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Wendy Williams refused medical testing amid her ongoing fight to end her guardianship, her guardian claims.
In an exclusive statement to PEOPLE, Williams’ guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, claims that additional medical testing for the former talk show host, 60, has been scheduled, but Williams has declined to participate. (Her scheduled appointment was on March 21.)
“Medical testing, including an MRI brain scan and neuropsychological assessment, had been scheduled for Ms. Williams,” Morrissey says amid reports that Williams is waiting for her to schedule a new medical evaluation. “The Court directed that the testing be completed in March. Ms. Williams has declined to participate in the testing to date and therefore, the testing was not completed.”
“The parties are not able to address the concerns that have been expressed to the media without the testing,” the statement continues. “Once Ms. Williams undergoes the testing and a full evaluation, the results will inform the next steps for Ms. Williams’ care.”
A source confirms to PEOPLE that “Sabrina is ready to reschedule the scans and appointments as soon as Wendy is ready to participate.”
In an interview with PEOPLE during a #FreeWendy rally outside of her facility on Tuesday, Williams said she was unaware of the guardian’s claim that she had opted out of recent testing.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she told PEOPLE exclusively, before laughing and adding “bulls—. I am open to what I am open to and I can’t talk about it right now.”
Since May 2022, the former TV host has been living under a legal guardianship that oversees both her finances and health. Williams is currently living in a luxury high-rise assisted-living facility in New York to address her cognitive issues and dementia diagnosis in 2023. Morrissey is the only person who currently has unfettered access to her. Williams’ family told PEOPLE last year that she can call them, but they cannot call her themselves.
However, Williams’ health care advocate, Ginalisa Monterroso, exclusively tells PEOPLE that Williams initially wanted to be placed in a guardianship with the courts. She claims her client didn’t know all her rights would be taken away — including having no access to the Internet or a cell phone.
In early 2022, Williams’ 24-year-old son Kevin Hunter Jr. and her ex-husband, Kevin Hunter, were the subjects of public scrutiny when court filings showed that Wells Fargo froze her accounts after her financial adviser at the time, Lori Schiller, alleged that she was of “unsound mind.” In a letter to the court on Feb. 4, 2022 — and obtained by PEOPLE — Williams claimed Wells Fargo had “denied [her] any access, whether online or otherwise, to her financial accounts, assets, and statements” for more than two weeks.
The news comes as the television personality’s fans plan to show their support for her bid to end her guardianship at protests in New York and Los Angeles on April 1.
Last month, Williams’ health care advocate, Ginalisa Monterroso, told PEOPLE that the host is “excited” for a jury to decide if her guardianship should end following additional mental competency testing.
“This is something that she’s been wanting to say, and she just can’t wait to get her story out,” Monterroso said of Williams wanting to clear the air about being mentally incapacitated. “And at the end of the day, she’s going to have a trial by jury, and it will be the jury who will be making the decision.”
Monterroso shared that the trial, which has not yet been scheduled, will follow additional testing from “an independent neurologist.”
The additional testing comes after Williams, who was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in 2023, received a welfare check at her assisted living facility on March 11. She was then escorted out of the building, and EMS transported her in an ambulance to a local hospital “for evaluation,” a spokesperson for the New York Police Department told PEOPLE at the time.
Monterroso claimed Williams “passed” the mental capacity exams at the hospital. She shared, “She was alert and oriented, and we were satisfied with that.”
Williams has also spoken out and denied that she is incapacitated amid her continued fight to end her guardianship. “I am fabulous,” she told Page Six last month. “I’m better than good, but have been accused [of] being otherwise.”
“I am very much alive,” she added. “I deserve freedom, darling.”
Williams previously appeared on Good Day New York and announced that she “passed” the mental competency test at the hospital “with flying colors.” During the interview, she also noted the “most important thing” to her was “getting out of guardianship.”
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Williams also addressed her experience at the N.Y.C. facility’s memory care unit, where she is currently living, calling it “suffocating.”
“I am not cognitively impaired, but I feel like I am in prison,” Williams said during a joint appearance with niece Finnie on The Breakfast Club in January. “I’m in this place with people who are in their 90s and their 80s and their 70s. These people, there’s something wrong with these people here on this floor. I am clearly not.”
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