When Lifetime launched its controversial “Where Is Wendy Williams?” docuseries earlier this 12 months, the cable channel credited Williams as an govt producer on the challenge.
But on the time of the documentary’s manufacturing, the previous discuss present host — who was recognized with early-onset dementia and aphasia final 12 months — did not even “have the capability to consent to being filmed,” she mentioned in a press release. reviews his guardian Sabrina Morrissey. filed within the Supreme Court of New York County.
“As is blatantly apparent from the primary minutes of this system itself,” Morrissey mentioned in his September grievance, Williams “was extremely weak and clearly incapable of consenting to being filmed, a lot much less humiliated and exploited.” The case was moved to federal court docket final month.
The grievance asks that the defendants pay Williams unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and asks the court docket to order the defendants to completely cease airing the present.
The defendants within the case — Lifetime dad or mum firm A&E Television Networks, Lifetime Entertainment Services, EOne Productions, Creature Films and the documentary’s govt producer Mark Ford — filed counterclaims towards Morrissey this month.
Representatives for A&E, Lifetime, Creature Films and Ford didn’t instantly reply to The Times’ request for remark Tuesday.
Featured in 4 episodes, “Where Is Wendy Williams?” period offered as a “uncooked and compelling documentary” which adopted the media persona’s life after “The Wendy Williams Show” was canceled in February 2022. The cancellation got here as Williams’ bodily and psychological well being worsened. Filming of the doc started in August 2022, shortly after Williams was positioned below monetary conservatorship, and stopped in April 2023 “as a result of her in poor health well being,” in keeping with court docket paperwork reviewed by The Times.
A month later, Morrissey mentioned in his submitting, Williams was recognized with frontotemporal lobe dementia and first progressive aphasia — each debilitating neurodegenerative illnesses that trigger conduct and language issues, in keeping with the report. National Institute on Aging – which have since left her “cognitively impaired and completely incapacitated”.
After Williams’ prognosis, Morrissey continued, he “fairly assumed the challenge was defunct, provided that no contract had ever been finalized and that (Williams) was clearly not engaged on a podcast or specializing in his profession on the time.” The grievance alleged that Williams may have signed an “on-camera expertise settlement” after filming had already begun, however Morrissey known as that settlement invalid due to Williams’ incapability — and since it was by no means shared along with his guardian or the court docket.
“Completely shocked and horrified” when the trailer for the documentary got here out on February 2, Morrissey mentioned she tried to dam its launch, however an appeals decide denied your request for a restraining order as inadmissible preventive seizure.
Nowhere in his ruling did the decide “handle the validity of the Guardian’s declare that (Williams) was incapable of giving consent,” Morrissey mentioned in his current assertion, including that though they had been conscious of the diagnoses of Williams, the defendants “shamelessly doubled down on their actions.” plan to revenue from the footage they’d wrongfully captured.
“They did this regardless of being totally conscious that this system depicted a severely disabled girl who had no management over her conduct and who had misplaced the power to make acutely aware and knowledgeable selections throughout filming,” he mentioned.
Morrissey claimed in his submitting that whereas Lifetime “profited immensely” from the manufacturing, Williams herself was paid “a paltry $82,000.”
After the documentary’s launch in February, govt producer Mark Ford mentioned The instances that the crew “would by no means have entered into the challenge if we had identified that Wendy had dementia,” including: “The challenge was signed off by her guardian, by her legal professionals or supervisor, by her publicist, by herself after which, finally, by his household.”
“The extra we bought into it, actually, it grew to become extra of a priority (about) what would occur to Wendy’s if we stopped filming reasonably than if we continued,” Ford mentioned. “We additionally knew we had the facility to by no means air it. If this film could not have gone in a redemptive or optimistic course, then I assure you that Lifetime would by no means have aired it, and we would not have been occupied with airing it.
