Wendy Williams’ Producer Reveals How He Feels About the Show’s End – ‘She’s Not Doing Well’
Wendy Williams’ reign as the queen of daytime television and celebrity gossip has ended, at least for now. The final season of her talk show featured all guest co-hosts as reports of Williams’ mental and physical health declining ran rampant. Williams has stated that she’s returning in the form of a podcast. In the meantime, she’s already been replaced by Sherri Shepherd. Williams’ longtime producer Norman Baker recently revealed how he feels about Williams’ show ending, and he says his concern is more about Williams’ health.
Norman Baker was a producer on ‘The Wendy Williams Show’ since the beginning
Baker moved to New York from Chicago with dreams of being a television producer. He landed a gig as a receptionist for Ananda Lewis while she was working on her television show. From there, he worked on VH1’s Best Week Ever. Baker learned of Williams’ show from a colleague and was hired as an entry-level producer.
His chemistry with Williams was there from the start. He told Carlos King during an appearance on the Reality With the King podcast that Williams surprised him by having him be an intricate part of her daily “Hot Topics” segment. Baker worked his way up to supervising producer for the show’s first half.
He will assume the same role on Shepherd’s new talk show set to premiere this Fall. Shepherd replaced Williams’ time slot on FOX and was one of the guest co-hosts who filled in during Williams’ absence.
He says he is mourning the loss of their relationship versus the show because Wendy Williams is not in the best health
Baker says he was thankful to Shepherd and all of the guest co-hosts who stepped in and allowed the staff to keep their jobs in Williams’ absence, but he does feel a level of sadness now that Williams’ show has ended. But, it’s not for the reasons one may expect.
“I’m still kind of in the grieving process. I luckily have like a couple of months off to recharge and re-center for Sherri Shepherd,” he said. “But it’s sad for the culture, it’s sad for my relationship with her. We’re good, we just kind of – we had a working relationship, so I don’t really speak to her as much. There were points where we talked all day, every day. But you know, she’s not doing well, so we don’t really speak as much.”
Baker says he has not spoken with Williams since she went on leave prior to the final season that featured all guest co-hosts. “It’s been a while, it’s been since before this season started. Honestly, if she called me right now, we’d pick up like nothing ever happened. I don’t take it personally,” he added. “Obviously, she’s not in the best of health. It is what it is. Actually, that’s the saddest part about it – is that she’s not in the best fighting form because she’s the G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time). And I remember – you can give her one name, you can just say ‘Kenya Moore,’ and she can just talk for 20 minutes about Kenya Moore, unprompted. So that’s the sad part, and the part I’m still kind of grieving.”
How he feels about Wendy Williams’ lackluster send-off
The show put together a montage of Williams’ best moments throughout her show’s run. Williams did not physically or virtually appear in the final episode. Baker says that was not his decision.
“Honestly, that’s above me. It’s above me now,” he insists. “I actually don’t know what the process was, or I don’t know anything about it, honestly. There were internal talks about what we were going to do, and how we were going to do it. But those are decisions [that] are made above us.”
