Execs At 'The Wendy Williams Show' Not Happy With Guest Host Picks

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There’s some drama brewing behind the scenes of The Wendy Williams Show regarding the guest hosts who have been taking over since the start of season 13. An insider told Page Six that management doesn’t know how to relate to Williams’ core audience which is Black. The producers and other staff members feel that the executives are choosing guest hosts who cannot relate to her viewers, like Whitney Cummings, Leah Remini and Michael Rappaport.

“They’re not factoring in the culture,” the inside source said. “The all-white management is out of touch with the demographic, which skews mostly African American.”

They added, “It’s like they’re programming against the culture instead of leaning into it.”

Execs are also annoyed about Rappaport being a guest host for the first week of Black History Month, the insider noted.

For the rest of February, guest hosts who are scheduled to host are Terrence J., Remy Ma, Bevy Smith and Sherri Shepherd, who has brought in the highest ratings. Guest hosts are on the schedule through March 4. Williams doesn’t have a say so about who sits in her purple chair, but the guest hosts are all past guests of hers or have helped her dive into hot topics. When season 13 began, there was a diverse panel of hosts that included Smith, Elizabeth Wagmeister, Devyn Simone and Michael Yo.

Williams was last spotted on her son Kevin Hunter Jr.’s Instagram story looking healthy and munching on a salad and sipping on a smoothie. Since last summer, Williams mental and physical health has been making headlines. Besides getting a breakthrough case of COVID-19, she was voluntarily admitted to the in-patient psychiatric unit at Beth Israel Hospital, was rumored to be showing signs of dementia and wheelchair bound which her brother Thomas Williams, Jr. denied and that she had been drinking while filming last season.

Williams doesn’t have a return date yet.