[ad_1]
Manny Carabel/Getty Images
The producers behind Wendy Williams’ new documentary said they would not have started filming it if they had known about her mental health diagnosis beforehand.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Where is Wendy Williams? Producers Mark Ford and Brie Miranda Bryant discussed the news last week that Williams had been diagnosed with new primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia.
“Of course, if we had known Wendy had dementia, no one would have rolled a camera,” Ford said. said Monday in the interview, in which they share that they currently do not know Williams’ whereabouts and that they have not spoken to her since last April when they last interviewed her for the film.
“The diagnosis that was announced was not information that any of us had,” Bryant said. “So people were watching the trip with information that we didn’t have in those first two hours, and I think that’s part of the confusion and upset and outrage.”
The couple responded to some criticism that the documentary could be interpreted as “exploitative,” saying they tried to remain “as transparent as possible” with it. In the document, Williams’ son, Kevin Hunter Jr., reveals that Williams’ dementia diagnosis also came in 2021 and says doctors told him it is alcohol-induced.
“We wanted people to understand the filmmakers’ journey and how disturbing it was for all of us in certain cases and also how outrageous the situations were in some ways,” Ford said. “Wendy, she would be left alone without food, completely alone in that apartment with stairs that she could easily fall down. There was no one there 24/7. So these are just all the questions we had throughout.”
Ford also shared that he was “not familiar” with any of the people attached to the press releases shared about Williams’ diagnosis, other than Williams’ guardian, who sued Lifetime, asking for him to be taken off the air.
“We were surprised? “I don’t think we were surprised,” Ford said. “Of course, we are not medical professionals. But anyone who watches the film can see that there are signs that were there and then progressed rapidly.”
“And besides, dementia is an insidious disease, right? It’s complicated. You’re not really sure what’s going on. So, you can see this journey of discovery throughout these four hours and I hope that people follow it to the end, because then they will see what the final intention was, which was that Wendy’s suffering and the family’s suffering are No in vain,” he added later. “That there is a message here that is universal and that people need to hear and, again, that echoes the experience of thousands of other families under this guardianship system. And making documentaries is always something complicated.”
TO Rolling Stone The review describes the two-part documentary as a “devastating watch” and a “hard pill to swallow.”