EXCLUSIVE: Befuddled and barefoot, Wendy Williams's mental and physical health are 'worse than people realize' as she appears swaddled in a Versace robe in public and asleep in Vuitton store next to a glass of bubbly, insisting her comeback is imminent

In Wendy Williams's latest public appearance in a promo clip for her podcast, 'The Wendy Experience,' she stares unblinking into the camera, her cheeks rouged, her smile stretched wide, Wendy Williams wanting the world to know that she's ready for her close up. 'Co-hosts I'm famous,' she announces, 'And I'll be back. Trust me.' But if Williams's promo meant to allay fans' fears that all is not well, then it failed. On Thursday afternoon the former daytime television queen appeared befuddled and barefoot, swaddled in her Versace robe, in the lobby of her downtown apartment building. 

Pictures obtained by DailyMail.com show her speaking animatedly to staff, seemingly oblivious to the strangeness of her appearance. Now, DailyMail.com can reveal that despite her clear efforts to maintain a public profile, Williams's physical and mental health are far more precarious than previously known.

The reality behind the recent string of bizarre appearances – including a rambling interview on TMZ when she displayed her swollen legs and feet on camera, another in which she made the outlandish claim that she had married a New York cop, and a third were she was seen asleep at the Louis Vuitton store – is a woman in crisis.

Williams herself has spoken openly about her struggles with Lymphedema and Graves disease but DailyMail.com has learned the troubles run much deeper. According to her brother Tommy, she is geographically and emotionally isolated from her family. Meanwhile her manager, celebrity jeweler William Selby III, admits that he has to 'fight' her to manage her expectations for a comeback that is, to say the least, premature. 

Speaking to DailyMail.com, one source said, 'Wendy's life and her situation are far worse than people realize. She has been plagued with serious health challenges.' Speaking to DailyMail.com Williams's manager Selby admitted, 'Look at everything Wendy has lost. She's lost her mother, she's lost her show, she's gone through a divorce, she's lost her son to college. She has lymphedema, thyroid issues, she's 58-years-old. We're used to seeing Wendy prepped and on camera but what you're seeing now is Wendy raw. She's going to have bad days.' 

To many it seems that she is having rather a lot of them as of late and in recent pictures she appeared to have lost a dramatic amount of weight. According to the source many of Williams's troubles are 'as a direct result of untreated alcohol addiction' that, they claim, worsened during her stint in rehab for cocaine addiction in 2019 and during her separation and divorce from her second husband, Kevin Hunter.

Today DailyMail.com has learned that Williams's absence from her own set had been a long time coming and that her relationship with alcohol was at the heart of many problems. According to one show insider, 'Williams's drinking wasn't new to her talk show team. She had already been abusing the booze while still married to [Kevin] Hunter but he helped her hide it.' Williams was with Hunter for close to 25 years and married for 21 when she filed for divorce in April 2019. The divorce filing came after a revelation by DailyMail.com that he was having a child with his mistress of 15 years, Sharina Hudson, to whom he has since become engaged. The couple are pictured in 2019 before their divorce.

With the end of her marriage, the insider said, came the end of Hunter's stabilizing – if controlling – influence. They said, 'I remember fans online asking for the network to cancel the show because it was obvious Wendy was on-air drunk. What viewers never knew was that there was easily a dozen other shows where we couldn't even put her on TV because her condition was so bad. One thing Kevin was good for was making sure Wendy could do the show. She never went too far when he was in the picture because she feared him, just like most people on the staff.'

'He led with heavy-handed tactics so even Wendy stayed in line when he was around.' Earlier this year a source told the New York Post's Page Six, 'Maybe Kevin is not exactly the bad guy. He kept things in order. He kept away the so-called friends and hangers-on. With him gone, people were able to get close to her who should not have.' 

According to another insider Williams's sobriety hit an all-time low around June 2021 when she spent a weekend partying with Ray J (pictured). The actor and singer, real name William Ray Norwood Jr. and brother of singer Brandy, was reportedly dating Whitney Houston up to her death in 2012. Williams was spotted hanging out with Ray J 'all over New York City' one June weekend and, the show insider told DailyMail.com, when she turned up at work on Monday, 'she was so intoxicated that producers canceled the show that day and several others that week.' They said, 'Whether it was alcohol, drugs or both; she was never the same after that weekend. She came back to work and was completely out of it. And everyone knew when she failed to get into her own car service that morning and Ray J personally dropped her off at work that she wasn't going to be able to host that week.' 

Williams's health has continued to deteriorate from then on. The last time she hosted her show was July 2021. Behind the scenes her crew was growing increasingly concerned by some alarming symptoms that Williams had begun to display including, one source told DailyMail.com, apparent visual and aural hallucinations. TMZ reported that she spent a period in hospital for psychiatric evaluation shortly after the show announced that she had suffered a breakthrough Covid 19 diagnosis in September 2021. DailyMail.com has learned that a health condition was ultimately diagnosed for which she has undergone treatment. 

