Executive producers Mark Ford and Erica Henson expressed their concerns about Wendy Williams’ health while they were making the Lifetime documentary.
During an awards consideration panel in Los Angeles, Ford and Henson said they were “concerned” about Williams’ conditions during production. through . They noticed she was living alone, with no food in her refrigerator, and tried to contact her family.
“The deeper we got into it, the more we didn’t want to leave Wendy until we could reunite her with her family,” Ford said. “Because we realized at a certain point who was going to be there to take care of him.”
Towards the end of production on The Doctor, Ford recalled that the producers were getting “very, very upset” and telling his manager, who was the only other person to visit his apartment, to do something to help him. need to.
“It’s getting very serious and scary,” he added. “And because she was under guardianship, her family couldn’t just fly in and decide to be involved in her medical care.” was They were removed from the process by the courts so that they would face legal repercussions if they tried to get more involved.
Sabrina Morrissey became Williams’ court-appointed guardian in 2022 after Wells Fargo claimed she was an “incompetent person” and “subject to undue influence and financial exploitation.” At the time, the former talk show host contested the appointment of a guardian ad litem, noting that her health had improved and that she was “absolutely” sane after treatment for Graves’ disease and thyroid problems. . Later, it was revealed that her son, Kevin Hunter Jr., was responsible for the financial exploitation.
During the panel discussion, Ford said that’s when the documentary began to take a turn and try to show “what these patriarchies are like” when the family isn’t involved. Hansen added that it felt “inconceivable” that her son didn’t know where she was and couldn’t call her, even though he had previously tried to help her “with all her addiction issues.” Who was
“I just think, in the end, you really see what happens when a guardian has total control and the family is taken away and they don’t know how they’re being treated medically. “Henson explained. “And they don’t know what happened to his finances.”
“It’s a very complicated process,” Ford said. [her family]. But I think you can see in the movie, it’s a beautiful group of people who care about their sister, their daughter, their mother, and want the best for her, and who better than those who see her. Be a caregiver, not a stranger.”
Morrissey tried to stop the documentary from airing by suing Lifetime’s parent company A+E Networks, citing that the contract to shoot the project was not valid because Williams had neither legal nor mental capacity to consent to his participation. However, the former host was an executive producer on the project alongside Hunter Jr. and his jeweler-turned-manager William Selby.
The guardian’s complaint claimed the four-and-a-half-hour documentary was “a blatant exploitation of a vulnerable woman with a serious medical condition who is loved by millions inside and outside the African American community.” Morrissey’s temporary restraining order was granted before the Supreme Court overturned the network’s First Amendment rights.
When court records were unsealed in March, they indicated that Williams’ guardians, who reportedly would not return calls from producers during production, aired the documentary only after seeing the film’s trailer on Feb. 2. Struggled to stop. The nearly four-minute look made it clear that Morrissey would not be portrayed in a positive light.
Only after watching the trailer of the documentary and realizing her role in Ms. [Williams’] Life can be criticized should Ms. Morrissey enlist the courts to unconstitutionally silence that criticism,” A+E Networks attorney Rachel Strom wrote at the time.
Days before the project aired, news broke that Williams had been diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, a buildup of fluid in the soft tissue of the body, in addition to his Graves’ disease and lymphedema.
In a post-release interview with Doctor Who , Ford said that “If we knew Wendy had dementia, no one would be rolling the cameras,” adding that “it got to the point where we were more worried. What would happen to Wendy if we continued filming.”
Credit : www.hollywoodreporter.com
