Shawn Zanotti, who appears on Lifetime's docuseries 'Where Is Wendy Williams?', slams the show by calling it exploitative and mortifying for the former TV and radio personality.
- Feb 29, 2024
AceShowbiz - Wendy Williams' former publicist Shawn Zanotti has called out "Where Is Wendy Williams?". Shawn, who appeared on the Lifetime docuseries, deemed the show exploitative and mortifying for her ex-client.
"I felt that [Williams] was being exploited," she revealed to NBC News of the two-part documentary on Wednesday, February 28. "She thought we were focusing on the comeback of her career."
Shawn also believed that the former "The Wendy Williams Show" host "would be mortified." She added, "There's no way you can convince me that she would be OK with looking and seeing herself in that way."
According to The Exact Publicity founder, producers at Creature Films and eOne Television approached her and Wendy to do the docuseries in 2022. The former radio DJ was allegedly on board as she would "love to do it" to "get [her] story out there."
However, after watching the docuseries that premiered on February 24 on Lifetime, Shawn insisted "that is not the project that [Wendy] signed up for." She divulged, "That's not the project [the producers] brought to me. That's not what I told her this was going to be about. There were a lot of good moments. None of those good moments were shown."
Lifetime has yet to issue a statement about whether Wendy had a say in the final version of the show. An insider, however, told Page Six that the star did not watch and approve the docuseries footage.
On the other hand, Shawn received backlash online as people thought she didn't do a good job making Wendy stay sober amid her battle with alcohol addiction. "The fact that Wendy's publicist, Shawn doesn't see a problem with an alcoholic having a drink says a lot about her," one user wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
"I need to see Shawn's resume and client list," someone else added. "There is no way any crisis PR person would let their client, who is assumed to be an alcoholic, drink on camera for something that was supposed to be PR doc!"