News of these troubles broke just as she was gearing up to film Season 13 of her hit show. With no details given, on September 9, 2021, production announced that Williams would temporarily step back from promoting the show to deal with some 'ongoing health issues.' Exclusive pictures obtained by DailyMail.com showed Williams looking frail and in a wheelchair as filming was pushed yet again, from September to October. Finally in November, Williams herself shared a health update. In an Instagram post she wrote, 'I'm making progress but it's just one of those things that's taking longer than we expected. I'm a woman of a certain age, and I know enough to listen to my doctors and will return to my purple chair as soon as we all agree I'm ready.'

That date would never come, and while production batted back questions and promised her imminent return they filled her chair with a string of co-hosts, one of whom, Sherri Shepherd, would eventually claim the show as her own. Meanwhile the health troubles with which Williams battled were compounded by the emotional toll of continued strife in her always turbulent life. 

A source has claimed that Williams is now estranged from her son Kevin Hunter Jr (pictured), 21 – an allegation that her manager denies. Certainly, the mother- son dynamic has long been fraught with Hunter Jr. reportedly issuing his mother with an ultimatum back in January telling her that he wouldn't be in her life 'unless she fixes herself.' The ultimatum came following his mother's release from her brief spell in hospital and during what would become her lengthy hiatus from her daytime talk show. Now, DailyMail.com has learned that, according to one source, during this difficult time Williams's son – who split his time between New York and Miami –  'Had a weekend of partying in a Miami hotel and ran up a credit card bill of about $90,000.' The insider alleged, 'On the Monday when Williams's financial advisor received the notice from American Express Kevin's AMEX was cut off.' 

Speaking to DailyMail.com Williams's manager Selby denied that she was no longer speaking to her son. He said, 'Could they be in a better place, yes, but they talk. The distance of college puts a strain on any relationship and that's happened.' As for Hunter Jr. running up excessive credit card bills, Selby said, 'I wasn't there to see if Kevin went on a spending spree but let's use our common sense. Any child is doing to do stuff that surprises us sometimes and if Kevin did that then Wendy, as his mother, is going to talk to him about it. Wendy loves her son.'

Williams has also endured a turbulent time with her bank restricting her access to her funds. In March 2022, Wells Fargo filed a petition to have Williams's account frozen because the bank, 'has strong reason to believe that [Williams] is the victim of undue influence and financial exploitation.' The bank noted that Williams was an 'established' client of Wells Fargo who had worked with the same financial advisor for the past 15 years. Wells Fargo later filed a petition that saw the court appoint a guardian of Williams's financial interests. According to the source, 'Wendy initially lashed out at her former manager Bernie Young and others and accused them of being accomplices in having Wells Fargo freeze her accounts.' Wendy has since walked back those allegations.

Williams's brother, Tommy, recently expressed his own concern at his sister's estrangement from family in general. Speaking out last month he said, 'I'm very supportive of Wendy so I tried to keep things under wraps in terms of her health. She is fighting. She is struggling. She is working her way back to being Wendy. No, she is not the Wendy we all knew and it's very sad, very heart-breaking, very disappointing and it's very frustrating.' According to Tommy, Williams is rejecting help from those who love her most and he fears that she is vulnerable to people whose intentions are not pure. He said, 'The fact [is] that she needs to be away from people that are going to do her wrong. That's the situation, the fact that her family is all down here in South Florida and Wendy is up in New York by herself.' He added, 'I want to be there badly but I'm not being brought in. It's not because Wendy and I are not in a good space, we are, but mentally she's not on board. She doesn't want me near because she realizes that I'm there to help so I might have some validity to a lot of things I'm trying to push on her so she pushes me away.'

Debmar-Mercury, the company that produced the Wendy show, has been circumspect in their public comments about the star with whom they had such a longstanding relationship. But one insider told DailyMail.com, 'They have cut ties. They love Wendy the person, but the truth is she's not good for business. No TV network or podcast company can insure Wendy at this point in her life. She won't be able to pass a physical and her inability to work consistently over the last three years has been very public. No insurance company in hell would authorize someone doing a deal with her. If she was in good health Debmar would have allowed her back at any point last season.'

Meanwhile, Selby has been frank in his assessment of his client's state of health and her readiness to relaunch herself into the public realm as the host of a podcast which, she claims, will earn her 'much, much more' money than any television show ever could. Selby admitted, 'She's telling me she wants to do the podcast every day. She's ready to do this thing today and I am fighting her off....Wendy is a workaholic, she's been working non-stop 15, 20 years...She's going through a lot. She's still hurting and battling a lot at one time, any person who had gone through half the stuff that Wendy has would have crumbled and at the same time she rushes herself and feels compelled to do things when maybe she should wait a week, or a month. She's a person after all and I would just ask people to remember that.'