The diminishing returns of The Wendy Williams Show

If you’re not familiar with Wendy Williams host of The Wendy Williams Show, allow me to introduce her to you: Wendy Williams, the 56-year-old mother of one son, is a former Radio DJ turned talk show host, bestselling author, businesswoman and all-round media personality. She began her eponymous talk show in 2008 which puts the show in its 13th season. I don’t recall when I first came across The Wendy Williams Show but by 2015 I was sufficiently in love with Wendy as host and the show that I applied for a free ticket to be one of the studio guests who she calls ‘co-hosts.’ I did get a train ticket but my trip out of Boston, Massachusetts got cancelled as the whole city was snowed in because of a blizzard that caused a 2-day closure of everything. I’m sure you get the fact that I was a fan of The Wendy Williams Show and may want to know why.

I was drawn to The Wendy Williams Show because Wendy said it ‘like she meant it.’ She was that talk show host who said things many people could be thinking of saying but not many were bold enough to say it out loud. Which is how fans of Donald Trump describe him. Now we know there’s a thin line between saying it the way you mean it and being tactless and mean. But I digress. Wendy unlike Trump was witty, could be catty and was on top of the gist and gossip. She was that friend or aunt who was like a guilty pleasure as you found yourself laughing at highly inappropriate things you wouldn’t own up to in public. However, things began to change in the last two years as I noticed that Wendy had too much negativity and was getting more catty than witty. She just had a way of shooting certain positive stories and news down. The sort of advice she gave young girls was sometimes frighteningly cringe-worthy. She’d discourage girls of certain ages from settling down, advising them to live life, etc. What if these women had found real happiness? Who’s to say when real love can show up? Perhaps, she was being affected by things happening in her own life, we’ll never know the full story.

Whatever her motivations, some women felt the brunt of her tongue more than others as Wendy Williams appeared to have the opposite of a soft spot for certain types of women which I wrote about last year with special focus on Meghan Markle and Nicki Minaj. Do these women have anything in common? When Meghan Markle, the actress turned duchess began dating Prince Harry of the British royal family, Wendy didn’t give them any chance in hell of lasting. She was very sure their relationship wasn’t going to last, that Meghan was only acting and didn’t have any real feelings for the Prince, etc. However, when it looked like their relationship had become serious, Wendy found a way to fall in line but only to a certain extent as she’d still find ways to take subtle digs at Meghan.

Wendy’s no big fan of Beyonce either. Always ready to help spread sometimes unsubstantiated rumours. I remember her trying to prove that Beyonce couldn’t have carried her now eight years old daughter Blue Ivy’s pregnancy.  One would’ve expected Wendy who has been public about her own pregnancy struggles to show some empathy. And even though she tries to claim the Black card when it’s convenient, The Wendy Show doesn’t seem to have a special policy of projecting Black public figures positively.

Then there are her opinions on rapper Nicki Minaj which are on a different level. For some reason, Wendy always sides with anyone seen as Nicki Minaj’s rival and would find ways to put Nicki down, sometimes downplaying Nicki’s contributions to rap music. She took Remmy Ma’s side. She also took Cardi B’s side. Well, Nicki Minaj who became Mrs Petty in real life after marrying Kenneth Petty in October 2019, finally responded to Wendy. After Nicki announced her marriage, Wendy was supposedly sending her congratulations by saying of Nicki’s husband: “Now, he served seven years in prison and he’s also a sex offender,” Williams said. “So that means that he…is a manslaughter, a killer? Okay, so he’s a killer and a sex offender. Well Nicki, congratulations.” The fact is, there’s no time Wendy mentions Nicki Minaj that she wouldn’t reel out the whole story about her husband. I suppose Nicki was at the end of her rope and had to reply the talk show host on her own (Queen Radio) show: “Every time you mention him you feel the need to bring these things up. It’s not about doing your job. There are people who report the news and there are people who do it with an evil intent in their heart, viciousness. And I pray for you because I know you’re hurting, and I know you must be sick and humiliated. I didn’t know that in our society, you have to be plagued by your past.. I didn’t know that people can’t turn over a new leaf. I didn’t know that your viciousness and evilness was this deep-rooted, this deep-seated.” Nicki then went to taunt Wendy over her estranged husband Kevin Hunter’s alleged mistress: “…look at where you are now in your life. Look at what age you are. You’re sat up there being vicious all this time and paid for that man’s mistress for all these years. You paid for her shopping sprees, you paid for her hotels, you probably even paid for her GYN bills … you paid to have that baby delivered.”

The foregoing notwithstanding, I was still a fairly regular watcher of The Wendy Williams Show. But since the show returned from the COVID-19 quarantine, things don’t appear to be the same. Everything looks watered down. It isn’t just the absence of studio guests because the social distancing studio guests at the moment are The Wendy Show staff. The change in tone has more to do with Wendy Williams’ lackluster performance as host.

She’s no longer fast on the draw. She loses her train of thought and often forgets the names of celebrities while doing the ‘Hot Topic’ segment and has to be corrected by Norman Baker, her Man Friday and one of the supervising producers of The Wendy Williams Show. Now, instead of being that edgy aunty or older friend, Wendy sounds like that relative you have to endure listening to, that one relative you dread but can’t escape listening to. Her pace is slow and sometimes lethargic. To make matters worse, she seems to have lost her opinionated and sometimes catty self. Sometimes, it’s like she can’t be bothered to string a strong opinion together. Even for stories, you expect her to say something witty or even catty, she more or less shrugs, like: ‘Well..’

There have been all kinds of stories as to what’s responsible for Wendy’s season 13 slowness which I call ‘no-showness.’ I can’t speak to any of that. But the question is: Will The Wendy Williams Show improve as this season progresses? Will the show survive? One thing is certain, the show’s ratings will tell.

Onoshe Nwabuikwu, AIRTIME columnist, is a renowned TV/Film critic, and Film scholar. She also has experience in Advertising as a senior Copywriter and Corporate Communications as Communications consultant. Email: [email protected]