Interest in Wendy Williams’ net worth once again peaked after the news that her condition had worsened. The television personality established quite a following through her eponymous talk show and achieved immense success, but sadly, her wealth has dwindled since the last time fans saw her on the small screen.
Wendy’s health update
Williams’ court-appointed guardian, Sabrina E. Morrissey, disclosed in new documents obtained by People on Tuesday that the media personality’s early-onset dementia has advanced, and she is now “cognitively impaired, permanently disabled, and legally incapacitated.”
The update comes months after Williams’ diagnosis with progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) was announced by her medical care team in February. At the time, her team admitted that she was diagnosed sometime in 2023, and her condition had started to present “significant hurdles” in her life, but she was “still able to do many things for herself.”
FTD is one of the leading causes of early-onset dementia in middle-aged people between 40 and 65. In the 60-year-old celebrity’s case, her condition progressed quickly, suggesting that there was already significant damage to her brain. Unfortunately, Johns Hopkins Medicine says there is no cure for this condition, only medication to help maintain mental function when the disease has yet to progress.
But while Williams is no longer capable of making decisions of her own, Morrissey has taken full guardianship over her and her financials ever since the court ordered a conservatorship to be put in place when the Drama Is Her Middle Name author suffered a string of health issues, including Graves’ disease, lymphedema, and alcohol abuse, in April 2022.
Wendy’s net worth
Before her conservatorship and health problems, Williams had a significant amount of money to her name. Her famous talk show, The Wendy Williams Show, which ran from 2008 to 2021, was reportedly earning her $55,000 per episode, or $10 million per year since she filmed around 180 episodes, according to Celebrity Net Worth (CNW).
In 2020, two years before her legal guardianship started, Williams’ net worth was reportedly at $40 million. The cancellation of her daytime talk show in 2022 dealt a huge blow to her wealth, and her value was cut in half last year. Then, earlier this year, CNW claimed she was only worth $500,000 when her diagnosis was disclosed to the public.
In Lifetime’s documentary series, Where Is Wendy Williams?, which came out in February, the famous big-haired broadcaster alleged that she no longer had money after her bank accounts were frozen by Wells Fargo because her former financial adviser said she was of “unsound mind” to make financial decisions.
Interestingly, CNW’s updated data shows that Williams’ net worth is now at $5 million even though she no longer has control of her assets. It’s unclear what caused the boost in her net worth in the months after her dire condition was revealed to the public. But knowing Williams, she’s earned all of it through hard work. After all, this is the same woman who ran a TV talk show and a radio show simultaneously, and still had enough time to manage her businesses and investments when she was still well.