Did you catch the Wendy Williams biopic last night?
If not, don’t fret — check out some highlights to see what was covered (and what wasn’t) in ‘Wendy Williams: The Movie’ below.
via People:
Wendy Williams: The Movie stars Ciera Payton as the TV personality and follows her entire life, from her upbringing in New Jersey to her tumultuous relationship with ex-husband Kevin Hunter, and yes, the infamous moment when she fainted on screen in costume on Halloween.
Other tough moments the movie highlights are Williams’ substance abuse issues, her experience with sexual assault and her fertility struggles before giving birth to son Kevin, now 20. Still, Williams previously told PEOPLE that “it wasn’t tough at all” looking back on her life.
“The life that I’m living right now is my best life, and I have no guilt about saying that. I don’t regret meeting Kevin, I don’t regret falling in love, I don’t regret staying with him for all 25 years, 21 of them married,” she said during a panel promoting the movie earlier this month.
Williams, who executive-produced the biopic, added that making the movie was a chance for her to clarify some misconceptions about her and present the truth.
“I was able to clear up half-truths and untruths,” she told reporters during the panel. “Just when you think you know, you watch a biopic and you learn a whole lot more — and for mine, I wanted to be very truthful.”
Read below for some of the film’s standout scenes.
Williams (Payton) struggled with her weight from a young age. At one point her mother (played by Liza Huget) even instructed her to start a new diet — only tuna fish in brine with mustard.
As she grew into an adult and got a job at a radio station, however, she noted that cocaine became her new way to lose weight.
“This particular diet was a whole lot more fun than tuna fish in brine with mustard,” she said over a voiceover as the clip showed her doing cocaine in a bathroom stall. “Coke was everywhere in those days, it suppressed my appetite and gave me all the chemical courage I thought I needed.”
Later, as Williams juggled two jobs in New York City and Washington, D.C., she referenced the drug as being her “most important social relationship.”
“By now my relationship with cocaine was the most important social relationship in my life,” she said. “I dated casually, but finding friends who weren’t starstruck by my new fabulous lifestyle were hard to come by. So, I was my own best friend — no one better.”
Among the many romantic relationships featured in the film was one with a man who Williams said “ruined” her credit by renting cars on her credit cards without telling her. In the end, she ended up pregnant with his baby.
“Our relationship, I mean if you could call it that, didn’t even last a year,” she said. “When it was all over, my credit was ruined — and I was growing his seed.”
Ultimately, she decided to have an abortion.
“I went alone and I went in secret,” she narrated of the experience. “I didn’t tell him or anyone else. It was one of the loneliest experiences of my life.”
After deciding to get plastic surgery (a breast augmentation) herself, Williams went on her radio show to discuss the procedure with her listeners.
“If you’re going to lay on the table and have somebody else cut you open, I say you see at least three doctors first, and then decide between them,” she advised. “But most importantly, I say, pay for your own plastic surgery. I mean seriously do you really want some future ex-boyfriend out here talking about how he bought your breasts?”
As she’s speaking, her boss came in to let her know her candid statements have led to a suspension.
“You’re off the air next week,” she said. “You can’t talk about your plastic surgery.”
“You do realize that 80 percent of the stars that we interview here have had work done. I mean Phil saw it, I saw it everybody sees it,” Williams replied, but to no avail.
“You’re off the air for two weeks, and then when you come back — tone it down,” her boss said.
One of the most heart-wrenching parts of the movie was Williams’ fertility struggles as she tried to have a child with now-ex-husband Hunter (Morocco Omari) in the late 1990s.
First, she miscarried at seven weeks when she gets pregnant, and months later had another miscarriage at five months.
Then, Williams found out that her baby is stillborn at five months after getting pregnant for the third time. “Why do my babies keep dying?” she asked a doctor in one scene.
“Wendy, your cervix is a little weak, so when you stand your body isn’t able to hold the weight of a baby,” he said.
“My cervix is a bit weak?” an incredulous Williams replied. “I’ve seen four different doctors, I’ve blamed myself, my husband, the abortion I had in my early 20s. I mean I regretted every time I smoked a joint or took a drink, and now you’re telling me that it’s just as simple as I just need to lie down?”
Having located the source of the problem, Williams eventually gave birth to son Kevin Jr. in 2000 after spending a full nine months on bed rest.
Hunter’s infidelity was a focal point of the film, and it began when Williams was pregnant with Kevin Jr.
Years later, however, after Williams forgave him for the misstep, she learned that he purchased a home in New Jersey not far from her own, where he spent time with his mistress. When she sought out some sort of revenge, Williams asked an employee to drive her to the picturesque suburban home.
“Sit low, duck down — I’m going in,” she told him, before investigating the property, gluing his mailbox shut and spray painting a hot-pink message on his garage door.
“Kevin + Wendy 4EVER” it read, with a heart at the end.
In 2019, Williams’ substance abuse issues resurfaced and she entered rehab and then sober living, all while a scandal was unfolding in the news regarding Hunter fathering a child with his mistress.
At one point in the film, Hunter visited her at the sober living facility in Queens and she confronted him about his extramarital activities. “You’re here to tell me that she’s had your baby,” Williams said of his mistress.
“Was it healthy?” she asked. “Was it a boy or a girl?”
After he confirmed that the baby was a healthy girl, Hunter asserted that despite his mistakes, Williams still had “a problem” that landed her in sober living.
“This isn’t all about me,” he said. “You’re not happy, you’re never satisfied. Look at what I built us and you want to throw it all away? You can lie to yourself all you want, but I know and you know you’ve got a problem.”
“Yeah, well, before I had you, I had me, and not you, nor anyone else has the power to take away my gifts,” she concluded. “You almost broke me Kevin. But you failed.”
We haven’t watched just yet, but we hear Ciera Payton did an excellent job embodying all that is Wendy Williams. We’re sure ‘Wendy Williams: The Movie’ will be re-airing on Lifetime and is On Demand — so check your local listings.
