Early and personal life

Williams was born on July 18, 1964, in Ocean Township, New Jersey, a suburb of Asbury Park. She is the second of three children born to parents Thomas and Shirley Williams, She grew up in the Wayside section of Ocean Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey. Williams graduated from Ocean Township High School, and from 1982 to 1986, she attended Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, where she graduated with a B.A. in communications and was a DJ for the college radio station WRBB.

In her biography, Wendy's Got the Heat, she uses the pseudonym Robert Morris III to refer to her first husband and describes him as a salesperson. Williams and her first husband have since divorced.

Radio career

Williams began her career working for WVIS in the United States Virgin Islands. In 1989, Williams began at urban contemporary WRKS (now WEPN-FM) in New York City as a substitute disc jockey. WRKS hired her full-time for its morning show. A year later, Williams moved to an afternoon drive-time shift, eventually winning the Billboard Award for "Best On-Air Radio Personality" in 1993. In December 1994, Emmis Broadcasting purchased WRKS and switched Williams to the company's other New York property, hip-hop formatted WQHT ("Hot 97"), as WRKS was reformatted into an urban adult contemporary outlet. She was fired from Hot 97 in 1998.

Williams was hired by a Philadelphia urban station, WUSL ("Power 99FM"). Her husband, Kevin Hunter, became her agent. She was very open about her personal life on air, discussing her miscarriages, breast enhancement surgery, and former drug addiction, and helped the station move from 14th place in the ratings to 2nd.

In 2001, Williams returned to the New York airwaves when WBLS hired her full-time for a syndicated 2-6 p.m. time slot. Williams' friend, MC Spice of Boston, offered his voiceover services to the show, often adding short rap verses tailored specifically for Williams' show. The New York Times stated that her "show works best when its elements - confessional paired with snarkiness - are conflated," and cited a 2003 interview with Whitney Houston as an example. During the highly publicized interview that "went haywire" and included "a lot of bleeped language", Williams "asked, insistently, about her drug and spending habits".

By 2008, she was syndicated in Redondo Beach, California; Shreveport, Louisiana; Wilmington, Delaware; Toledo, Ohio; Columbia, South Carolina; Emporia, Virginia; Lake Charles, Louisiana; Tyler, Texas; and Alexandria, Louisiana, among other markets.

Williams left her radio show in 2009 to focus on her television program and spend more time with her family. She was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.

Lawsuit

In 2008, Nicole Spence, talent booker for The Wendy Williams Experience, filed papers with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission suing Williams. Spence claimed Williams' husband, Kevin Hunter, demanded sex from Spence on many occasions and created a hostile work environment by threatening and assaulting his wife on company premises. On June 11, 2008, Spence filed a sexual-harassment lawsuit against Williams, Hunter, and Inner City Broadcasting Corporation in federal court in Manhattan. Both Williams and Hunter deny the charges.

Television

The Wendy Williams Show

On July 14, 2008, Williams debuted her daytime talk show, The Wendy Williams Show, a 6-week test run on Fox owned-and-operated stations in New York City, Dallas, Detroit, and Los Angeles, during the summer of 2008. Fox Television Stations signed a deal with syndication company Debmar-Mercury at the end of the test to broadcast the show on its station group beginning in July 2009.

In addition to its broadcast syndication coverage, Black Entertainment Television (BET) picked up cable rights to The Wendy Williams Show.

On April 11, 2013, Williams announced on The Wendy Williams Show that she was becoming an ordained minister with the Universal One Church. She donated items from her talk show, including a wig, a script, and "bedazzled pink microphone" to the Smithsonian Institution's daytime television collection in 2014.

Williams was nominated at the Daytime Emmy Awards in 2015 for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host and the show itself was nominated for Outstanding Talk Show/Entertainment.

Other television appearances

Williams has made appearances in the television series Martin (1992) and in the soap opera One Life to Live (2011).

Williams filled in for Jodi Applegate on WNYW's morning television show, Good Day New York (2007), and hosted a game show for GSN called Love Triangle (2011) for which she and her husband Kevin Hunter served as executive producers.

Williams played a judge on the Lifetime network show Drop Dead Diva (2011), was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars(2011), and served as a guest judge on The Face (2013).

In February 2013, it was announced that Williams and her husband and manager, Kevin, were launching a reality television production company, Wendy Williams Productions. that will produce unscripted content, including reality television and game shows. Williams was an executive producer on the show Celebrities Undercover (2014).

Williams also executive produced the Lifetime biopic Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B, which premiered on November 15, 2014. In September 2015, documentary series entitled Death By Gossip with Wendy Williams premiered on the Investigation Discovery channel, both hosted and produced by Williams.

Film

Williams appeared in the film adaptation of Steve Harvey's book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, titled Think Like a Man (2012) and its sequel, Think Like a Man Too (2014).

In 2012, it was announced Williams would enter into a "production alliance" with producers Suzanne de Passe and Madison Jones to create movies and television shows aimed at multicultural audiences. These projects will appear under the heading "Wendy Williams presents" and their first project will be VH1 adaptation of a Star Jones novel.

