted”; Williams scoffed at that suggestion on The Breakfast Club.
Her guardianship was instated in 2022 on the grounds that she needed to be protected from financial abuse. Her bank believed that she had been exploited, and Morrissey was appointed as her guardian.
When asked on Good Day New York if she would be willing to get a financial advisor if she were released from the guardianship, Williams replied, “I’ve had that for years. Of course, [I will get] a financial advisor, of course, somebody to look over my money. The money I have right now is all with my guardian person.” Williams previously alleged in Lifetime’s 2024 documentary Where Is Wendy Williams? that Morrissey had stolen money from her. (Morrissey later filed a complaint alleging that Williams did not have the capacity to consent to the doc.)
Williams said on Good Day New York that getting out of her guardianship is her “number one most important thing.” Beyond that, she has hopes of staying in New York and “going back to work.” In the more recent future, she is scheduled to call into The View on March 14. As of her Tuesday Breakfast Club interview, Williams said she was still in the hospital. It’s currently unclear if and when she will have to return to the assisted living facility.
