- Hi, how you doin'?
I'm Wendy Williams and I'm in studio
with The Hollywood Reporter.
(upbeat music)
- Can you teach me how to properly say, "How you doin'?"
in true Wendy Williams fashion,
because I need to execute it.
- Dim your eyes and your lips should fall into a triangle,
on the doin'.
How you doin'?
- How you doin'?
- Yeah, a little forceful from the back.
It sound ridiculous.
How you doin'?
- How you doin'?
- That's pretty good, Evan.
- Do you know what, I appreciate that.
I still feel like it's lacking, but you're a great teacher,
and thank you, I really appreciate the lesson.
But I think that just goes to prove that
no one does it like Wendy Williams.
- Well. - There's only one
Wendy Williams and no one's been able to do
what you've done in the past 10 years with your talk show.
- Eleven.
- Eleven? - Point five
if you include. - 10 plus years!
- Yeah, if you include the six week sneak peek.
- Wow.
- Yeah.
- I can't imagine a world without The Wendy Williams Show.
And this has been such an incredible year for you.
You got your star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
you're about to have your own Madame Tussaud's wax figure
which is such an iconic moment for you,
for any public figure.
And not to mention, you have a wig of yours,
a dress of yours, one of your sparkly microphones
in the Smithsonian?
- Yes.
- How does it feel to have your career immortalized
so many times in such a short span of time?
- It feels like I'm talking about somebody else, not me.
- Yeah. - I'm Wendy from Jersey.
Like my family doesn't treat me any different.
The public treats me different but I still don't feel,
my staff doesn't treat me any different.
You know, many of us, we've been there from the first day
of the six week sneak peek.
We've become like family.
- Yeah.
- And I don't want to be treated any different. You know?
I just want my respect from this industry.
It seems as though that's the biggest fight that I have,
so I've given up.
Thank you for having me here, oh, Hollywood Reporter.
I guess I am big-time.
- You absolutely are big-time.
How would you describe the evolution of your show
in the past decade plus?
- Well, we used to be in Hell's Kitchen
which was a lovely studio
for a person who's never had a talk show.
I was grateful for everything there.
When I was told "Wendy, we're moving next season."
I was kicking and screaming.
Like, "No, no, no, no, no, I got my office painted pink,
all my chachkas are hanging up.
This is home, I like it here, why are we moving?
Why do we have to move? Why do we-"
And then it was explained to me by the execs higher up,
"Wendy,
our show is growing and we need a more mature situation."
So we moved to Chelsea, higher rent, and they're right.
We did have to move.
I didn't realize it until we got there, and then,
we got this million-dollar media wall behind me
as I do Hot Topics and you know, give away things.
The media wall does make a difference
and I didn't realize that either, you know.
There's no more painted of cheetah on the floor,
which, I miss that.
Like why can't we have that, you know?
And they're, "Wendy, because we're mature now."
I said, "No we're not."
- Now you're big-time. - Yeah.
- You can't fight it, you can't fight the success.
- I love it, I love it.
So how has the show changed?
We've upgraded in many ways, but still as messy as ever,
which is very important to me.
- Perfectly imperfect.
- Exactly. - Like, wonderfully messy.
- Exactly.
- It's a lot more fun that way for sure.
- It's the show that I would watch if I wasn't doing it.
- The syndicated talk show space
is a really difficult space,
especially over the past ten years.
I mean, let's be real,
there've been a lot more failures than successes.
- There sure have, including some very big names.
- Very big names, yeah.
- With bigger salaries than I have
even in my eleventh season, who have failed, darling.
- So how do you think. - And you know what?
And that makes me feel good.
People are betting on horses
who don't even need to be in the same barn as me.
- Oh, she went there, I love it.
What do you think it is about you that has defied the odds
and what are the specific challenges
that come with the syndicated space?
- Well, I was born to do this, you know.
I'm not a manufactured product, you know.
In sixth grade, I knew, all right,
enough with this, I wanna be a nurse,
I wanna be a school teacher.
I wanna be either a DJ on the radio,
or I want to be a news anchor.
I come from a family of good communicators, you know.
And, so I'm a natural.
The one thing that I have
is that I'm not scared to public speak, at all.
And I'm not scared to public burp,
and I'm not scared to public, you know,
tilt my wig or whatever it is.
I'm not scared,
I've never been scared of that all of my life.
Neither are my mother and father.
My parents walk into a room, forget it, the room stops.
They have this aura and they can talk to everybody,
from the homeless to Heads of State.
- Yeah, obviously runs in the family.
And you've said that it's your parents, Oprah,
and Howard Stern that have had the biggest influence on you.
- Yes, yes.
- How have they each impacted you?
- Well, Howard just because
I feel as though his mother and father,
you know, Ben has since passed away,
but his mom and dad remind me of my mother and father,
you know, "Shut up, stupid, sit down."
That's my parents, are you serious?
You know, my parents
because they taught me the personal side of,
"If you're ever lucky to get successful, Wendy,
"you wanna know how to cook
"for your husband and your family.
"Wendy, you wanna know how to iron correctly.
"You wanna know how to keep your nails done
"and your waist tight and look beautiful for your husband.
"It's not enough that you're successful,
"if you become successful in life."
And she never really told me these things.
My mother is one of my three heroes,
because I learn from observation.
And to this day, she's the same person.
Oh, she cooks for my, she keeps those nails done.
My father has a hot meal every night.
It might be leftovers but it's a hot meal.
She might now because she, you know, she's eighty-four,
maybe she got it from the publics,
but she knows how to pick the right things.
She waits for him to open the door for her.
My father comes around and opens the door.
He treats her like a delicate flower,
and she is a boss but still letting him be the man.
So, that's why she's my hero.
Oprah, being the physically challenged black girl
when she started,
having a real hard time growing up, that wasn't me,
but the thing about Oprah is that she rose.
- Mm hmm.
- She rose, and she let people hear no for an answer.
And I know it wasn't easy for her.
- Yeah. - But look at her today.
- And look at you.
- Well, I don't have a billion dollars.
- You're on your way.
- I'm not staying around long enough for that.
- Wendy, I want to talk about Hot Topics
and the evolution of that.
Because at the beginning of your show,
it was just a few minutes of you talking about pop culture
and now it's a full twenty-five minutes
of you sitting there on the purple chair,
just talking about celebs,
talking to your audience. - Talking, making tea.
- How did it become that and yeah,
how did it become the tent pole of your show
and what's your favorite part of doing it?
- Well, Hot Topics used to be eight minutes
and then it became twelve minutes.
And as our show was still swimming along,
we're doing the best that we can,
that ended up being the most popular part of the show.
But there was still this thing,
"Oh we've gotta book celebrities,
"we gotta book celebrities."
Look, I like celebrities, I like pop culture.
I prefer to talk about celebrities though than to,
you know, if you wanna come, then come to play.
I'm not playing around.
But the connection with my audience, yeah.
I don't mind being raw with my audience,
you know what I mean?
There's no secret,
what I'm going through right now as we sit here.
And I have made it no secret either.
Not my fault, but I'm gonna roll with the punches.
- Yeah.
- My sister who's older than me, she says,
"You're a hero to a lot."
- I would agree with that,
I would definitely agree with your sister for sure.
Yeah, and you're not afraid to get emotional
on your show either and I see you here right now,
you're tearing up and I really appreciate that.
- No, I'll be laughing in thirty seconds.
- Well, let's get to laughing.
I wanna talk about the guests on your show.
Sometimes there's these amazing full circle moments
where you've given someone a good read on Hot Topics
for years and years,
and then they come to your show.
- Isn't that great? - To play.
I love it, how do you navigate those relationships?
I think of the Kardashians,
who you've obviously talked about for years,
but then you're hanging out at KimYe's house
over the summer.
- And I've talked about them since I've left but people,
my watchers, they're so stuck on that I went to the house.
They're saying that I'm on the Kardashian payroll,
and I don't talk about them the same way.
Yes, the heck, I do.
Here's how I run my business, the business side of me.
I've learned to only count on me
and my support staff at the Wendy show.
I've also reckoned with, my career is not celebrity-driven.
At all.
- Okay.
- So that's career.
When I think about my personal life,
which would be my social life and who counts to me,
it's me and my son against the world, you know.
The support of my family and we're thicker than ever.
You know, thanks to this last year, you know.
Sometimes you need to go through things, to reassess things.
All of us.
And then as far as the friends that I have,
I know people.
If I want to go to the celebrity soiree in the Hamptons,
I know how to get there, I know how to get invited.
If I don't wanna go, I don't have to go.
Because,
this level of celebrity has come to me later in life,
I don't embrace it the way I would if I was twenty-five.
If I was twenty-five,
I wouldn't wanna be at every kick up around the city.
I'd wanna be in Barcelona with the running of the bulls,
because that's where, you know,
DJ Khaled's having his birthday party
or something like that, you know.
