Wendy Williams’s life-long friend says what’s REALLY going on with the TV star as she is rushed to hospital… and it’s truly chilling

Wendy Williams’s oldest friend has blasted her ‘controlling’ guardianship as the former TV host was rushed to a New York hospital to undergo cognitive evaluation.

Regina Schell, 59, has been close to Williams since she was 13 years old. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail she spoke out against the restrictive conditions her life-long friend has been placed under. After her long-running talk show was axed in 2022 the TV personality was placed in an assisted living facility due to health issues. 

Things took a dramatic turn on Monday when Williams, 60, who has repeatedly denied being ‘cognitively impaired’ and claims she is being held against her will, was seen being taken to the hospital. It came after the star dropped a note down to paparazzi from her fifth-story room with a desperate plea for help.

Schell told the Daily Mail she fears Williams has been taken advantage of since she was placed under the guardianship of Sabrina Morrissey, a New York attorney.

Schell says she knew Williams, who she has been unable to speak to for nearly two years, had a $55 million fortune in 2022. Yet the star recently told radio host Charlamagne tha God in an interview that she is down to her last $15.

Backing her claim, Schell submitted an affidavit to a New Jersey court saying she was told by Williams’ former publicist that they overheard a conversation in which the former nationally syndicated TV host was told her wealth had dried up.

Things took a dramatic turn on Monday when Wendy was seen being taken to the hospital after dropping a note down to paparazzi from her fifth-story room with a desperate plea for help

In dramatic scenes the embattled talk show host, 60, was led out to an ambulance after she had been seen begging fans for help

Regina Schell (left), 59, told the Daily Mail she believes her friend Williams has been taken advantage of since her talk show was cancelled in 2022

‘She would never fritter away her millions,’ Schell told the Daily Mail. 

In October, Williams’s ex-husband Kevin Hunter demanded that their divorce be ‘set aside’ as he claimed she had ‘fraudulently concealed $48 million’ in their settlement.

Schell told the Mail: ‘I saw her bank statement in 2022 that said she had $55million. I provided an affidavit to that effect for her husband in court, because, as much as he comes off as a horrible person, he sees what is going on with the legacy of Wendy, and how they’re trying to portray her.’

When Schell called Morrissey, the legal guardian, to try and clarify Williams’s financial situation, she claims she was cut off entirely from her long-time friend.

‘Morrissey takes her instructions from the court and is guided by what the doctors say’, insists the guardian’s own lawyer. ‘Within those limits her role is to protect Ms Williams’s physical and emotional health, as well as her assets.’

Early last year it was revealed that Williams had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and aphasia in 2023.

Because of her diagnosis she was declared ‘permanently incapacitated’ by the court in August 2024.

Williams was taken away from her assisted living facility in New York by ambulance at about 11.15am on Monday

The emergency services were summoned after the former talk show queen dropped a handwritten note from her window begging for help (pictured)

Sabrina Morrissey was appointed two years ago to supervise the wellbeing of the TV legend, who was seen attending a private dinner in New York in February 2023

Williams later sparked fears among fans after disturbing pictures emerged of her banging on the window of the New York assisted living facility where she has been placed. 

She was then moved to a ‘memory unit’ in her New York assisted living facility after  she allegedly got drunk at a boozy brunch last month.

In a rare interview with Charlamagne on his The Breakfast Club radio show on January 16, Williams insisted: ‘I am not cognitively impaired, but I feel like I am in prison.’

Williams claimed her cats are ‘gone’ and she could not leave the facility where she was being ‘held’.

‘My life is f***ed up,’ Williams, 60, added. ‘I feel like I’m in prison. I’m definitely isolated. I keep the door closed, I watch TV, listen to the radio and look out the window. I sit here as my life goes by.’ 

