Wendy Williams Hunter is an American broadcaster, media personality, and writer.
73 Facts About Wendy Williams
2.
Wendy Williams gained notoriety for her on-air spats with celebrities and was the subject of the 2006 VH1 reality television series The Wendy Williams Experience, which broadcast events surrounding her radio show.
3.
Wendy Williams was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2009.
4.
Wendy Joan Williams was born on July 18,1964, in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
5.
Wendy Williams is the second of three children born to Shirley and Thomas Dwayne Williams.
6.
Wendy Williams suffered from poor body image due to the diet her parents put her on after gaining weight in elementary school.
7.
Wendy Williams was a Brownie in the Girl Scouts and volunteered as a candy striper.
8.
Wendy Williams graduated from Ocean Township High School in 1982 among four black students, ranking 360th in the class of 363.
9.
Wendy Williams did not get along with the other black students and said their only commonality was smoking cannabis.
10.
Wendy Williams acted as an announcer at her younger brother Thomas's Little League Baseball games.
11.
Wendy Williams attended Northeastern University in Boston with the intent of becoming a television anchor.
12.
Wendy Williams graduated in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication and, to appease her parents, a minor in journalism.
13.
Wendy Williams was a disc jockey for the college radio station, WRBB, where rapper LL Cool J was her first celebrity interviewee.
14.
Two weeks after graduating from Northeastern, Wendy Williams began her career as a disc jockey working for the small, calypso and reggae-oriented WVIS in Frederiksted, US Virgin Islands, but disliked the role because she did not learn as much about radio from her colleagues as she expected.
15.
Wendy Williams left WVIS after eight months and obtained a position at Washington, DC's WOL, but found its oldies radio format incompatible with her personality.
16.
Wendy Williams continued sending tapes to other stations and on November 1,1987, began as a weekend fill-in on New York City's WQHT.
17.
Wendy Williams was fired from WQHT after two years and briefly worked overnight shifts at WPLJ before being hired by WRKS.
18.
Wendy Williams joined Jeff Foxx and Spider Webb as part of the station's "Wake-Up Club".
19.
Wendy Williams co-hosted American Urban Radio Networks' syndicated Top 30 USA song countdown program in 1993 and USA Music Magazine in 1994.
20.
Wendy Williams was hired by a Philadelphia urban station, WUSL.
21.
Wendy Williams was very open about her personal life on air, discussing her miscarriages, breast enhancement surgery, and former drug addiction.
22.
Wendy Williams helped the station move from 14th place in the ratings to 2nd.
23.
Wendy Williams left her radio show in 2009 to focus on her television program and spend more time with her family.
24.
On July 14,2008, Williams debuted her daytime talk show, The Wendy Williams Show, in four cities during the summer of 2008.
25.
Wendy Williams hosted a game show for GSN called Love Triangle for which she and her husband Kevin Hunter served as executive producers.
26.
Wendy Williams played a judge on the Lifetime network show Drop Dead Diva and served as a guest judge on The Face.
27.
Wendy Williams was paired with Tony Dovolani as a contestant on the twelfth season of Dancing with the Stars; she was eliminated second.
28.
Wendy Williams later alleged the show's producers portrayed her as an angry black woman, a racial stereotype.
29.
Wendy Williams appeared in the film adaptation of Steve Harvey's book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, titled Think Like a Man, and its sequel, Think Like a Man Too.
30.
In 2012, it was announced Wendy Williams would enter into a "production alliance" with producers Suzanne de Passe and Madison Jones to create movies and television shows aimed at multicultural audiences.
31.
Wendy Williams was an executive producer on the show Celebrities Undercover.
32.
In September 2015, the documentary series Death By Gossip with Wendy Williams premiered on the Investigation Discovery channel, both hosted and produced by Williams.
33.
In 2013, Wendy Williams was cast to play the role of Matron "Mama" Morton on the Broadway musical Chicago.
34.
Wendy Williams began her tenure on July 2 and finished her seven-week run on August 11,2013.
35.
Wendy Williams had not missed an episode of her talk show until February 2018, when she took one week off; however, on February 21,2018, Wendy Williams announced that her show would be on three weeks' hiatus due to her complications with Graves' disease and hyperthyroidism.
36.
