Details finally emerge about the final season of The Wendy Williams Show
A new report paints a picture of the chaos and uncertainty that underlined season 13

This year saw the end of two long-running daytime talk shows: Ellen and The Wendy Williams Show. While Ellen’s reasons for ending after 19 seasons arrived in dutifully packaged reports on the toxicity behind the scenes which left little room for conjectures, the end of The Wendy Williams Show came accompanied by long weeks of silence, guest hosts, and a myriad of rumors on the controversial host’s wellbeing. Now, a new report from The Hollywood Reporter tries to piece together the final months and days of the meme queen’s 13-season reign.
The windup to the end of The Wendy Williams Show happened over the course of years, starting in 2017 when the host collapsed while shooting the season’s Halloween episode. The interviews paint a picture of chaos, with Williams enduring ongoing health struggles with Graves’ disease and lymphedema, as well as her own battles with addiction. These weren’t necessarily private proceedings, as Williams developed the habit of divulging personal details on camera in between spilling the secrets of high-profile celebrities, but they still increasingly became a cause for concern.
Come September 2021, the veteran cast and crew needed to hear some comforting words from their fearless leader in the form of a Zoom meeting ahead of season 13, which they did not receive.
“It lasted two and a half, three minutes, and it was not pretty,” says Lonnie Burstein, Debmar-Mercury’s Executive VP of Programming. “People were sort of freaked out. She was saying things like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait, I’ll be back with you really soon,’ but it was obvious to anyone watching that she was not going to be back really soon.”