Days after the premiere of the Lifetime documentary Where is Wendy Williams? The talk show host’s former publicist criticizes the special for exploitation.
While speaking to NBC News about the special, Shawn Zanotti stated that he felt Williams was being exploited. Zanotti also said that the former talk show host had a different idea of what the documentary was going to be like.
“She thought we were focusing on her career coming back,” Zanotti said of the Wendy Williams documentary. “She would be mortified. There’s no way you can convince me that she would be okay with looking at herself and seeing herself that way.”
Zanotti further recalled that producers at Creature Films and eOne Television approached her and Williams about doing the two-part series in 2022. Williams said yes and stated that she would love to do it so she could get her story out there.
“That is not the project that [Williams] I signed up,” Zanotti continued. “That is not the project [the producers] brought to me. That’s not what I told you it would be about. There were many good moments. None of those good moments showed.”
Just before the documentary’s release, it was revealed that Williams had been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
The producers of the documentary stated that they were unaware of his recent diagnosis. Mark Ford, one of the producers, even said: “If we had known Wendy had dementia, no one would have rolled a camera.”
Shawn Zanotti doesn’t believe the filmmakers didn’t know about Wendy Williams’ dementia diagnosis
In response to Ford’s comment, Shawn Zanoitti stated that he didn’t believe the excuse. He also said he doubted Wendy Williams’ diagnosis would have stopped the production team.
“The producers were asking questions the entire time,” Zanotti noted. “I was asking questions where she seemed a little confused, and I feel like it was done intentionally at the time to make her story.”
Zanotti repeated that she and Wendy Williams were presented with a documentary that was far from what the special was. “To me, it seemed like it was a circus reality show,” she said. “A circus of her fall.”
Ford said in his interview that questions were asked during production. “We try to be as transparent as possible,” he explained. “And the making of the film is as much a story in some ways as Wendy’s own story. And that’s why we intentionally left a lot of the questions.”
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn