Another bump in the road. Wendy Williams announced that her talk show is going on hiatus due to her battle with Graves’ disease. A return date has not been announced.
“Recently, Wendy has been dealing with symptoms from her Graves’ disease which is causing fatigue. In consultation with her doctor and as a precautionary measure, she will be taking some time off as she continues to receive treatment,” a spokesperson from The Wendy Williams Show said in a statement to Us Weekly on Monday, May 18. “We look forward to welcoming Wendy back soon and continuing the Wendy@Home shows. More updates on a return date will follow.”
The TV host, 55, announced in February 2018 that she was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease as well as hyperthyroidism, which forced her to take a three-week hiatus from her talk show.
“My doctor has prescribed — are you ready? — three weeks of vacation,” she told her studio audience at the time. “I was pissed. Encore performances, really?”
Williams missed another two months of The Wendy Williams Show in early 2019 after fracturing her shoulder. That March, she announced that she had been living in a sober house in New Jersey. She was also going through a divorce from Kevin Hunter at the time. The former couple, who share 19-year-old son Kevin Hunter Jr., finalized the case in January after 22 years of marriage.
Prior to her latest hiatus, the Emmy nominee had been filming her show from her home kitchen due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If it wasn’t for [my radio career], I could not do this quarantine thing from home properly,” she told CNN on May 5. “I’ve so enjoyed this 11, going on 12, years of doing the talk show with the studio and hundreds of people and clapping and the immediate response. I’ve so enjoyed that, but it is much easier for me as a host to be here at home, with no audience, because it’s always been about description. You know, I’ve been a radio host longer than I’ve been a TV host, so yes, right. Thank God for radio.”
Williams made headlines for saying in the same interview that she thinks other TV hosts working remotely have been “looking disgusting.”
