Photograph Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Every day Beast/Getty/The Wendy Williams Present
After 14 years, 2797 “How You Doin’s,” and innumerable memes and recollections, The Wendy Williams Present has formally closed its sliding stage doorways, marking the top of an period for a chat present that outlined the phrase “iconic” earlier than it grew to become an overused popular culture descriptor for every part underneath the solar.
The final eight months of Wendy reveals noticed a slew of visitor hosts filling in for the legendary discuss present maven. A breakthrough case of COVID-19 and issues together with her Graves Illness delayed the present’s thirteenth season weeks past its projected begin date final fall, inflicting Williams to take time away from the present to give attention to her well being.
In February, it was introduced that Sherri Shepherd, a frequent visitor host within the months prior, would turn out to be a successor to Wendy together with her personal present, Sherri, debuting later this yr for the 2022-2023 season. It was a transfer that upset followers, who had been much more dismayed when it was formally introduced this week that Wendy would air its final present immediately.
On the prime of its ultimate episode, Shepherd thanked the crew, visitor hosts, viewers, and Wendy herself. “There's no person like Wendy Williams,” Shepherd stated. “From her days on the radio to ruling daytime discuss for 13 seasons, Wendy earned her title because the queen of all media.”
In its ultimate moments, Wendy got here to a detailed with a whimper within the type of a flimsy video montage devoted to Williams and her present’s unbelievable legacy. No look, not even a pre-recorded message from the star of the present—the one who constructed its viewers and carved out a brand new house in daytime for individuals who wished a no-holds-barred host who wasn’t afraid to talk her thoughts and choose up the items afterward. For sure, Wendy Williams deserved higher.
The Wendy present was a cosmic flash, a dangerous idea that might’ve fully bombed and been a forgotten blip in talk-show historical past. There are only a few individuals who can maintain up an hour-long daytime present on the premise of simply being themselves, and Wendy Williams was one of many first of her variety. A Black girl spearheading a solo discuss present with nothing greater than a penchant for gossip and a built-in viewers from a long-running radio present: It was by no means assured that Wendy Williams ’explicit model would translate to the treacherous panorama of daytime tv, the place extra historically "apparent" hosts, like Katie Couric, Anderson Cooper, and Meredith Viera all failed.
“I didn’t even suppose we had been going to make it previous our six-week sneak peek,” Williams instructed audiences in what can be her ultimate sign-off final July. “Thanks for accepting us within the spirit during which this present has been carried out since we first began.”
From the bounce, The Wendy Williams Present felt particular. It was a present that was designed to really feel such as you had been sitting in on a gossip session along with your finest buddy, solely amplified to the nth diploma—the Wendy manner. Viewers participation was not solely current however inspired, typically boosting Williams’ morale and making at-home viewers really feel like they had been within the studio themselves.
Carson Kressley on The Wendy Williams Present.
The Wendy Williams Present
As each a repeat interview topic on the present’s purple sofa and a frequent visitor host in the previous few months throughout Williams’ absence, Carson Kressley skilled Wendy’s welcoming nature firsthand.
“At one level, I used to be probably the most frequent visitor on the present—I believe 13 occasions, except someone has outmoded me,” Kressley instructed The Every day Beast. “[Wendy] introduced a complete new vibe to daytime tv…the present is about as much as create an atmosphere the place it’s festive and other people really feel protected and empowered to be precisely who they're. You are feeling relaxed and at house there.”
The atmosphere of Wendy was really easy going that it felt a lot much less produced than different related reveals.
Over the course of the present’s run, crew members didn’t simply turn out to be characters on the present, however energetic individuals in its segments. Co-Govt Producer Suzanne Bass and Supervising Producer Norman Baker are so beloved by followers for his or her rapport with Williams that they’ve each been the topics of multiple-part compilationedits on YouTube highlighting their funniest moments on the present.
But it surely was the studio viewers that gave the present a type of vitality that you just couldn’t discover anyplace else in daytime. They had been urged to cheer, giggle, shout, and be as opinionated because the host herself. “Wendy at all times known as the viewers her cohosts. You may simply brush that off as simply an expression, however she actually meant it,” longtime visitor correspondent Brian Balthazar instructed The Every day Beast over Zoom. “The vitality of the viewers and the interactivity of the viewers mirrored that.”
Brian Balthazar and Wendy Williams
The Wendy Williams Present
Movies chronicling Williams’ interactions with the viewers have been considered tens of 1000's of occasions on YouTube. “I by no means realized I like Wendy a lot till immediately,” one viewer commented. “This was so good, God it makes me fall in love with Wendy once more,” stated one other.
