The producers of the new Lifetime documentary about Wendy Williams say they wouldn't have filmed it had they known she had dementia. Producers Mark Ford, Erica Hanson, and Lifetime’s Brie Miranda Bryant, all spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the making of the piece for an interview published on Monday. Where Is Wendy Williams? aired last weekend, just days after the diagnosis became public.
A major response to the beginning of the documentary was whether it was exploitative. Discussing this reaction, Ford admitted that there were many conversations about what to keep in the film. "But ultimately, we stuck to the truth of our journey as filmmakers," he explained. "And when you watch the film, it’s almost like you’re on the journey of discovery with us."
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Ford further added: "We tried to be as transparent as possible, and the making of the film is as much a story in some ways as Wendy’s story itself. And that’s why we intentionally left a lot of the questions in — we wanted people to understand the journey of the filmmakers and how upsetting it was for all of us in certain instances and also how outrageous in some ways the situations were. Like, Wendy would be left alone without food, completely on her own in that apartment with stairs that she could easily fall down. There was no one there 24/7. So, these are just all the questions we had throughout. But, of course, if we had known that Wendy had dementia going into it, no one would’ve rolled a camera." Check out a trailer for the documentary below.
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Wiliams' care team shared that she had been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, last Thursday. Be on the lookout for further updates on Wendy Williams on HotNewHipHop.
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