Wendy Williams insists she's not 'cognitively impaired' amid dementia battle

Wendy Williams has insisted she's not "cognitively impaired" amid her battle with dementia.

The former Wendy Williams Show host was placed under guardianship in May 2022, and last year her team announced she had been diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia.

In late 2024, her guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, alleged Williams was "cognitively impaired and permanently incapacitated", and the star denied the claim during a rare interview on The Breakfast Club radio show on Thursday.

Addressing her health and her time in a cognitive facility, Williams said, "I am not cognitively impaired, you know what I'm saying? But I feel like I'm in prison. I'm in this place where the people are in their 90s and their 80s and their 70s... There's something wrong with these people here on this floor."

Meanwhile, the TV personality's niece Alex called into the show to support her aunt and explained that while she is able to contact her friends and family, she cannot receive calls and has no access to the internet.

Williams then claimed that she had spent three birthdays alone while in the facility, and sensationally alleged, "This is what is called emotional abuse."

Elsewhere in the conversation, Alex insisted she had spoken to Williams, 60, and she "sounds great".

"I've seen her, in a very limited capacity, but I've seen her and we're talking to her. This does not match an incapacitated person," she said. "And that's why we say she's in a luxury prison, because she is being held and she is being punished for whatever reason that other people are coming up with as to why she has to be kept in this position."