Wendy Williams is denying claims that she’s in cognitive decline as she breaks her silence on her “prison”-like conservatorship.
The 60-year-old New Jersey native and her niece Alex had a phone interview Thursday morning with “The Breakfast Club” radio show to detail the allegedly oppressive conditions to which she’s been subjected in recent years.
“I am not cognitively impaired, no, but I feel like I am in prison,” said the former talk show host, who’s currently living in New York. “This system is broken, this system that I’m in. This system has falsified a lot. … This has been three years I’m caught up in this system.”
Williams revealed that as part of her conservatorship, she can call friends and family, including Joy Behar and Fat Joe, but no one can call her, as her phone number is with her court-ordered guardian, Sabrina Morrissey.
“That’s been the reality since 2023,” said Alex. “That room she’s sitting in? … She’s there every day, all hours of the day. Every week. Every month. She’s not getting proper sunlight. I went to New York in October to visit her and the level of security, and the level of questions that there were in terms of who am I, why am I here, what’s the purpose, I mean it was absolutely just horrible.”
Noting that she’s spent her past three birthdays alone, Williams called what she’s going through “emotional abuse.” She said her cats were sold without her knowledge and that, at this point, she has just $15 to her name. Her finances are not in her control. She also has to get permission from Morrissey to visit her father in Florida for his 94th birthday next week — a request that has yet to be approved.
“That person that you’re talking about, who’s holding me hostage … I don’t know that she’s going to let me,” Williams said, referring to Morrissey, who last year filed legal documents claiming Williams was severely “cognitively impaired.”
Last February, Williams’ care team revealed that she’d been diagnosed with aggressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia in May of 2023. By September, they said she was “permanently disabled” and “legally incapacitated” as a result.
Williams said she fears potential retaliation — such as losing her phone privileges — as a result of giving the interview, but told her niece, “I have to do this.”