Wendy Williams could start the new year with a new sense of freedom.
The former talk show host’s lawyer says he is working to get Williams out of her court-appointed guardianship “by year’s end.”
Related: Wendy Williams Tells ‘The View’: I Want Guardian ‘Off My Neck’
Attorney Joe Tacopina offered that update during a Dec. 9 interview on ABC’s Nightline.
“It’s very scary that someone like Wendy Williams can be in that position because it’s a situation that she cannot get out of right now, Tacopina told Nightline.
The attorney added that Williams has been evaluated by a respected New York City neurologist, who concluded the 61-year-old media personality is not suffering from frontotemporal dementia and aphasia, contradicting a 2023 diagnosis.
“Williams does not have frontotemporal dementia,” the attorney said.
Instead, he told ABC she was dealing with symptoms brought on by alcoholism at the time that she was diagnosed.
“There’s something called alcohol-induced dementia. That may have been something Wendy was suffering from… She was an alcoholic, no question about it,” Tacopina said. “Wendy was drunk almost 24 hours a day. She looked like she needed help. She did need help. She needed alcohol rehabilitation.”
Williams is currently living in a memory care center in New York City under close watch. A security key is required to access her floor, and she’s not allowed to go outside without authorization.
Tacopina said Williams is now sober and “does not drink alcohol.”
This isn’t the first time someone close to Williams has said she had alcohol-induced dementia.
In the 2024 Lifetime documentary Where is Wendy Williams?, her son Kevin Hunter Jr. said he took his mom in for medical testing in 2021, and she was diagnosed with alcohol-induced dementia, as we previously reported.
The documentary showed Williams spending her days in bed drinking, after her daytime talk show was canceled. There was an empty vodka bottle in her bedroom and no food in the refrigerator.
Williams has been under a court-ordered guardianship since Wells Fargo froze her bank accounts and filed a petition to a New York court in 2022. The bank suggested Williams needed someone to oversee her affairs amid concerns she was “the victim of undue influence and financial exploitation.”
The television and radio personality’s son had power of attorney at the time, it was revealed in the Lifetime docuseries. But a judge had her legally removed from the care of Kevin Jr. and her family.
Earlier this year, Williams revealed in the Tubi documentary TMZ Presents: Saving Wendy, that her son’s lavish spending triggered the bank’s concerns.
“My son, he overstepped his boundaries in terms of me. He overstepped his boundaries and he was inappropriately using my money without telling me crap about it,” she said.
Williams’ nephew Travis detailed some of the spending in the Lifetime documentary. According to Travis, Kevin Jr. spent more than $200,000 of his mom’s money in one year.
“To put it all in perspective, Kevin’s birthday party that his mom threw that year was like $120,000. Kevin’s rent was $80,000. Kevin’s Uber Eats probably exceeded $100,000 that his mom approves,” Travis said.
A Lifetime producer later asked Kevin Jr. if he had ever taken money from his mom’s bank account. He responded, “Not without her consent.”
Watch the ABC News interview here.
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