Wendy Williams wants out of her current living conditions.
While appearing on the Feb. 27 broadcast of NewsNation’s Banfield, the former talk show host, 60, provided an update on how she was faring in her assisted living facility amid her ongoing battle to end her conservatorship.
“Well, I don’t have the freedom to do virtually anything,” Williams said of her situation. “As far as where I am, I’m on the fifth floor. They call it ‘the memory unit,’ so it’s for people who don’t remember anything.”
“I’ve met the people who live here and I’ve been here for almost a year now, and this is very suffocating,” she continued.
The former Wendy Williams Show personality explained that the type of patients who stay in the memory unit need various “pills” or other forms of medication. She said they are unable to use the shower by themselves and have “a difficult time brushing their teeth.”
“It’s the memory unit, you know what I mean? Why am I here?” she said. “I have no idea, but I can tell you that it’s $18,000 a month, which is extremely expensive. And what do I have? I have a bedroom, and a bathroom and a window.”
For Williams, it isn’t about being in the memory unit. Instead, “it’s about being in this building. I have been in the ward for over three years.”
“It’s a long time,” she continued. “I’m ready to get out of here. I’m ready to get out and get out of the guardianship. It’s suffocating, it’s very lonely.”
This isn’t the first time Williams has opened up about her living conditions. On Jan. 16, the television personalty was in tears as she begged to get her out of her conservatorship and leave the New York City wellness facility she’s been ordered to live in.
“I am not cognitively impaired but I feel like I am in prison,” she said during an appearance on The Breakfast Club. “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.”
Williams claimed the facility does not let her come or go as she pleases, with elevators locked and visitors restricted. She also alleged that the facility regularly administers her medication — some of which she claims she doesn’t know why they’ve been prescribed.
Since May 2022, Williams has been living under a legal guardianship that oversees both her finances and health. She and her court-appointed guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, have been at odds over the status of her wellbeing.
In February 2024, Williams’ medical care team revealed the 60-year-old television personality had been diagnosed with progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Then in November, amid her ongoing legal battle with A&E Television Networks over Lifetime’s Where Is Wendy Williams? series, Morrisey claimed Williams was “cognitively impaired, permanently disabled and legally incapacitated” in court documents obtained by PEOPLE.
After Williams denied she was “incapacitated” on The Breakfast Club, Morrissey requested a “new medical evaluation” in a court filing hours after her appearance.
On Thursday, Feb, 27, Suzanne Bass, a television producer who worked with Williams on her long-running talk show, shared her support for Williams and called for the end of her conservatorship.
“I hadn’t heard from Wendy in years, until last week, my phone rang and it was Wendy,” she began in a video posted to Instagram. “I cried. She cried.”
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“She sounds fantastic. She sounds the best she’s sounded in years,” she continued. “I’ve been learning every day since then, more and more about her story, what she’s been through, what she’s going through, this horrible guardianship she’s in.”
“And so, #Free Wendy all the way, all day, and she really just needs our love and support. Send prayers to her,” Bass concluded.
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