Wendy Williams

At 59 years old, Wendy Williams has this physical status:

Wendy Williams Hunter (born Wendy Joan Williams, 1964) is an American television and radio presenter, author, comedian, and media personality.

Since 2008, she has hosted The Wendy Williams Show, the nationally syndicated television talk show. Williams was a radio DJ and host before television, and he quickly became known in New York as a "shock jockette."

She gained notoriety for her on-air spats with celebrities and appeared in the 2006 VH1 reality television series The Wendy Williams Experience, which broadcasts news about her radio show.

In 2009, she was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame. She has written a best-selling autobiography and six others, as well as producing product lines such as a fashion line, a jewelry collection, and a wig line.

The council of Asbury Park, New Jersey, renamed the street on which she grew up Wendy Williams Way on her 50th birthday.

Early life and education

Wendy Joan Williams was born in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on July 18, 1964. She is the second of three children born to Shirley (née Skinner) and Thomas Dwayne Williams. Shirley was a special education teacher while Thomas was the first black school administrator in Red Bank, New Jersey, with a combined three master's degrees; Shirley was a special education instructor; and Thomas was a school principal. Following the 1970 riots in Asbury Park, the family migrated to Wayside, a predominantly white, upper middle class suburb in Ocean Township, New Jersey. Each summer, they attended a Baptist church and explored Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, an African American vacation town. Doctors suggested that Williams be medicated to reduce her hyperactivity as an infant. Since starting to gain weight in elementary school, she suffered from bad body image as a result of her diet. Williams was a Brownie in the Girl Scouts and worked as a candy striper. Her parents hoped she would become a nurse.

Williams graduated from Ocean Township High School in 1982, ranked 360th in the class of 363. Wanda's older sister Wanda's academic success was in contrast to her sister Wanda, who was awarded a University scholarship at the age of 16. Williams' white classmates treated her as she was able to use "white" diction rather than African-American Vernacular English, and she freely used the term nigger around her. She did not get along with the other black students, who said they had the only commonality was smoking cannabis. Williams said she did not listen to hip hop music and instead listened to rock bands like AC/DC because they were popular with her classmates. She appeared as an announcer at her younger brother Thomas' Little League Baseball games.

Williams aspired to become a television anchor at Northeastern University in Boston. She went from television broadcasting to radio because she could advance her career faster, a step in which her parents opposed. Williams earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication in 1986, as well as a minor in journalism to appease her parents. LL Cool J, rapper LL Cool J, was her first celebrity interviewer for the college radio station WRBB, where she was a disc jockey. Williams recapped the soap operas Dallas and Dynasty on air as an intern for Matt Siegel at contemporary hit radio station WXKS-FM.

Personal life

Williams said she was date raped at college and by R&B singer Sherrick in the 1980s. After breaking up with her boyfriend in 1991, she had a six-week abortion. Bertrand "Bert" Girigorie, Williams' first husband, married her later in life. In her autobiography, she says they separated after five months and divorced about eighteen months later. Williams married Kevin Hunter, her second husband, in 1994, on November 30, 1999. Before giving birth to their son, Kevin Samuel, on August 18, 2000, she had suffered several miscarriages before giving birth to their son, Kevin Samuel. After Hunter fathered a child with a mistress, Williams filed for divorce in April 2019. Even though the divorce was finalized in January 2020, Hunter's legal surname remains Hunter.

Williams describes herself as "a multicultural woman who happens to be Black" due to her suburban upbringing. Williams identifies himself as Christian, but no longer attends church services. "God is everywhere" and prays "every day, many times a day," she says. Williams is the author of abortion rights. In 2012, she endorsed Barack Obama in the presidential race and endorsed an NAACP voter helpline. Williams posed for PETA's "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur" campaign last year, claiming, "we should all be safe in our own skin and let the animals keep their own." She favors the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina state house in 2015.

