Wendy Williams’ guardian has filed an amended complaint over Lifetime’s Where Is Wendy Williams? doc , claiming the two-part series was made “without a valid contract” while Williams was “highly vulnerable and clearly incapable of consenting to being filmed, much less humiliated and exploited.”
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It accuses the defendants — which include Lifetime and its parent company, A&E Network — of “willfully taking advantage of a severely impaired, incapacitated person” and making “millions” from the docuseries. Meanwhile, the suit claims Williams “received a paltry $82,000.”
Williams’ guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, is demanding that all the profits from Where Is Wendy Williams? go to Williams, “who will need significant funding to provide for proper medical care and supervision for the rest of her life,” the lawsuit reads. ( Williams was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia.)
“As our complaint shows in painful and excruciating detail, A&E, Lifetime and [producer] Mark Ford viciously and shamelessly exploited Wendy Williams for their own profit while she was obviously incapacitated and suffering from dementia,” said Morrissey’s attorneys Kaplan Martin LLP and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP in a statement. “Their behavior truly shocks the conscience, and they should not be permitted to profit from her suffering. We are proud to represent her guardian in holding them accountable.”
Morrissey filed the amended complaint in New York State Supreme Court on Monday, Sept. 16. She first sued Lifetime, its parent company A&E Networks, and other producers on the doc in February, aiming to block the film’s release a few days before its premiere.
That effort, however, was unsuccessful , and the doc aired as planned. But the legal dispute has not gone away. About a month after Where is Wendy Williams? aired, Morrissey’s original lawsuit was unsealed . It contained claims that Williams — referred to as W.W.H. in the suit — had signed the contract for the doc in Jan. 2023, four months before she was diagnosed with dementia, arguably rendering her incapable of consenting to the project. (The doc’s producers previously said they were unaware of the diagnosis and would not have filmed Williams if they had known.)
The new amended complaint takes that claim even further. It alleges that the doc’s producers presented the contract after Williams had been filmed while “clearly disheveled, not mentally present, and confused.” The suit states that “No person who witnessed W.W.H. in these circumstances could possibly have believed she was capable of consenting either to an agreement to film or to the filming itself.”
Wendy Williams Doc Is an 'Exploitation of a Vulnerable Woman,' Lawsuit Claims
To that end, the lawsuit now suggests that Williams never actually signed the contract. The document “bears a printed, not cursive signature purporting to be the signature of W.W.H., but looks nothing like W.W.H’s signature, which his visually distinct.” The lawsuit alleges that the contract’s signature “does not appear to be genuine,” and “even if [Williams] had signed it (which she did not),” she was still ultimately “incapacitated and unable to consent” at the time the contract was put forward.
Furthermore, the suit claims that the defendants never consulted Morrissey, despite knowing Williams was now living with a court-appointed guardian. “[T]he Guardian was not involved in the creation of the Program [docuseries] or the Contract and was not shown a copy of the Contract until months after it was purportedly executed.”
Morrissey, according to the suit, also claims she was “actively misled” about the film and was “unaware of the damaging way” that Williams was allegedly being filmed. She said she was led to believe Williams was “being treated properly and with respect and dignity,” citing several photos texted to her during filming that showed Williams “on set, professionally made up, well-dressed, and looking beautiful and happy.”
This is why, Morrissey says, she didn’t try to stop the film until right before tis premiere. Had Morrissey known that the production team was “taunting, goading, and tormenting” Williams, per the suit, “she would have sought to stop filming immediately.”
A representative for A&E Networks did not immediately return Rolling Stone ‘s request for comment.
This story was updated at 4:35 p.m. ET with a statement from Morrissey’s lawyers.
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