Wendy Williams’ recent diagnoses with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia reportedly came as a surprise to former staff members of The Wendy Williams Show.
“I don’t think no one knew exactly to the extent how bad it was,” the defunct daytime talk show’s disc jockey, DJ Boof, revealed on a Monday, February 26, episode of TMZ Live. “I felt like people knew something was up with her, but they didn’t really know.”
However, he told the outlet that the last time he saw Wendy in person, she was “100 percent great.”
On Wendy’s worsening health, DJ Boof, 39, whose real name is Clyde Joseph Jr., added that it was “sad to see something like that happen to her” and that the television personality needed “help.” He revealed that when he last spoke to Wendy, 59, last month, he felt that her legal guardian was not letting her family “know exactly what’s going on.”
The disc jockey explained that Wendy “needs 24-hour care,” and that he believes she should be moved to Florida with her family.
Wendy’s recent diagnoses came following years of public concern about her health. In 2017, she famously fainted during a live taping of her talk show’s Halloween episode while wearing a Statue of Liberty costume. The viral moment caused fans to speculate that Wendy had suffered a stroke or a seizure on air, but Wendy eventually offered a more benign explanation.
“I’m a 53-year-old, middle-aged woman going through what middle-aged women go through, if you know what I mean,” she said on her show a few days after the incident. “The costume got hot.”
A statement regarding Wendy’s health, which was released on February 22, addressed her recent tendency to “lose words, act erratically at times, and have difficulty understanding financial transactions.” The decision to share her diagnoses with fans was made in order to “correct inaccurate and hurtful rumors about her health,” per the release.
One day after her diagnoses were revealed, Wendy released her own message thanking fans for their support.
“Let me say, wow! Your response has been overwhelming,” her statement read, in part. “The messages shared with me have touched me, reminding me of the power of unity and the need for compassion.”
Wendy was diagnosed with both conditions in 2023, two years after she ended her 13-year tenure as host of The Wendy Williams Show. The talk show aired for one more season after Wendy’s exit and was hosted by a variety of guest hosts until its final episode in June 2022.