In early March 2020, the show discontinued its live audience for two tapings due to the coronavirus pandemic; Wendy Williams's staff filled in the seats.
37.
In July 2020, Wendy Williams announced that her show would be returning to live broadcasting in-studio on September 21,2020.
38.
In 2020, Wendy Williams competed on the fourth season of The Masked Singer as "Lips" where she was mostly sitting due to the weight of the costume.
39.
Wendy Williams performed the song "Native New Yorker" by Odyssey and was the first member of Group C to be eliminated and unmasked after her first appearance.
40.
Wendy Williams released an autobiography co-written with New York Daily News journalist Karen Hunter in August 2003 titled Wendy's Got the Heat.
41.
In May 2013, Williams released an advice book, Ask Wendy.
42.
Wendy Williams has written several fiction books, including a trilogy about the life and career of radio shock jock Ritz Harper.
43.
In 2014, Wendy Williams released a romance novel, Hold Me in Contempt.
44.
Wendy Williams said it was co-authored with an English professor ghostwriter.
45.
Wendy Williams interviewed Blu Cantrell in 2003; the conversation was released as a DVD on the singer's album Bittersweet.
46.
In 2014, Lipshtick called Wendy Williams to participate in their first all-female-based comedy series at the Venetian in Las Vegas.
47.
Wendy Williams made her sold-out comedy debut on July 11,2014.
48.
Wendy Williams returned to Lipshtick on October 31,2014, and November 1,2014, after she made a sold-out debut in July.
49.
Wendy Williams hosted her "How You Laughin'" Comedy Series at NJPAC on November 15,2014, featuring Luenell, Jonathan Martin, Pat Brown, Hadiyah Robinson, and Meme Simpson.
50.
Wendy Williams debuted a jewelry and shoe line on shopping channel QVC called "Adorn" in 2012.
51.
In 2013, Wendy Williams released a wig collection to online retailers.
52.
Wendy Williams sold a self-titled clothing line in 2015 on shopping channel HSN and continued the partnership the following year by releasing shoe and winter clothing collections.
53.
City University of New York professor Tanisha C Ford credits Williams for creating the format by which other personalities conduct gossip segments of their own.
54.
The scholars ThedaMarie Gibbs Grey and Bonnie J Williams-Farrier contend Williams is among the African American women who, through their television programs, popularized the term "sipping tea".
55.
Wendy Williams was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2009.
56.
Wendy Williams was honored with the 2,677th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on October 17,2019.
57.
Wendy Williams has repeatedly feuded with celebrities and faced criticism for her comments.
58.
In 2014, Williams openly promoted sperm theft during a segment of her show titled Ask Wendy, in which an audience member claimed she wanted another child but her husband did not.
59.
In January 2018, Williams was criticized by activist Tarana Burke after saying an alleged 14-year-old victim of R Kelly "let it go down" and that she was "sick of this Me Too movement".
60.
In early 2020, Wendy Williams was criticized over several remarks she made on her show.
61.
Wendy Williams refers to him under a pseudonym in her autobiography and says they separated after five months and divorced about eighteen months later.
62.
Wendy Williams met her second husband, Kevin Hunter, in 1994, and married him on November 30,1999.
63.
Wendy Williams suffered multiple miscarriages before giving birth to their son, Kevin Samuel, on August 18,2000.
64.
Wendy Williams identifies as Christian but no longer attends church services.
65.
Wendy Williams believes "God is everywhere" and prays "every day, several times a day".
66.
Wendy Williams has had breast implants since 1994 and has had other cosmetic procedures such as liposuction and botox.
67.
Wendy Williams has been open about her cocaine addiction in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for which she never received treatment.
68.
In February 2018, Wendy Williams disclosed that she has Graves' disease which causes hyperthyroidism, conditions she was diagnosed with nearly two decades prior.
69.
Wendy Williams wears wigs in public because her thyroid condition thins her natural hair.
70.
In March 2019, Wendy Williams said she had been living in a sober house "for some time" and that she has vertigo.
71.
Later that year, Wendy Williams revealed she had been diagnosed with lymphedema, a condition that causes swelling in her ankles.
72.
In 2005, Wendy Williams funded a $1,000 scholarship for a black female high school student who sought to major in communications at college.
73.
Wendy Williams led an effort to donate money and school supplies to Asbury Park Middle School in 2009.