Wendy Williams pleads for freedom in rare public sighting

Wendy Williams is pleading for freedom in her first public sighting since February as she remains stuck in an ongoing court-ordered guardianship case.

The TV personality was walking around New York City Wednesday when she was asked by a paparazzo what she had to tell fans about “what she is going through.”

 “I want out!” the 62-year-old said, as she entered a building with a few shopping bags in tow.

Williams, who was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in 2023, was accompanied by a male companion, whom she was seen chatting with during the outing.

The former “Wendy Williams Show” star stepped out wearing a black T-shirt, high-rise jean shorts and black boots. She accessorized with a red handbag.

Williams was placed under a conservatorship in May 2022 after Wells Fargo voiced their concerns for her in a letter to a New York Supreme Court judge, claiming that the talk show host was an “incapacitated person” and she needed a “temporary guardian” to ensure her “affairs are being properly handled.”

The media personality was placed in the guardianship that same month, with Sabrina E. Morrissey, a New York-based attorney, appointed as her legal guardian.

Williams was opposed to the guardianship, telling “Good Morning America” at the time, “They say that I need somebody to handle my accounts, and I don’t want that. I want all my money.”

“I want to see all my money that I worked hard for my entire life. My entire life,” she added. “I don’t lie, and I don’t cheat, and I don’t steal. I am an honest, hardworking person.”

At the time, Williams had also been open about her battle with Graves’ disease, which led her to take a hiatus from “The Wendy Williams Show” in 2020. The show ultimately ended in June 2022 after 13 seasons amid Williams’ health issues.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Graves’ disease is a lifelong (chronic) autoimmune disease that causes your thyroid to make too much thyroid hormone.” 

Then, in 2024, Williams’ frontotemporal dementia and aphasia diagnoses were revealed after a series of tests the year prior, leading her to “lose words” and “act erratically,” per a press release.

Johns Hopkins Medicine defines frontotemporal dementia (FTD) as “a group of disorders that occur when nerve cells in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain are lost,” leading to “problems with thinking and behavior” that ultimately “affect behavior, personality, language, and movement.”

Aphasia, meanwhile, is a condition that affects communication, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Following her diagnosis, she was put into a treatment center, where her family wasn’t able to reach her.

Williams has continued to speak out about her ongoing conditions, including in March 2025, when she tossed a paper to paparazzi outside her NYC-based assisted living home window that read, “Help! Wendy!!”

At the time, she had also signed legal documents to end her conservatorship, but the filing was denied.

The “Dancing With the Stars” alum’s ex-husband, Kevin Hunter, also intervened by filing a $250 million lawsuit attempting to end her guardianship in June 2025, claiming that the conservatorship had “become a weapon, not a shield.”

In the lawsuit, Hunter, who was wed to Williams from 1999 to 2020, alleged that she was “being abused, neglected, and defrauded under the care of court-appointed guardians.”

In November, sources told Page Six that Williams can’t leave the assisted living facility without her guardian’s permission, saying that Morrissey has to “sign off.”

Morrissey’s attorney, however, hit back at several of the claims, referring to them as “untrue, inaccurate, incomplete or misleading,” per TMZ.

In a twist of events, doctors walked back on Williams’ frontotemporal dementia diagnosis in November after she underwent additional testing.

As a result, the “Dancing with the Stars” alum’s attorney Joe Tacopina sought to have her out of the conservatorship by the end of 2025, but his attempt was unsuccessful.