Filmography

Film

• 2004 The Cookout as Reporter No. 2
• 2011 The Cookout 2 as herself
• 2012 Think Like a Man
• 2014 Think Like a Man Too
• 2014 The Santa Con
• 2016 Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

Television

• 1995 New York Undercover as New York/WQHT DJ (One episode: "You Get No Respect")
• 2010 & 2011 The A-list: New York as Reunion Host
• 2011 One Life to Live as Phyllis Rose (Four episodes)
• 2011 Drop Dead Diva as Judge Mary Rudd (One episode: "Hit and Run")
• 2011 Mob Wives as Reunion Host (One episode: "Reunion")
• 2012 30 Rock as herself
• 2012 Sesame Street as herself (Episode: "Afraid of the Bark")
• 2013 Belle's (One Episode: "Runaway Bride")
• 2013 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Herself (One episode: "Funny Valentine")
• 2013 The Neighbors as Shirley (One episode: "The One With Interspecies F-R-I-E-N-D-S")
• 2013, 2014, 2015 R&B Divas: Los Angeles as Reunion Host
• 2014 R&B Divas: Atlanta as Reunion Host live
• 2016 Wendy's Style Squad as Host

Theater

In 2013, Williams announced she was going to play the role of Matron "Mama" Morton on the Broadway musical Chicago. Williams officially began her tenure on July 2 and finished her 7-week run on August 11, 2013. Her preparations for the musical were documented in the TV Guide docuseries, "Wendy Williams: How You Doin', Broadway?!", which was produced by her own production company, Wendy Williams Productions.

Books

Williams is a seven-time New York Times best-seller and has published several books, including:

Non-fiction

• Wendy's Got the Heat (2003), coauthored with Karen Hunter Atria; 1 edition (August 5, 2003)
• The Wendy Williams Experience (2005)
• Ask Wendy: Straight-Up Advice for All the Drama in Your Life (2013) ISBN 9780062268389

Fiction

• Drama Is Her Middle Name: The Ritz Harper Chronicles, Vol. 1 (2006), coauthored with Karen Hunter
• Is the Bitch Dead, Or What?: The Ritz Harper Chronicles, Book 2 (2007), coauthored with Karen Hunter
• Ritz Harper Goes to Hollywood! (Ritz Harper Chronicles) (2009), coauthored with Zondra Hughes

• Hold Me in Contempt: A Romance (2014) ISBN 978-0062268419

Adorn by Wendy Williams

Williams sells a line of jewelry products on the home shopping network, QVC, called "Adorn by Wendy Williams".

Williams and her husband, Kevin Hunter, commissioned the Chinese-based manufacturing firm, Max Harvest International Holdings, to make 12,140 pairs of shoes bearing the logo of her brand, Adorn. The owners of Max Harvest International Holdings were said to have gone into hiding after the owner of the shoe factory who made the shoes kidnapped one of their managers and held the man prisoner for two weeks before releasing him, and Williams' failure to pay was cited the reason, reported by the New York Daily News. The manager and his wife retained lawyer Staci Riordan of Los Angeles. Their representative says they've been in negotiations for several months in order to reach a settlement. Williams declined to comment on the matter.

Endorsements

Williams was previously a spokesperson for Georges Veselle champagne.

She posed for PETA's "I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur", ad campaign in 2012.

Wendy Williams' HSN Clothing Line

By partnering with the Home Shopping Network (HSN), Williams debuted a line of dresses, pants, sweaters and skirts fit for the everyday woman.The household name media mogul debuted her HSN Clothing line on March 28, 2015. The debut was a "sell-out success" and Williams even told viewers on her talk show that according to HSN, the debut was their most watched premiere since the onset of the program. The Wendy Williams line is sold exclusively at HSN.

Awards

• "Radio Personality of the Year" awards from Billboard, Black Radio Exclusive, and Radio & Records industry magazines
• 2009: named to the National Radio Hall of Fame
• Hosted the 2013 Soul Train Awards Red Carpet
• Hosted the 2014 Soul Train Awards in Las Vegas, which aired on November 30, 2014.
• Nominated for The 42nd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Talk Show/Entertainment and Outstanding Talk Show Host.

Stand-up comedy

Before Wendy turned 50, stand up comedy was on her bucket list

• In 2014 Lipshtick called Williams to participate in their first all-female based comedy series at the Venetian in Las Vegas
• Williams made her sold out comedy debut on July 11, 2014
• Williams comedy tour was called "The Sit-down Comedy Tour."
• Williams returned to Lipshtick on October 31, 2014 and November 1, 2014 after she made a sold out debut in July.
• Williams hosted her "How You Laughin'" Comedy Series at NJPAC on November 15, 2014 featuring Luenell, Jonathan Martin, Pat Brown, Hadiyah Robinson, and Meme Simpson.
• In 2015, Williams announced a 12 city comedy tour called, The Wendy Williams Sit Down Tour: Too Real For Stand Up.

Charities

Wendy Williams supports the following charitable causes: Gay Rights, Animals.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]