“It’s a very intimate experience.”įor “Date Wendy,” hundreds of suitors had been narrowed down to three. “Traditionally, for women at home, watching a daytime-TV show is ‘me time,’ ” Alexandra Jewett, a programming executive at Debmar-Mercury, the show’s production company, told me. Williams came to prominence as a radio jock, and she has a talent for talking to millions of people (her viewership is mostly female, but she also has a big gay following) and making them feel like they’re on a dishy phone call with a friend. Its audience-“Wendy watchers,” in the show’s parlance-regards the fifty-six-year-old hostess as an ultra-fabulous, in-the-know gal pal.

It averages more than a million live viewers a day, with hundreds of thousands more catching up online. “The Wendy Williams Show,” taped live in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, is in its twelfth season, an eternity in daytime years. “My hands are sweaty,” she had confided earlier, during the daily monologue that she calls “Hot Topics.” Met with reassuring applause, she suddenly teared up, and, as a stagehand proffered a Wonder Woman tissue box, she confessed, “No, I’m teary because I can’t believe I have a show.” Williams had on a tousled blond wig, yellow sneakers, and a stretchy patterned dress. It was a February episode of her syndicated talk show, and the segment, “Date Wendy,” was the culmination of a monthlong search. screens, each of which showed a man who was vying to enter her tumultuous, open-book life.

Wendy Williams sat on a plush red sofa facing a trio of L.E.D.

The queen of dirt