‘Permanently incapacitated’ Wendy Williams couldn’t agree to Lifetime doc, guardian says

When Lifetime released its controversial “Where Is Wendy Williams?” Earlier this year, the cable network mentioned Williams as an executive producer on the project.

But at the time of the documentary’s production, the former talk show host, who was diagnosed with early-onset dementia and aphasia last year, was not even “in a position to consent to being recorded,” her guardian Sabrina Morrissey said in a complaint filed with the Supreme Court of New York County.

“As is clear from the first few minutes of the broadcast itself,” Morrissey said in her September complaint, “Williams was extremely vulnerable and clearly incapable of consenting to being recorded, let alone being humiliated and exploited,” last month the case was referred to federal court.

The lawsuit asks the defendants to pay Williams unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and asks the court to order the defendants to permanently stop airing the show.

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The defendants in the case — Lifetime parent company A&E Television Networks, Lifetime Entertainment Services, EOne Productions, Creature Films and the documentary’s executive producer Mark Ford — filed countersuits against Morrissey this month.

Representatives for A&E, Lifetime, Creature Films and Ford did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment Tuesday.

Presented in four episodes: “Where Is Wendy Williams?” Was billed as a “raw and compelling documentary.” which followed the media personality’s life after the cancellation of “The Wendy Williams Show” in February 2022. The cancellation came as Williams’ physical and mental health deteriorated. Filming for the documentary began in August 2022, shortly after Williams was placed under conservatorship, and was halted in April 2023 “due to her poor health,” according to court documents viewed by The Times.

A month later, Morrissey said in her filing, Williams was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and primary progressive aphasia — both debilitating neurodegenerative diseases that cause behavioral and language problems National Institute on Aging – which has since left her “cognitively impaired and permanently incapacitated.”

After Williams’ diagnosis, Morrissey continued, she “reasonably assumed that the project was canceled since a contract was never finalized and (Williams) was clearly not working on a podcast or focused on her career at the time.” The complaint states Williams may have signed an “on-camera talent agreement” after filming had already begun, but Morrissey declared such an agreement invalid because Williams was incompetent – and because she could not tell her guardian or the court had been communicated.

“Completely shocked and appalled” when the documentary’s trailer was released on February 2, Morrissey said she tried to stop the release, but an appeals judge refused her request for an interim injunction as inadmissible prior restraint.

Nowhere in his ruling did the judge “address the merits of the Guardian’s assertion that (Williams) was incapable of consenting,” Morrissey said in her latest filing, adding that despite their knowledge of Williams’ diagnoses, the defendants “shamelessly expressed their opinion would have doubled”. Plan to profit from the footage they had unlawfully captured.”

“They did this despite being fully aware that the show portrayed a severely disabled woman who was not in control of her behavior and who had lost the ability to make conscious and informed decisions during filming,” she said.

Read more: Wendy Williams thanks fans for “love and kind words” after sharing her dementia diagnosis

Morrissey said in her filing that while Lifetime profited “immensely” from the production, Williams herself received a “ridiculous $82,000.”

Upon the documentary’s release in February, executive producer Mark Ford said: The times that the crew “would never have participated in the project if we had known that Wendy suffered from dementia,” adding, “The project was approved by her guardian, her lawyers or managers, her publicist, herself and ultimately her family .”

“The deeper we got into it, the more worried we became about what would happen to Wendy if we stopped filming than if we continued filming,” Ford said. “We also knew we had the power to never air it. If this movie couldn’t go in a redemptive or positive direction, I guarantee you, Lifetime would never have aired it, and we wouldn’t have had any interest in airing it.”

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.