Wendy Williams is speaking out in a video shared on her new Instagram account.
A rep for the talk show host — who’s been M.I.A. from her eponymous show amid health issues and is battling Wells Fargo over her mental stability — shared a video of Williams walking a Florida beach and talking about her break from the spotlight.
“I’m doing OK, ya know?” Williams said to her son, Kevin Hunter Jr., who apparently recorded the five-minute chat. “It’s very peaceful being here.”
The star, who tapes her Wendy Williams Show in New York, has been recovering from her illness — attributed to the autoimmune disorder, Graves’ disease — in Miami. She lives in an apartment with her only son and receives out-patient “holistic” treatments, sometimes arriving at wellness centers in a bathrobe and sans shoes. She said she had extended family living nearby.
In the video, Williams said she takes daily beach walks at 8 a.m. and then hits the gym. After, she watches TV and talks on the phone with friends and family. She added she does “some business. I do call business affairs,” though there have been reports she’s had no contact in months with producers of the show bearing her name. There have been guest hosts with Sherri Shepherd reportedly working out a deal to serve as as “permanent guest host” for the rest of Season 13.
Williams only vaguely addressed her break from showbiz, agreeing with Hunter that she was on one.
“Yeah, this is my break from New York,” she said, though still repping the Yankees with her ball cap as her long locks blew all over from the beach breeze.
“Everybody’s got issues, don’t they?” she said when talking about how she’s focused on taking better care of herself as far as diet and wellness. “At 56 years old, there are things that happen to people,” she said without getting specific. “Things usually start about 40 and they go up from there.”
To people praying for her and wondering about her, Williams vowed, “I am going back stronger … I want to be all I can be and then get back to New York and get on down with the Wendy Williams Show.”
As the video wrapped, Williams went off on her walk down the beach solo — an apparent statement, without verbally making one, that she is not an “incapacitated person.”
That is what her Wells Fargo is alleging. Williams’s now former financial advisor, Lori Schiller, was behind the bank freezing millions of dollars of Williams’s money, claiming the TV star is “of unsound mind” and needs a guardianship. (A guardianship is the term used in New York for a legal arrangement where a court gives a person the right to make decisions for another person who’s unable to make decisions for themselves. In some states, like California, the arrangement is known as a conservatorship — which Britney Spears was famously under.)
An attorney for Wells Fargo said William’s s money was frozen because the bank “has strong reason to believe that [she] is the victim of undue influence and financial exploitation.” She was described as an “incapacitated person.” It’s not specified who is allegedly exploiting Williams.
Over the weekend, Williams’s attorney issued a statement saying the TV host “wants the world to know that she strenuously denies all allegations about her mental health and well-being.” In Williams’s affidavit, she called Schiller a “disgruntled” former employee.
Williams apparently has a new Instagram account (@therealwendywilliamsonline) separate from her show, which debuted in 2008. That’s where this new video was shared today. So was a second video, showing the same beach stroll, but that one had the caption: “Are you ready? She’s back!!!”
Williams’s publicist Shawn Zanotti said the new Instagram is a place for fans to send the star “positive messages, energy and affirmations.”
“She thanks everyone who has been patiently awaiting her return and believes that, thanks in large part to the love and support of her son, her family, her new team of doctors and a change of scenery, she is on the mend,” Zanotti added.