Now, I feel like,
no, my favorite place to be is in my apartment, you know,
my favorite position is with my legs up in the bed.
And my favorite company, the comfort of a man.
- Nice, alright.
- Or, or family.
And I do know celebrities, I do know them.
And I appreciate them and I, you know,
I don't take advantage of the ones that
we're in each other's lives, but I always let them know.
Now you know.
If we talk about you on Hot Topics,
I'm gonna give you a call,
like 9:30 in the morning,
after I've met with my briefing team
for the production of Hot Topics.
And I'm gonna call you.
And I want you to give me answer as to what is going on.
Because I'm still going to do the story.
- Well, then it's kinda nice
to be friends with Wendy Williams.
- That's what I'm saying.
- There's a benefit to it.
- That's what I'm saying,
but Wendy Williams is not on their payroll.
You know what I mean?
- Right.
- It's not, you know, but Wendy watchers seem to be...
Some of them, seem to be really stuck on that.
Like, "Oh, Wendy's becoming, you know, one of them."
No, I'm not one of them.
Howard is one of them, see.
I'm not one of them.
- Yeah, there's a difference.
- There's a big difference.
- Quickly take me through that day at KimYe's house though,
and could we get them on the show one day?
- I mean, if they wanna come.
- Yeah. - Yeah,
I've a booking department.
They need to get busy, you know.
But we had two months off for summer, so I said,
"What am I gonna do for two months?"
- Go to KimYe's house, duh.
- I know, I keep telling my manager,
"Bernie, just have the bail money ready.
Cause I've a whole lotta fun."
Okay, so I said, you know what?
I'm gonna go out to LA, and I'm gonna go by myself.
No friends,
no nothing.
I'm gonna go out there, I'm gonna stay for a week
at the best hotel in town and I did.
Then I called Chief, that's my assistant.
Get me Kardashians, get me as close as possible.
I don't want an assistant, I want personal numbers.
Now, I'm challenging her.
- She rose to the challenge,
you were walking in the big white hallways.
- A few hours later, right, she calls me back.
She goes, "Here's Kris' number."
I was like,
okay. - Wow, that is like gold.
- Okay, now here we go.
- The things you could do with Kris Jenner's number right?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I called her up, you know I'm out here.
I'm staying here, I told her where I was staying.
I said, "No tricks, no nothing.
I'm by myself, do you wanna have lunch?
I wanna come over."
Next thing you know, I dinged and donged, right?
I told the driver, "Wait, and keep the motor running
"for the first fifteen minutes.
"Just in case they're setting me up", you know what I mean?
- Right. - Like I don't wanna
walk in on a filming of Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
I wanted authentic family day.
- So if there were cameras, you were going to bounce.
- Yeah, or if there was hostility or something.
If I sensed hostility, because I'm insinuating myself
on the first family.
- The first family,
I love that. - Well?
- They could be.
- Well, the Wendy watchers that would say,
"Oh, Wendy, why you calling them that?"
Because get down with the real, who's the first family?
Who's the first family, right?
Alright now.
- She says it like she means it.
- Right, so I dinged and I donged and who opened the door?
Not a servant, Kim, and Kim gave me a hug hello.
And she was like, "Welcome, welcome."
I felt like we'd known each other forever.
And we have known each other forever, but not in that way.
- Right, in a Hot Topics kinda way.
- Right, so I was like,
"Okay, this is all too good to be true,
"all too good to be true, all too."
So she walks me back, we sit in the kitchen
and we're talking, I'm sitting on a bar stool.
Kris comes out, flawless.
Beautiful.
Wonderful.
They had one hired help there that I saw,
but they treated her like family, not like some servant.
We stayed in the kitchen like the whole time
and then here comes Kanye, right?
And then right behind him is Kanye's dad.
It was a real moment, Kanye's very skeptical of me.
You know, but Kanye, he has his thing.
But he invited me to the library, and Kris goes,
"He really likes you if he invites you to the library."
- Wow. - Yeah, for a sit-down.
- You had a sit-down with Kanye inside of the library?
- Yes, yes. - Wow.
- I sat on the couch.
- It went well?
- It went very well, but it was more like,
I talked to him but he was talking at me.
You know what I mean?
- I feel like that's kind of like the classic Kanye,
what he wants, you know? - Yes, yeah.
- Kanye talking at you. - Yeah.
- I feel like that's how he communicates, right?
- Yeah, the rest of the family was very warm,
his father was very warm.
Kanye was just, you know, Kanye.
- Yeah.
- And he started off talking to me with sunglasses on,
and I just, I did ask him,
"Can you take off your sunglasses?"
