Wendy Williams is receiving treatment at a wellness facility shortly after her 22-year-old son, Kevin, spoke candidly about his concerns for her mental and physical health. “Wendy is at a facility doing her best to be her best. She’s taking it day by day,” her manager, Will Selby, told Entertainment Tonight on Wednesday, June 7. He then critiqued the media’s coverage of the 58-year-old former television host. “And that’s another thing, too, does anybody even ask like, ‘How’s she doing? Does anyone even care,” Will said. “I feel like everyone just puts out negative information about her and that’s the focus.”
He added, “Why don’t we just stop for a moment and just say, ‘Hey, how is she? Is she doing OK today?’ Why is that not the focus? Why isn’t that what we’re talking about on a daily basis?”
Kevin, the one son Wendy shares with her ex-husband, Kevin Hunter, said he was concerned about his mother’s drinking problems and the people in her life during a June 5 interview with The U.S. Sun. “I know the rate that she uses alcohol isn’t like a normal person and we’ve spoken about it. I’ve said, ‘This is one thing where you don’t know how to approach it normally, and that’s fine,'” he noted. “And it’s gotten to a point where yes, it could have that effect that it might be fatal because it affects her way worse than a normal person, since it stays in her system.”
“There are a lot of people who are very aware that there is an issue with her drinking, and how that issue may be helped, but I think these people are taking advantage of it while allowing it to play out to make it look like they aren’t causing the issue,” he added. Kevin claimed that his mother’s body has trouble processing alcohol, which makes her tendency to drink potentially dangerous.
He also slammed Wendy’s inner circle for allegedly using her for monetary gains instead of focusing on what’s best for her. “I know there are all sorts of things happening that I know in her right mind, she would never agree to,” he explained to The U.S. Sun. “As hard as it is seeing her being taken advantage of, I know that if I’m making sure she, as a person, is okay, that is the important thing. Because eventually, she’s going to realize the craziness that’s been going on.”
Kevin claimed he specifically saw his mother get used when she was in rehab for her alcoholism between Aug. and Sept. 2022. “[Her manager and jeweler] had her in a position where she was agreeing to a lot that she shouldn’t have. When I heard that, that turned me off,” he recalled. “In trying to attempt to know what everyone’s intention is around her, at first, I was like, okay this is the team she wants to have around.”
“But once I heard that she was agreeing to stuff around her rehab, I thought, ‘Well okay, they are taking advantage,'” Kevin continued. “I feel that when it comes to people wanting to ‘help’ her, a lot of it is coming from a stance of, okay, she’s alone now. Let’s try to see how we can make her act the way we want her to act, or if we can kind of control the rate at which she’s handling herself.” He also accused the people around her of “enabling” her alcohol abuse.
However, Wendy’s manager Will denied Kevin’s claims in a statement to Entertainment Tonight on June 6. “Taking advantage of her for what? To get what? To do what? I’m not here to brag, but I was doing just okay before Wendy came along and I insisted on helping her because she requested my assistance,” he clapped back before speaking of her court-appointed guardianship. “Wendy is under a guardianship. Everything that she does gets approved by the guardianship. A court-appointed guardianship. So, no one, even if they wanted to take advantage of her — everything has to get approved by that court. So, any type of business dealings that we do, Wendy, myself, and anyone — we have to get the guardianship to sign off on it. So how can anyone take advantage of her?”
He then spoke directly to Kevin. “If your mother was near death would the first thing you do is call an online publication?” he questioned. “Okay. So, that’s all I have to say about that… I usually don’t do this. I’m only speaking on behalf of my client, and I’m not trying to have a debate with Kevin. You know he’s a young man, and honestly, I feel like he’s gone through a lot. He’s probably dealing with a lot. I have a son that’s the same age as him, and sometimes you just make poor decisions, in my opinion, and I’m just speaking to my son.”
Will concluded, “I’m not here to be combative about whatever allegations he has. He’s entitled to his opinion. I’m just trying to say that us, as adults, let’s be responsible and let’s actually utilize some common sense.”
As fans know, Wendy has been in and out of various treatment centers to manage various health issues over the years, including her rehab stint in 2022 and another in 2021. Her health issues seemingly began in 2017, when she fainted during a taping of her syndicated talk show, The Wendy Williams Show. After a long-term absence from the show, it officially ended in 2021. Some of the health issues Wendy has publicly spoken about include Graves’ disease and lymphedema.
Wendy seemed to be on the rise last August when she announced her new podcast, The Wendy Experience. It has yet to take off.