Williams has been breast implants since 1994, and has undergone other cosmetic procedures, such as liposuction and botox. Williams has been open about her cocaine use in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for which she never received medical attention. Since dehydration caused her fainting on her talk show in October 2017, she has opened up about other health problems. Williams revealed in February 2018 that she had Graves' disease, which causes hyperthyroidism, which had been prevalent for nearly two decades. They may have a prominent appearance due to the increased pressure behind her eyes. Williams wears wigs in public due to her thyroid disease, which thins her natural hair. In December 2018, she mistakenly fractured her arm.

Williams said she had been living in a sober house "for some time" and that she had vertigo in March 2019. Williams revealed that she had been diagnosed with lymphedema, a condition that causes swelling in her ankles. Williams was positive for a breakthrough infection of the disease during the COVID-21 pandemic in September 2021. Wells Fargo, Williams' bank, froze her accounts and requested a New York Supreme Court hearing to determine if her medical conditions make her incapacitated and in need of a guardianship in early 2022. Williams' lawyer disputes these allegations and claims that the latter group employs "holistic health professionals."

Williams gave a $1,000 scholarship to a black female high school student who wanted to major in communications at college in 2005. In 2006 and 2007, the finalists were both granted internships at WBLS. In 2009, she led an effort to donate funds and school supplies to Asbury Park Middle School. Williams and her husband founded The Hunter Foundation in 2014, a non-profit group that funded anti-poverty services and provided assistance to people who were transitioning from heroin use to recovery. Following Williams' divorce, the foundation closed in May 2019. Williams became an ambassador and honorary board member of the Lymphatic Education & Research Network in September of that year.

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Career

Williams began her career as a disc jockey on the small, calypso, and reggae-oriented WVIS in Frederiksted, the United States Virgin Islands, but she did not hear as much about radio from her peers as she expected two weeks after graduating from Northeastern. Williams began delivering resumes and demo tapes of herself to other radio stations due to her low salary and loneliness from her family. She left WVIS after eight months and accepted a position at Washington, D.C.'s WOL, but found the oldies radio style incompatible with her personality. Williams continued to send tapes to other stations, and on November 1, 1987, he began as a weekend fill-in on WQHT in New York City. She left WOL after the urban contemporary station hired her full time to work overnight shifts.

Williams was fired from WQHT after two years and briefly served overnight shifts at WPLJ before being hired by WRKS. After WBLS began poaching Williams, WRKS gave him a non-compete clause and a permanent morning position in May 1990. "Wake-Up Club" actress Jeff Foxx and Spider Webb joined Jeff Foxx and Spider Webb. During a segment dubbed "Dish the Dirt," Williams began raving about rappers and celebrities. Many of her interviews, such as Bill Cosby and Russell Simmons, called the station and politely requested that she be fired. WRKS changed Williams to host the evening drive time slot in April 1991 as she rose to become a well-known radio personality. She was the highest-rated host in her time slot in the New York City market by 1993 and received a Billboard Radio Award for R&B Major Market Radio Air Personality of the Year. In 1993 and 1994, Williams co-hosted American Urban Radio Networks' syndicated Top 30 USA song countdown program, as well as USA Music Magazine.

WRKS had seen a ratings decrease in mid-1994 after losing to Emmis Broadcasting's hip hop-oriented WQHT. Williams returned to mornings on September 26, 1994, where she hosted "Wendy and Company" in an attempt to reverse the trend. However, Emmis bought WRKS less than three months later and moved Williams to WQHT, where she began hosting the evening drive time slot on December 12, 1994. Williams was deemed by some as they were turned into a younger demographic for WQHT.

She was kicked out of Hot 97 in 1998. Williams was recruited by WUSL, a Philadelphia urban station ("Power 99FM"). Kevin Hunter Hunter, her husband, became her agent. She was vocal about her personal life on television, addressing her miscarriages, breast augmentation, and heroin use in the past. She aided the station in moving from 14th place in the rankings to second in second place.