An attorney for the guardian Sabrina Morrissey states to the Daily Mail that, ‘Ms Williams resides in an assisted living facility with a full complement of activities, classes, spa treatments, a workout room, 24/7 medical oversight, excellent food, a dining room, and outside terraces. Ms Williams can leave the facility and has done so – to shop, for meals, and for medical appointments – although she usually requires a personal aide and private security to do so.’

Wendy and Schell at their Ocean Township High School reunion in 2003. Schell had numerous photos of Wendy including a photo of her holding her son Kevin Jr taken around 2004

In the summer of 2022, when Schell lived with Williams in New York, they visited Asbury Park, New Jersey, where Wendy and her family lived before moving to Ocean Township

Wendy featured Schell and their annual girls trip to Palm Beach on The Wendy Williams Show, telling viewers what they got up to on their vacation

But according to Williams: ‘I’m in this place where the people are in their 90s and their 80s and their 70s. There’s something wrong with these people here on this floor.’

She said she has spent her last three birthdays alone. 

‘This is what is called emotional abuse. They won’t allow you to leave or have visitors. So you can’t even take a walk if you want to, or take a trip or visit family members. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to see my dad on his 94th birthday,’ she said through sobs.

Williams, the focus of a February TMZ documentary ‘Saving Wendy’, also recently gave a telephone interview to TMZ journalist Harvey Levin who claimed she is not allowed visitors and may not receive phone calls.

But the lawyer for Morrissey says that Williams has not been kept from her family and can call or see them whenever she wants – and she reunited with them late last year. 

‘The guardian has never denied Ms Williams access to her family members,’ the lawyer stated.

Her finances are in such disarray that her family has started a ‘Support Wendy Williams’ Fight for Independence’ GoFundMe page to pay for lawyers.

The page, run by her niece Alex Finnie, has raised $47,070 – 94 percent of the $50,000 target.

Wendy’s struggles were put on full display to the entire nation in the Lifetime documentary that listed her son Kevin Jr as executive producer. It was announced in 2023 that the TV personality had been diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia

Schell believes for much of the guardianship the family – including Wendy’s ex-husband Kevin Hunter and their son Kevin Jr (pictured) – have been left in the dark about her condition

Despite their divorce and Hunter’s bid to overturn their settlement, Schell believes Hunter genuinely cares for his ex-wife’s welfare 

‘For far too long Wendy has faced the challenges of being unjustly placed under guardianship and labeled as incapacitated, despite her strong will and determination to live her life independently,’ Finnie wrote on the page.   

The court has been in charge of the TV legend’s finances for the past two years. 

Williams was reunited with her family in Florida for the first time in over a year last December. She was spotted sitting in a car outside Sista Sara’s Sho’Nuff Oysters restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, alongside her nephew Travis Finnie.

The group was caught on camera picking up a food order of fried oysters as a seemingly coherent Williams thanked staff and even greeted a fan, despite Morrissey’s claims of her cognitive deterioration.

Williams also attended her son Kevin Jr’s college graduation from Florida International University on December 19.

Speaking from her home in Los Angeles, Schell, who was a fashion model for 20 years, said: ‘It looks to me more likely that Wendy has been allowed down to Florida to see family, where many of them are based. 

‘She was surrounded by security, it feels a bit contrived. I’m just not convinced by this video that she’s OK. If she was free to do as she pleases, she’d call me. Really, it’s so smelly. I want my friend to be OK.’

Schell believes that, for much of the guardianship, Williams’s family, including her ex-husband Kevin Hunter and their son Kevin Jr, have been left in the dark about her condition.

Schell explained: ‘There’s this narrative they are portraying that she was out of control. There’s no proof of this.’

Last month the star got emotional while ‘locked in a room’ as she conducted a live phone interview with Harvey Levin  (pictured in 2019)

Schell and Williams have been friends since they were 13. Their mothers were friends and Wendy would often come over to their home after school while her mother was teaching (pictured together in 2018) 

Schell believes that Hunter genuinely cares for his ex-wife’s welfare, stating that ‘we all want the same thing’ when it comes to loosening her guardian’s hold, even though she feels his intentions are likely out of financial self-interest.

