The goodbye of the most black interviewer in the US: Wendy Williams closes her program after 14 years of impertinence

Oprah Winfrey is considered the inventor of confessional television: if she managed to get dozens of stars to exorcise their traumas before her, it was because, before, she had confessed some of hers live.

She created a long trail of imitators (Ellen DeGeneres, Tyra Banks or Rosie O'Donnell), but of all of them Wendy Williams (New Jersey, 57 years old) is the most striking.

If Oprah created a school by becoming a friend to whom she confessed her most intimate secrets, Wendy was that other colleague with whom to criticize and laugh nervously at her out-of-place comments.

Oprah was sweet and attentive;

Wendy, acid and malevolent.

Often, even though she considered her an idol, Wendy criticized Oprah ("I thought her corset was going to burst," she said of her weight at the 2018 Golden Globes).

One day he assured live that Oprah had responded to his criticism by showing a letter.

“It's written in all caps, that's why she's yelling at me!” she commented as she put on her reading glasses and the audience laughed.

Shortly after, Oprah's representatives stated that she had not written Wendy any letters.

It did not matter: the moment was already one of those great milestones of her program.

It has many more.

worked thanks to this unpredictable woman, without a

or earpiece, who spoke her mind even if it caused her problems, cried live more than anyone else on television, kicked someone off the set if her cell phone rang, made jokes insensitive about tragic news and, above all, continually mixing his private life with his professional life in front of the cameras.

The Wendy Show made it to its finale last Friday after a spectacular 14-season run regularly competing with (and sometimes beating)

which also ended this year.

strange blood bond

Wendy Williams grew up in a small seaside town called Ashbury Park which today has a street named after her.

She started out as a presenter on college stations.

During this time, while she was alternating stations of hip hop, reggae and hits of yesterday, she developed an addiction to cocaine and was raped by an artist who invited her to a party and later to her hotel.

She told

in 2021 , but, in true Oprah tradition, she had previously revealed it live on her show and in a memoir of hers published in 2003.

Wendy Williams (with rapper Gizmo) poses at an awards show in 1991 in New York,Al Pereira (Getty Images)

In 1990, he began working on a morning radio show where he discovered that what he did best (and the audience liked it best) was talking openly about celebrities.

She specialized in exposing the miseries of African-American celebrities.

Bill Cosby, Sean Combs or Russell Simons, some of her favorite victims, called the station complaining and asking for her to be fired.

They half succeeded: the management gave him his own space, aware that he had become the star.

In 1993 the influential magazine

named her “The best radio personality”.

Hip hop culture permeated the popular and Williams was the particular Louella Parsons of it.

Tupac Shapur (who she said had allegedly been raped in prison) even cursed her in song.

Sean Combs, however, reconciled with her in an interview years after her: “You've never been credited for being the first to talk about hip hop culture and hip hop celebrity culture.

You shed light on us and our people.”

"I know I pissed off a lot of people," she replied, "starting with you."

But the person he pissed off the most was one he would end up forming a strange bond with: Whitney Houston in 2003. The singer was then going through a low personal moment and had just given a disastrous television interview.

Her team said

to Williams, knowing that the presenter often talked about Houston and her programs with her drugs.

But it was the singer herself who called Williams on the radio and left one of the most cafre interviews that are remembered with a celebrity of her level.

“Whitney, are you currently using drugs?” Williams asked.

“Only my mother has access to that information.

She talks about drugs with your son.

Don't ask me things like she's a girl."

Wendy conceded at the time: "I was addicted to cocaine too."

"Well, that's your problem, not mine," Houston cut in.

The level of confrontation escalated: "Careful what you say," Houston said, to which Williams replied, "Careful what you do."

The interview ended with Houston hanging up the phone.

louder, more acidic

The Wendy Williams Show

began in 2008. At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the classic format of a daily program with great stellar confessions and spiritual maturity (read Oprah, who ended her program in 2012) was entering its twilight.

Williams knew how to take advantage of a new era of celebrities that came out, above all, of

, and a new instant and reckless way of approaching gossip, boosted by the rise of social networks.

franchise

and commenting on what celebrities did on her networks, she ended up being a louder, more acidic, cheaper and lacerating Oprah.

Kevin Hunter and Wendy Williams, in 2006. Johnny Nunez (WireImage)

And precisely because it wasn't the superstars who sat on the couch on the Wendy Williams show (although she did get a few, like Jennifer Lopez, Aretha Franklin, or Dolly Parton), the host was able to ask those malicious questions and comments that viewers expected to hear. .

"They say you only care about money," she told Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner.

“What happened in that photo where you see white powder around your feet?” she asked Lindsay Lohan.

"I don't want to see you nursing your child in public," she blurted out to Alyssa Milano.

“It makes me uncomfortable.

Breastfeeding lasts for a while, but the rest of the time your breasts are sexual."

He asked exctor Marcus Scribner, when he attended the program at the age of 18: "Are you a virgin?"

To the model and

Draya Michele: "How many NBA players have you slept with?"

"You haven't had much success in the United States with your music," she snapped at Thalia.

"Until you came out on [the US edition of the show]

I didn't know who you were," she told Paulina Rubio.

But it was the section called

was the most famous on his show and the one that has left the most viral and controversial moments.

It started lasting ten minutes in 2008 and reached half an hour in its last seasons.

It consisted of Wendy, alone, unscrupulously commenting on celebrity news.

"My show is what it is and I love what I love: getting into the lives of celebrities," she told

in 2019.

