BREAKING: DON SPEAKS WITH WENDY WILLIAMS!
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Don Lemon Show. I'm so glad that you are here. As you see, this is Hot Topics. And How interesting that we're doing this on Hot Topics here in New York. Hot Topics, Wendy ran in New York at 10 a.m. She did Hot Topics. She's now the Hot Topic on this show. The reason I called this Hot Topics is because of Wendy was the Hot Topics person and she was no longer doing it. And when I spoke to Sherry, who has Wendy's time slot now, Sherry said, I'm not doing Hot Topics, Don, go for it. So Wendy is our Hot Topics this morning. Okay. And yeah. So I want to talk about this interview that we did with Wendy. OK, and I just want to sort of give you a behind the scenes.
I don't really want to say too much, but I want to give you a behind the scenes of why someone reached out to me. So let me give you the story. So Wendy's niece. OK, look, backstory. There's a lot going on here. I'd been in touch with Wendy's niece and Wendy's sister the entire time because Wendy used to call me and talk to me randomly, and then it all stopped. And I would try to call her, her old numbers. Nothing. The numbers changed. And so she stopped responding. And so her sister and her niece, who is a news reporter in Florida, reached out to me. And then so we started communicating. But Wendy and I go back. I would appear on Wendy's show. She would ask me to do the hot talk topics or hot talk panel with her.
And so we would do it and I would go on. And then when Wendy became sick in the beginning, her team, her production team and the production company asked me to fill in for Wendy while she was out sick. And they asked me to do it once, CNN approved. Then they asked me to do it again. CNN said, it's not part of your deal, but we'll let you do it. And then they wanted me to do it on a more permanent basis until she came back. But I was under contract with CNN and I couldn't. And so. Wendy and I became friendly through her show. And then she and her husband thanked me for filling in. When my sister died, they were very kind to me. Wendy would come on her show when she had a book or a project. And so during COVID, there you see the picture of Wendy and that was my fiance, but husband now.
So during COVID, Wendy, and I'm just being honest, Wendy was calling me up randomly out of the blue. And she's like, hi, Don, it's Wendy Williams. I'm like, Wendy, why are you calling me? And she opened up to me. She said, I'm feeling by myself. I'm feeling lonely. Her mom had died and she hadn't spoken to, she hadn't told the world. No one knew. She said, my mom actually died a few weeks ago, a few months ago. I can't really recall. And I haven't been able to, I haven't told anybody. I haven't been able to see her. I've been here alone in New York. She had just gone through a separation. I don't know if the divorce was final yet. And so she was feeling a certain kind of way about it. And I said this again, this was during COVID.
I felt bad for her. I was like, well, Wendy, you know, I'm out here at the house in Long Island. There's plenty of room. If you would like to come out, come out. So Wendy came out. And so my husband and I, fiance at the time. treated her with kindness. We took her out on our boat. We went, uh, for dinner and we went for lunches and we took her around town and she had a great time. That was in 2020. And then, uh, in the picture you're looking at now, that's her, we were in a restaurant and she looked windy, like the windy, her old self there. She is with, uh, Luann de la Seps, Countess Luann. We all went to on the boat and went to lunch. Um, So she came back a year later for 2021. And again, sort of the same thing.
She had gone through a divorce. It was big news. Everything about her husband and all of this had come out about her husband and the baby and all of this. Okay. Um, so, but we noticed that Wendy was different, not quite, you know, the way she looked in the documentary that was on television that eventually came out on, I think it was lifetime, not quite like it wasn't that windy, but she looked different.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:15
2
How did Don Lemon first meet and become friends with Wendy Williams?
5:15–12:22
3
What personal struggles did Wendy share from her visits during COVID?
12:22–20:32
4
How did Wendy describe leaving her marriage and the story about serving divorce papers?
20:32–41:40
5
How did Wendy sound in the full interview — lucid, incapacitated, or confused?
41:40–44:23
6
Why was Wendy placed under a guardianship and what does she say about it?
44:23–52:47
7
What did Wendy reveal about her living conditions and money under the guardian?
52:47–1:06:17