When WBLS recruited Williams full-time for a syndicated 2–6 p.m. time slot, she returned to the New York airwaves in 2001. MC Spice of Boston, Williams' companion, contributed his voiceover to the show, often adding short rap verses tailored specifically for Williams' appearance. "When its elements – confessional and snarkiness – are conflated," the New York Times said. By 2008, she was syndicated in Redondo Beach, California; Shreveport, Louisiana; Toledo, Ohio; Columbia, South Carolina; Emporia, Virginia; Tyler, Louisiana; Tyler, Louisiana; and Alexandria, Louisiana; among other states. Williams left her radio show in 2009 to concentrate on her television show and spend more time with her family.

Debmar-Mercury presented Williams with a six-week television trial of her own talk show in 2008. Wendy's World, a syndicated daytime talk show hosted by Williams, was supposed to debut in fall 1997 but never aired. During the summer of 2008, Williams premiered The Wendy Williams Show, a daytime talk show, in four cities. During the tryout, The New York Times declared that the show had a "breakthrough in daytime" by introducing the term "backtalk show." Fox has signed a national broadcasting deal with Debmar-Mercury to air the program on their radios beginning in July 2009. In addition, BET gained television rights to air the show at night. Through BET International, BET International announced that the show was broadcast nationally in 54 countries in 2010. On average, the show has 2.4 million daily viewers, with Williams trading off with Ellen DeGeneres as the country's top female host.

Williams hosted Love Triangle (2011), which featured her and her partner Kevin Hunter as executive producers. Williams appeared as a judge on the Lifetime network's Drop Dead Diva (2011) and served as a guest judge on The Face (2013). Williams was paired as a contestant with Tony Dovolani in the twelfth season of Dancing with the Stars; she was voted second. Williams later alleged that the show's designers portrayed her as an enraged black woman, which was a racial stereotype. Williams appeared in the film version of Steve Harvey's book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, and its sequel, Think Like a Man Too (2014). Williams will enter a "production collaboration" with producers Suzanne de Passe and Madison Jones in 2012 to produce films and television shows aimed at multicultural audiences. These projects will be included in the category "Wendy Williams Presents" and their first project will be a VH1 version of a Star Jones book.

Williams, her husband, and manager, Kevin, were among the first people to start Wendy Williams Productions, a reality television production firm. Unscripted content such as reality television and game shows will be produced by the library. Williams was an executive producer on Celebrities Undercover (2014). Williams also produced a biopic for Lifetime, Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B, which premiered on November 15, 2014. Due to its casting and portrayal of Aaliyah's friendship with R. Kelly, the film drew out controversy. Critics generally had scathing critiques of the book. The documentary series Death By Gossip with Wendy Williams premiered on the Investigation Discovery channel in September 2015, with both hosts and produced by Williams. Williams was selected to appear as Matron "Mama" Morton on the Broadway musical Chicago in 2013. She began her career on July 2 and ended her seven-week tenure on August 11, 2013. In the TV Guide docuseries Wendy Williams: How You Doin', Broadway, she was chronicled. Wendy Williams Productions, Wendy Williams Productions' own production company, made this video.

Williams did not miss an episode of her talk show until February 2018, when she took one week off; however, Williams revealed on February 21, 2018 that her show would be on three weeks of hiatus due to her illness with Graves' disease and hyperthyroidism. Williams had been hospitalized as a result of Graves' illness complications, and her return to the show would be postponed indefinitely as a result. During Wendy's absence, she was aided by guests such as Nick Cannon; she returned on March 4, 2019. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Williams' live audience for two tapings was cut off in early March 2020; Williams' employees filled up the seats. Shortly thereafter, the show's development was halted. The Wendy Williams Show @ Home, broadcast via video chat from Williams' apartment, resurfaced, and production was suspended again due to a outbreak in Williams' Graves disease. Williams revealed in July 2020 that her show will be back to live broadcasting in-studio on September 21, 2020. Williams appeared on "Lips" in 2020, where she was mostly on display due to the costume's weight. She performed the song "Native New Yorker" by Odyssey and became the first member of Group C to be banned and unveiled after her first appearance. Wendy Williams, a documentary producer from Lifetime, has signed Williams to a contract. Wendy Williams' life and film The Movie based on her life.

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