Hunter is demanding that their January 2020 divorce deal is overturned after his marital settlement payments were stopped by Morrissey after her appointment as the star’s temporary financial guardian in May 2022.

Hunter claims that he was told at the time of their split in April 2019 that Wendy had just $7million. Now he wants the divorce judgement to be ‘vacated and set aside’ claiming that $48million had been kept concealed.

Wendy’s struggles were put on full display to the entire nation in a Lifetime documentary that listed Kevin Jr as executive producer. 

Schell agreed with Morrissey, who said Wendy would not have agreed to the filming if she was coherent.

Morrissey is suing Lifetime’s parent company A+E Networks claiming it took advantage of Williams in its fly-on-the-wall documentary, Where is Wendy Williams?. 

The lawyer said Lifetime made millions from the documentary while Wendy was paid ‘a paltry $82,000’. 

A+E Networks and Lifetime are countersuing Morrissey, claiming she filed her lawsuit only to protect her own interests.

Wendy’s guardian Sabrina Morrissey filed a lawsuit against A&E Television Networks for its portrayal of Wendy in the Lifetime documentary Where is Wendy Williams? She stated in the opening statements that she is ‘permanently disabled’ and ‘legally incapacitated’

Morrissey claimed the network humiliated Wendy and exploited her alleged impairment 

But Schell did not trust the way Williams was portrayed in the Lifetime documentary. 

‘On the documentary, they showed [stacks] of money. [Williams] would never show money,’ she said. ‘She would never have bottles of alcohol on her table. They had me leave by the time they started filming that stuff. To see it was shocking. She would never do that. I lived there for a couple of months, she did not have alcohol lying around on her countertops.’

‘She did not have her money lying about. She didn’t have her train box of jewelry and riches open for everyone to see. Never, ever.

‘She was always very much in tune with herself. She would never allow herself to be on camera without her wig on. All these things are just very suspicious to me as someone who’s known her as long as I have – very out of character. 

‘If you cared about her and you wanted to portray her in a positive way, that’s not the way to do it. Why would Wendy go along with that?’

Schell and Williams have been friends since high school in Ocean Township, New Jersey.

And it’s because she knows Wendy so well that Schell says she feels unconvinced by what she has been told.

In 2018, Williams admitted to having the immune system disorder Graves’ Disease and in June 2022 she also confessed to losing 95 percent of the feeling in her swollen toes due to the blood disorder lymphedema. In May 2023 she was diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia.

‘The deterioration in this is so quick – that’s what gets me,’ said Schell.

‘Dementia is a progressively deteriorating disease, I get that, but it’s not supposed to happen that quickly,’ Schell said.

‘I’ve never seen her in the state they’re declaring her to be. The whole thing is very suspicious to me. Her dementia has never directly been said to me or anyone that I know of.

‘There’s this background team, who we’ve never seen, telling us she has dementia,’ Schell continued.

‘What’s frightening is that I don’t know where she is, and the fact that she’s in that woman’s clutches is alarming to say the least because you just don’t know if someone’s getting three regular meals a day, it’s pretty unpleasant.’

The guardian’s lawyer says that Wendy is getting ‘excellent food’ and has access to a dining room.

Even though it’s been about two years since the friends have spoken, Schell still believes Wendy has attempted to contact her using an unknown number that consistently cuts out after a few rings.

‘I keep getting these phone calls. Usually, when she’s been in rehab previously they would take her phone, but she would always find a way to get her phone back, and she would always call me first thing.

‘So now I’m getting these calls from a private number, it rings, or a half ring, then it cuts off, and that’s been for the last six months. I really believe it’s her, but she can’t get through.

‘If she’s in such a state, why don’t you just let her live out her years in comfort? If someone is that irredeemable, they don’t sit in an institution – there’s plenty of places she could go.’

Schell is determined to help her friend. ‘I won’t stop until I free Wendy,’ she said.