Producers of Wendy Williams' Doc say they wouldn't have made it if they'd known about her dementia diagnosis

The producers back Wendy Williams' new documentary has said they wouldn't have started filming if they had known about her mental health diagnosis ahead of time.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Where is Wendy Williams? Producers Mark Ford and Brie Miranda Bryant discussed the news last week that Williams had been diagnosed with new primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia.

“Of course, if we knew Wendy had dementia, no one would have put a camera on,” Ford said. said Monday in the interview, in which they share that they currently do not know Williams' whereabouts and have not spoken to her since last April, when they last interviewed for the film.

“The diagnosis that was announced was not the information any of us had,” Bryant said. “So people were watching the trip with information that we didn't have in the first couple of hours, and I think that's part of the confusion and the upset and the outrage.”

The pair responded to some criticism that the documentary could be interpreted as “exploitative”, saying they tried to remain “as transparent as possible” with it. In the document, Williams' son, Kevin Hunter Jr., reveals that Williams' dementia diagnosis was also given in 2021 and says doctors told him it was alcohol-induced.

“We wanted people to understand the filmmakers' journey and how upsetting it was for all of us in some cases and also how outrageous the situations were in some ways,” Ford said. “Like, Wendy would be left alone with no food, all alone in that apartment with the stairs she could easily fall down. No one was there 24/7. Well, those are just all the questions we've had all along.”

Ford also shared that he was “unfamiliar” with any of the attachments in the press releases shared about Williams' diagnosis, other than Williams' guardian, who sued Lifetime, asking it to be retracted.

“Did he surprise us? I don't think it surprised us,” Ford said. “Of course, we are not medical professionals. But anyone who watches the film can see that there are signs that there were and then they moved on quickly.”

“And also, dementia is an insidious disease, right? It's hard. You're not really sure what's going on. Well, you can see that journey of discovery in those four hours, and I hope people stay with it until the end, because then you'll see what the intent was ultimately, which was that Wendy's suffering and the family's suffering is not in vain,” he later added. “That there is a message here that is universal, and people need to hear it, and, again, that echoes the experience of thousands of other families under this guardianship system. And documentary filmmaking is always a difficult task.”

ONE Rolling rock The review describes the two-part documentary as a “disastrous watch” and a “tough pill to swallow”.