When Whitney Houston died in 2012, Williams broke the news by crying and leaving one of those moments that perfectly define her style.

“Some of the things that Whitney and I had in common, that brought us together, aside from the love of our parents, was that we were both plagued by the demons of addiction.

I haven't smoked crack for fifteen years.

I haven't waited on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx for fifteen years for my drug dealer.

I'm not proud of the girl I was, but without being that girl, she would never be the woman I am today.

I don't know if she makes sense to you guys, but I don't regret anything."

The approach that Williams had to the figure of Houston justified, at least for her, her brutal style: a former drug addict recognized another drug addict, called her to order, tried to help her.

A few months before Houston's death, Williams projected an unflattering photo of the singer, saying, “I remember that girl, it was me.

Sweaty, bad hair, whimpering.

Whitney, you need more than just a doctor's visit.

And while we're at it: I don't believe she's sober and I don't believe you voluntarily went to rehab."

“I know why people listened to my radio show, and it wasn't because of the songs,” he explained in

.

“And I know why people watch my TV show: because of the

.

I do not regret anything.

Some of the things I've been able to say may have hurt, but I sleep very well every night."

Wendy refers there to other moments.

Here are some.

Of Beyoncé she said that she spoke like a fifth grade girl.

Of Meghan Markle he said: "Before I was with a member of a royal family, we didn't even know who you were."

Of Madonna he said that she "she has become that old grandmother that I feel sorry for".

Of Jennifer Lawrence, after personal nude photos of her were leaked, she said: “Don't complain, young lady, it was you who took the photos.

They are there in the cloud for whoever wants to see them, I have seen them several times, applaud [the public] if you too!”.

After reporting that rapper Trey Songz had been arrested after assaulting a woman, she looked at the photo of him on the screen and sighed, “Isn't he gorgeous?”

When actor Terry Crews confessed to being groped by an executive, she sarcastically commented: “Was he eight years old?

You don't seem brave to me for telling this!"

She laughed at Joaquin Phoenix's physique.

“When you shave off that mustache you get that… what's it called, cleft lip?” she said as she teasingly distorted her own lips.

She didn't believe Kesha when she spoke about her being sexually assaulted by producer Dr. Luke.

The two men who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Michael Jackson were not believed.

When the fiancee of host Drew Carey (host of

"When you shave off that mustache, you see that... what's it called, cleft lip?" he said, mockingly deforming his own lips.

She didn't believe Kesha when she spoke about her being sexually assaulted by producer Dr. Luke.

The two men who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Michael Jackson were not believed.

When the fiancee of host Drew Carey (host of

"When you shave off that mustache, you see that... what's it called, cleft lip?" he said, mockingly deforming his own lips.

She didn't believe Kesha when she spoke about her being sexually assaulted by producer Dr. Luke.

The two men who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Michael Jackson were not believed.

When the fiancee of host Drew Carey (host of

in the United States) was killed by being thrown from a terrace by her ex-partner, Wendy released the equivalent of the filler "let's play!", which is

(that is, “come down!”) while she played dead.

No one in the audience was able to laugh.

The list could go on for several paragraphs.

Many viewers and television analysts considered it offensive and cruel;

others, sincere and honest.

In any case, her success did not stop growing.

Her influence was so great that in 2021 a movie about her life (produced by herself) premiered on television and she has her own wax figure at Madame Tussaud's in New York.

But two years earlier, in 2019, that approach to celebrities that she had promoted turned against her when she became the subject of the tabloids.

That year it was discovered that her husband of 21 years, Kevin Hunter, had been having an extramarital affair for almost a decade and his lover had just given birth to a baby girl.

In March 2019, after a few weeks away from the show, Wendy herself confessed that she was living in a controlled apartment with other recovering addicts.

Due to her own statements (the presenter recalled that she had stopped using cocaine without any type of treatment) her viewers feared that she had relapsed into her consumption habits.

She confessed her reasons months later: “She knew what was going to happen [when the news about her husband broke] and I wanted to go to a place where I couldn't drink an entire bottle of wine.

It's not because of the cocaine, I've been clean of it for years.

And I don't take pills.

But when you see your husband's lover with a baby bump and you're a talker with a hit TV show, you know what's going to happen to you.

I needed to go to a quiet place.”

That same year he also lost his mother and, by not attending the funeral, the public learned that he had a bad relationship with his brother.

She was also diagnosed with Graves' disease, an autoimmune condition that causes hyperthyroidism.

Since 2020, her health problems have affected her presence on the show, taking long absences, delaying the premiere of two seasons and, finally, leaving the show so that, while keeping her name, other presenters could replace her. weekly.

Those issues have meant that she hasn't been back on her own show since last October (several hosts substituted for her).

The last blow to her image took place in March this year, when the

published that a New York judge had imposed a guardian on Williams' financial accounts until this July at the request of Wells Fargo, the bank that keeps the presenter's enormous fortune, stating that she was "mentally unstable."

Little has been known about Williams since last October.

In May, she appeared in an Instagram direct with rapper Fat Joe and, although he did not want to detail his financial situation, he confessed: “The truth is that I only have two dollars.

The rest of my assets are frozen and there are people guilty of it.”

His decline comes just like his success: television has changed.

In uncertain times, viewers have opted for the luminosity of formats such as those of Kelly Clarkson (who was beginning to surpass Wendy in audience) or Drew Barrymore, based on luminous news and friendly interviews.

Sherri Sheperd will be taking over from Williams with her own show,

.

Williams, true to herself, only said one thing about it in that Instagram direct: "I don't plan to see it."

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