Wendy Williams, the daytime host and former disk jockey, (some would call her a “shock-jock”), had a life-time movie that premiered on January 30th.
Williams helped produced Wendy Williams: The Movie. Celebrity gossip has been Williams’ forte years before her life became fit for a tabloid.
The movie featured Ciera Payton in the lead role and traces Williams’ trailblazing career from her rise in New York and Philly hip-hop radio to the struggles that have played out in her personal life.
Williams has written three books about her life/career and has been very open about her drug abuse. Because Williams’ has been so candid about her life – including her plastic surgery – the movie contained few things that aren’t already known.
The Lifetime movie, directed by Darren Grant, could’ve used the opportunity to fill in what we did NOT know about her successes and setbacks.
Williams has talked openly about regularly using cocaine in the late ’80s and early ’90s. In the movie, Wendy says, “The drug suppressed my appetite and gave me all the chemical courage I thought I needed”.
After meeting her husband Kevin Hunter, she tells him that her parents weighed her weekly, and following an “exhaustive” struggle to control her weight she decided to get breast augmentation and liposuction.
The movie chronicles the ultimate end of her marriage – starting with her discovering her husband’s “double life”. She begins drinking heavily to cope but denies having a drinking problem.
Williams took a three-week leave from her show, just months after she fainted on-air and slurred her speech. A year later, she told viewers she was staying in a sober-living facility – a decision the movie casts as involuntary.
Williams continues to say that the time she spent in a rehab-house was “100% against my will”.
It was during her time in rehab that she finds out that her husband is having a child with his mistress and decides to end the marriage/business relationship for good.
The movie ends with Williams (the real-life one) proclaiming she has no regrets.
