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It’s been almost a full year since Wendy Williams was last seen in her famous purple chair discussing Hot Topics and treating celebs to the signature Shoe Cam on The Wendy Williams Show. A health decline last fall forced her to miss the entire duration of Season 14, which as we know now will be the final one before Sherri Shepherd takes over the time slot with her own show.

Even though there’s been no word on Wendy returning to her namesake show anytime soon, some may still find it shocking to know that she won’t even be returning for the series finale airing this Friday.

According to Variety, The Wendy Williams Show‘s final episode will feature only a video montage of Willams over the span of her iconic 13-year run on daytime television. Wendy first began in summer 2008 as a six-week test run that proved to be a major hit amongst audiences. The series had its nationwide launch the following year, and has increasingly grown in popularity up until her simultaneous battle with Graves Disease, COVID-19 and mental health in general last September. Even now it’s hard to give a full diagnosis on what Wendy was and is currently going through, aside from sporadic social media updates and the potential of a podcast deal on the horizon.

Read below for more clarity on the situation from the perspective of Wendy Show producers, via Variety:

“Speaking to Variety last month, the co-presidents of Debmar-Mercury, Ira Bernstein and Mort Marcus, addressed the situation with Williams for the first time, saying they’d like to work with the host again.

‘It doesn’t mean the next day, but we will put it together and figure it out,’ Bernstein said. ‘It’s not like we have a Plan B where we hit a button and it’s back in a week, but we do have the desire to be in business with her, if she can come back and be healthy, and so does Fox.’

‘Other than her health, she could have continued to keep doing it as long as she wanted. She was still getting a rating and she has a die-hard audience that turned it into a profitable show,’ said Marcus. ‘We were protecting the business, while we waited for her. And at some point, we had to say, ‘We have a business to run and she’s not here.’ It was a hard call.’”

Wendy hasn’t been an angel in the least bit — her controversial radio days and producing the Aaliyah biopic speak for itself! — but no one deserves to have such a strong legacy end this way. We pray that her future endeavors work out for the best.

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Wendy Williams To Miss Final Episode Of ‘The Wendy Williams Show’ Airing On Friday  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com