Williams and her “cohosts” fed off one another’s boundless vitality, creating a few of probably the most laugh-out-loud moments that daytime TV has ever seen—typically unintentionally. “The viewers handled their function as cohosts significantly. They'd yell and scream and cackle and work together as a lot as they might—it was a part of the enjoyable of the present,” Balthazar stated.
However like every long-running discuss present, Wendy was not with out its (many, many) controversies. As Web Meme Queen Supreme, Williams’ present was watched each day by lots of of 1000's of loyal viewers, a lot of whom had been prepared to leap anytime Williams misspoke.
Final summer season, after Britney Spears known as right into a California courtroom previous concerning the standing of her conservatorship, Williams publicly chided the Spears household. “Loss of life, to all of them!” Williams stated in a second that was later edited out of the present’s on-line broadcast. By no means thoughts that Williams had already spent years publicly throwing jabs at Spears’ psychological well being on her present.
Williams relished her function as a gossip-slinger and routinely got here underneath hearth for the opinions she’d throw out in her Sizzling Subjects segments. She criticized Beyoncé’s intelligence stage and Mariah Carey’s psychological wellness. She made insensitive, cringey reviews of individuals’s deaths and instructed homosexual males to cease sporting skirts and heels, and implied that males can’t menstruate—which she later tearfully apologized for. These examples do not even start to scrape the floor in terms of controversies.
Sure, a lot of what Williams stated on her present was impolite and inexcusable and fully out of contact. However Williams wasn’t bashful about her character. She was outspoken and audacious. “Say it such as you imply it” was actually the theme of her present.
Supervising Producer Norman Baker
The Wendy Williams Present
She by no means modified herself to suit any mildew or anybody else’s notion of who she needs to be—and she or he managed to carve a path for herself in a cutthroat business by remaining genuine the complete time. Individuals understood that and revered it—even those that discovered themselves in her crosshairs. There’s a cause that Mariah Carey wrote the lyric, “‘Trigger they be all up in my enterprise like a Wendy interview.”
That the present survived so many controversies speaks to how beloved it was. Even should you didn’t like what Wendy was saying, you couldn’t not watch her. Anytime Wendy would upset me with an off-color remark about queer individuals like myself or say one thing egregious and patently unfaithful about Mariah Carey or Beyoncé, I’d attempt to take a break. However I at all times discovered myself perched again in entrance of the tv, ready to see precisely what she was going to say subsequent.
“You may have Wendy, who’s sitting alone on that stage speaking for 20 or half-hour, it’s very straightforward to underestimate how tough that's,” Balthazar stated. “And the truth that she was in a position to do this and have the viewers is actually one thing that I do not suppose we’ve ever seen earlier than to that extent. The size of time that she was capable of do it, I imply, a whole lot of discuss present hosts do a monologue for 5 minutes. She did half-hour of straight speaking.”
So typically, Wendy would sit in her purple chair in entrance of a photograph of some celeb splayed throughout the display screen behind her and spend a complete fifteen-minute stretch of a twenty-two-minute Sizzling Subjects phase speaking a few fully unrelated story a few meal she ate the day earlier than or an occasion she was going to after the present. She was, and is, compulsively watchable with out even attempting. Wendy ceaselessly referred to celebrities as “buddies in her head,” which is strictly what Williams was to so many individuals every single day for one complete hour. Her present was comforting and confounding, as enjoyable to look at because it was irritating.
The final eight months with out Wendy Williams in her purple chair have been robust. Simply take into consideration the entire hardships we’ve endured as a society since: a million hours of Stranger Issues, a Jamie Lynn Spears memoir, a continued perpetual drought of Rihanna music.
These issues didn’t occur due to Wendy’s absence, however think about how wonderful it might’ve been to listen to her touch upon them, to rant and rave for 5 complete minutes about Beyoncé’s upcoming album earlier than she trails off right into a story about what she has ready for lunch backstage.
The Wendy Williams Present was removed from good, similar to its host, who can be the primary to confess that. Williams would consult with her present as “messy” and “silly,” however its silliness was at all times its greatest asset. Wendy wouldn't have been Wendy with out the attraction of its imperfections. To see the present finish with out her on the helm has confirmed extraordinarily disheartening for a lot of. However perhaps that reign isn’t over..
“The largest mistake anybody could make is to write down off Wendy Williams and her capability to beat challenges,” Brian Balthazar stated when requested about what it was prefer to see Wendy ending with out its star current. “So whereas everybody would like to see her spherical out the present with a giant bang, I don’t suppose we’ve seen the final of her. And I look ahead to seeing the place she turns up subsequent.”