Wendy Williams is currently in a treatment center amid her battle with alcohol abuse, a rep for the former talk show host confirmed to Pvnew.
“Wendy is at a facility doing her best to be her best,” her manager, Will Selby, told Entertainment Tonight, who first reported the news, in a statement Wednesday. “She’s taking it day by day.”
Selby told the outlet that he feels like people put out “negative information” about Williams, 58, without ever asking about how she is really doing.
“Why don’t we just stop for a moment and just say, ‘Hey, how is she? Is she doing OK today?'” he added. “Why is that not the focus? Why isn’t that what we’re talking about on a daily basis?”
Selby’s comments come a day after the former “Wendy Williams Show” host’s son, Kevin Hunter Jr., shared his concerns for his mother’s declining health.
The 22-year-old told the US Sun Monday that Williams’ body does not process liquor at the same “rate” that a “normal” person’s body would.
“We’ve spoken about it. I’ve said, ‘This is one thing where you don’t know how to approach it normally, and that’s fine,’ and it’s gotten to a point where, yes, it could have that effect that it might be fatal because it affects her way worse than a normal person since it stays in her system,” he explained.
Not only is Hunter Jr. concerned about his mom’s health, but he’s also worried about the intentions of the people she has around her — which includes Selby — as she remains under a court-ordered guardianship.
“What’s been made more important by the people around her is that while her health may not be great, she needs to keep on earning income, and in my opinion that should not be a priority at all,” he told the outlet.
“And whoever has been hired, they are taking advantage of someone who needs to get better.”
Hunter Jr. — whom Williams shares with her ex-husband, Kevin Hunter — claims that the people around his mom are exploiting her by having her sign contracts while she was in rehab last year.
“I feel that when it comes to people wanting to ‘help’ her, a lot of it is coming from a stance of, ‘OK, she’s alone now. Let’s try to see how we can make her act the way we want her to act or if we can kind of control the rate at which she’s handling herself,'” he told the US Sun.
Selby refuted Hunter Jr.’s claims, telling ET, “Taking advantage of her for what? To get what? To do what? I’m not here to brag, but I was doing just OK before Wendy came along and I insisted on helping her because she requested my assistance.”
The jeweler-turned-manager said that since the “Ask Wendy” author is under guardianship, “everything that she does gets approved” by that guardianship.
“So, no one, even if they wanted to take advantage of her — everything has to get approved by that court,” he said. “So, any type of business dealings that we do, Wendy, myself and anyone — we have to get the guardianship to sign off on it. So how can anyone take advantage of her?”
Williams, who is also battling Graves’ disease, previously hid her battle with alcohol abuse.
However, Pvnew exclusively reported that she was caught drinking at Fresco by Scotto and then The Townhouse in March — a few months after leaving rehab.
She recently dropped out of a speaking engagement at the Atlanta Women’s Expo in May. Williams was reportedly hospitalized, although her publicist, Shawn Zanotti, denied she was in the hospital at the time of the report.
