'Dire and Scary': Wendy Williams Lifetime Doc Producers Say They Became 'Worried' About Her Care Under Guardianship

The team behind the disturbing Lifetime documentary Where Is Wendy Williams?, which showed the former talk show host in the throes of primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, said that their series was intended to expose the "dire" living conditions under her guardianship, RadarOnline.com has learned.

"The deeper we got into it, we didn't want to let go of Wendy until we got her back in touch with her family,” executive producer Mark Ford said during a awards consideration panel in Hollywood on May 1, per PEOPLE. "Because we felt that at a certain point that's who's going to be there for her to care for her."

"You could see Erica and Michael towards the end of the documentary, very, very worried and saying to her management, who was the only other person that was coming into her apartment on a daily basis, 'Something has to be done to help her.' This is getting very dire and scary. And because she was under a guardianship, her family couldn't just fly up and hang out and decide to get involved in her medical care. They were removed from that process by the courts so they could face legal ramifications if they tried to get too involved.”

Ford said that Williams' court-appointed legal and financial guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, was "not responding to any kind of calls for help," and so the documentary "took a turn" and began trying to "expose what these guardianships are like" when the family is not involved.

“I just think, in the end, you really see what happens when a guardian has complete control and the family is cut out and they don't know how she's being treated medically. And they don't know what's happened with her finances," co-executive producer Erika Hanson explained.

Ford added that it was “important” that “there be ways for families to call out abuses if they feel like they're occurring ... And if there are issues, come out and tell the world what they are. The family welcomes that. Just don't keep it in secrecy. Let them answer what the specific things are. It's a very complicated process for [her family]. But I think you could see in the film, they're a lovely group of people who care about their sister, daughter, mother and want the best for her, and who better to be involved in her care than those people, not a stranger."

In February, Morrissey filed a lawsuit in a failed attempt to prevent the docuseries from airing. "She was not, and is not, capable of consenting to the terms of the documentary Contract," the complained stated. "And no one acting in [Wendy’s] best interest would allow her to be portrayed in the demeaning manner in which she is portrayed in the Trailer for the documentary."

"The Trailer, which appears to contain privately-shot footage of W.W.H. in an obviously disabled state, shamelessly exploits W.W.H. and portrays her in an extremely demeaning and undignified manner, incorrectly states that W.W.H. is 'broke,' and cruelly implies that W.W.H.'s disoriented demeanor is due to substance abuse and intoxication," the docs continued.

Ford noted that that were not made aware of her frontotemporal dementia (FTD) at the time; the diagnosis was revealed days before the doc was scheduled to air. "If we had known that Wendy had dementia going into it, no one would’ve rolled a camera," he previously told The Hollywood Reporter.

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Williams was placed under a guardianship in early 2022 when Wells Fargo froze her accounts after her financial adviser claimed that she was of "unsound mind" and vulnerable to financial exploiattion.