Wendy Williams Tells ‘The View’ She Wants Out of her Guardianship: “Why Am I Here?”

Wendy Williams wants out of her guardianship. On Friday, the 60-year-old former host of The Wendy Williams Show called into The View and said in no uncertain terms that she wants her conservatorship, run by elder care attorney Sabrina Morrissey, to end: “I don’t want Sabrina. Period.”

In 2022, Williams was placed under a court-ordered conservatorship after a bank claimed that she was a “victim of undue influence and financial exploitation.” In 2023, she was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and primary progressive aphasia, which was revealed to the public in February of 2024. For the past year, Williams has been living in a memory care unit of a New York City assisted living facility and has been placed under a guardianship run by Morrissey.

On Tuesday, The New York Post reported that Williams dropped a note that read “Help! Wendy!!” out of the window of her fifth-story room at her NYC care facility. She was subsequently removed from the assisted living facility and taken to Lennox Hill Hospital, where she passed a psychiatric evaluation, scoring 10 out of 10 on a capacity test.

On Friday, Williams called into The View from the care unit with Ginalisa Monterroso, founder and President of the Connect Care Advisory group, and addressed her living situation and her guardianship. View hosts Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin, Ana Navarro, Alyssa Farah Griffin spoke with Williams and Monterosso over the phone for approximately 20 minutes across two separate segments.

Williams sounded lucid over the phone, beginning the conversation by explaining the circumstances that led to her trip to the hospital. “I went to the hospital. I was having a little agita,” she said. “There’s a hospital where I live, but I needed a breath of fresh air. I needed to see the doctor, you know?” Williams said that she got her blood drawn at the hospital, and independently chose to receive psychiatric evaluation. “How dare they say I have incapacitation,” said an irate Williams. “I do not.” Some of The View hosts affirmed Williams’s claim that she is not psychologically impaired. ”You sound okay to me,” said Behar.

Williams made it very clear that she has had enough of the assisted living facility. “I am not permitted to do anything but stay on this memory unit floor, where these people are 90, 80, and 70,” she said. “Look, I’m 60. Why am I here where people don’t remember anything?” While in the facility, she said she stays in her bedroom and doesn’t engage with the other residents. Hostin noted that Williams helped launch her career by giving Hostin a spot on her radio show, which Williams said she remembered.

“I am a college educated woman. I am a global international person,” she said. “I’ve been doing important things all of my life. And these two people don’t look like me, they don’t dress like me, they don’t talk like me, they don’t act like me,” said Williams, referring to the guardians and the judge in her case.

She continued to rail against Morrissey and the judge, making it exceedingly clear that she wants out of her guardianship. “Get off my neck,” she said. “I can’t do it with these two people again. I’m speaking of the guardians and the judge.”

After a commercial break, Monterroso explained why Williams was put in a guardianship in the first place. She said that Wells Fargo noticed “unusual activity” in Williams’ bank account and proceeded to freeze the account and initiate the guardianship. Williams then said that she didn’t mind the guardianship “at all” at first, because it was there to protect her money. However, now she’s had enough.

“I want to terminate the guardianship and move on with my life, if that’s possible at all,” she said.

What began as a voluntary guardianship quickly turned into something more nefarious, Williams claimed. At the beginning, “everybody played really nice to me,” Williams said. “I was like, ‘Ok, no problem. Where am I going next? I’m going to Connecticut.’ Next thing I know, the entire building was memory units. Nothing but grass and trees and memory units.” Williams said she spent a year at a Connecticut assisted living facility before being transferred to her current assisted living facility in New York. Williams claimed that she has been unable to contact friends and family because her guardian kept her phone.

Griffin noted that Williams has been open about her previous struggles with addiction, and asked Williams what her plan was moving forward. “I’ve had my devices [sic], and I have to tell you something. I am easily going on with my life alcohol free,” she answered, to cheers from the audience. Behar ended the conversation by noting that Williams sounded “really good.” Williams expressed regret that she couldn’t “put on nice clothing and come down to the show,” but expressed gratitude for being able to finally speak her truth.

“I don’t want Sabrina. Period,” she said. “I want to get out of guardian. It’s been over 3 years, you know what i’m saying? It’s time for my money and my life to get back to status quo.”

At the end of the episode, Hostin delivered the following message from Morrisey: “Her legal guardian now believes that it would be prudent for Wendy to under go a new medical evaluation that would involve comprehensive neurological and psychological testing by a specialist in the field. This would be more thorough testing than what Wendy mentioned earlier. The judge has agreed to do that.”

Vanity Fair reached out to Morrissey for comment.