- Did he comply?
- Yeah, which I thought, oh my gosh, I'm making headway.
With Kanye.
- What a highlight for you and you're in this year
that's been already so insane for you.
Before the year wraps up though, I do kinda wanna
go through some Hot Topics of 2019 with you.
- Some rapid fire topics because a whole heck of a lot
happened in 2019, which of course, you know.
You talk about it everyday on your show.
- I try to erase it from my brain, though.
I've so much on my mind
that if you remember everything about a Selena Gomez
then I would never be able to get stuff accomplished
in my real life, you know?
- Yeah, so it's like in one ear, out the other.
- It's gotta be, it's gotta be.
- I feel that, okay, well first up,
the college admissions scandal.
Do you think that Felicity served enough time?
Do you think Lori Loughlin's headed to the clink?
I mean, what are your thoughts on it all?
- I mean, being a mother, we do anything for our children.
But I wouldn't break the law for my son.
Only because, if I ever got caught,
then it would only be my son against the world.
And I'm behind bars, and ultimately speaking,
the public shame would be something that
I don't know that we could recover from.
So lock them all up, as far as I'm concerned.
I really don't care, that's very rich people,
white people rich problems.
- I see, I see, okay, and the next up is J.Lo and A-Rod.
They got engaged, you know,
and J.Lo's been around for a second.
She's had a lot of loves in her life,
but do you think that they're the real deal?
Do you think she's finally found the one?
- She better have found the one.
If they ever break up, it would break my heart.
I'm so invested in this relationship.
First of all, I still am broken up
that she broke up with Marc Anthony.
I find Marc Anthony to be one of the sexiest men on earth.
And I'm a big girl, that's a little tiny man.
He said this, so I can repeat this.
He's, visually, not the best looking man,
but there is something so manly about Marc Anthony (groans).
She made me look at him as more
than the baseball legend person thing that he is, you know.
He does have that show Game On, I believe.
He is a commentator, he has been on Shark Tank.
Yeah, he's smart, he's smart.
And he was smart enough to get with her,
and he better be smart enough not to cheat on her.
Cause we're all watching you.
- And then lastly,
- I don't want her to get pregnant though,
she doesn't have to prove anything to me.
- Okay, alright.
- You know what I mean?
She doesn't have to prove anything to me.
It seems as though they've the perfect blended family.
She's showing women it's never too late
to find your next love.
And she's also showing women there's nothing wrong
with being in love with love, you know?
Because I've always felt that way myself.
I'm in love with love, I wanna be in love
and that's the way it is.
I need love in my life.
I need the comfort of a man.
I'm not one of these hip-shaking girls.
I don't need a man, hashtag I'm single.
No, if I walk in the hall and see somebody nice,
I'll go right up to him, "Hey".
- I love it, and lastly the Jussie Smollett hoax scandal.
Do you think his career is ruined forever?
- Yup. - Do you think Hollywood
is over him for good?
- Yup. - Yeah, okay.
- He didn't have a strong enough career
to even pull those shenanigans, you know?
Like at least,
I feel as if Felicity Huffman will work again.
Lori Loughlin, I'm not so sure,
cause if she goes to jail for all eleven years
that they're saying that she should go, you know.
But Mossimo's got the money,
she knows she's not gonna be poor.
It's just that, I feel like Jussie's,
the foundation of his career was not strong enough
and is not strong enough
for him to work some place else again.
Like, if I was a gainfully employed actress
and I found out that he was going to be part of
the new cast of my show?
- You'd pull out?
- I would go and complain to my agent,
and then I would find out who else is hired for this show
and I would secretly have little powwows over here
with the other cast and say,
"Look, there's strength in numbers.
"This joker right here,
"I don't know what you think about him,
"but all I'm saying is he's gonna attract unwanted paparazzi
"and attention to the show and not for a good reason."
You know what I mean?
They're not even worried about me working on the show,
they're so busy looking at Jussie, no.
No, I don't think he'll work again.
- So safe to say Jussie's not getting a part
in the Wendy Williams biopic for Lifetime.
- No. - Okay.
- Jussie's not even invited on my messy little show.
- Oh?
- And he's been there before,
and we just talked about guests and things like that.
But I do have a say so.
He's not the first person that I would say no to.
I've said no before, won't tell you.
- Alright, she's saying it like she means it like always.
Wendy Williams, thank you so much for being here.
- Thank you. - It was such a joy
to have you. - Evan.
And the award goes to...
- Wendy.
- Ta-da.
- I love it, thank you.