Becoming Her Own

Our own Jaymes Vaughan connected with Williams to discuss her life a year after divorce. Vaughan complimented the host of The Wendy Williams Show, noticing how she was essentially glowing during their chat to which Williams responds by saying she's always felt this way on the inside and now she can show it on the outside.

"The thing is that I wasn't able to express it, outwardly, in the way that I can express it now because, you know, my ex Kevin, he was the great love. I fell for him immediately on our first date."

Williams says nobody expected her to be with someone of his past, especially not herself, but she couldn't help the connection she felt.

"I saw something in him that I could help and that he could help me and that together we could be in love and have a family."

She Needed to Be a Mother

The Emmy nominated host goes on to discuss how the life she had with Kevin was far from her white picket fence dreams. From her perspective, their relationship was emotionally abusive and only benefited her ex-husband. The final straw for Williams was the news of his baby from a 15 year long affair.

"His baby's now like two years old, okay? Kevin, I knew that I would be divorcing him."

Vaughan went on to ask why Williams stayed in such a toxic relationship and two reasons stood out: her career and her son. Williams and Hunter had Kevin Hunter Jr. in 2000, a time when Williams was on the rise in the radio industry.

"Somebody's gotta help me co-parent... He was a serial cheat and the reason that I stayed is because I had a baby and I didn't know how to be a mother and I wanted to get back into my first love of life, which was radio."

Now that her son is 20 and she is financially stable, Williams was able to proceed with the divorce she's always wanted.

"Kevin was a perpetual cheat and I knew that I would be divorcing him."

Building a Team

Williams intentionally kept her plans of a divorce on the down low with the first step being to find a new manager to take the place of her ex.

"I needed to build my team to be on my side. There are a lot of people who thought that I was with them when really they were hired by Kevin. You know, I got rid of everybody who he hired and I started a new. You know, my manager, now, is a soft spoken, but he carries a big stick."

Williams had to convince her now manager Bernie Young that she was above what the media pegged her out to be and she needed him at this point of her life more than ever.

"I promise[d] that I am not the problem that you've heard about or that you see or whatever and at that time TMZ and all of the tabloids were taking picture[s] of Kevin and that woman who he's been with allegedly for 15 years, but she is not the only one."

Bringing Her Life to the Big Screen

Williams further explores her divorce process in the Lifetime film Wendy Williams: The Movie, which she executive produced.

"You'll see it played out in the movie that he was actually cheating on me. That same day I took my parents for a ride."

Williams explains to Vaughan that she was determined to build her team, so she took her parents to the attorney general's office, unbeknownst to Hunter. She instructed them afterwards to play it off like nothing ever happened.

"I was ruthless in my planning. Ruthless. And he has no idea."

Wendy Williams: What a Mess!

Along with the movie, Williams has worked on a documentary featuring behind the scenes moments of her life as she opened up to the world on the hot topics in her life.