Wendy Williams' talent as a daytime talk show host is "being Wendy"

The New Yorker

With her glam bordering on camp style, Williams is an anomaly on daytime TV, Michael Schulman writes in a New Yorker profile of the daytime talk show host. "Unlike her competitor Ellen DeGeneres, she’s not a standup comedian, and, unlike Kelly Ripa or the women of The View, she doesn’t have co-hosts," explains Schulman. "She’s her own sounding board, capable of filling endless time with off-the-cuff, bawdy talk, delivered in a Jersey accent. Her rambling spontaneity is an antidote to the cheery polish of the Today show; she’ll interrupt a celebrity tidbit to tell a story about her weekend, then lose her place. She barely uses a teleprompter and won’t wear an earpiece. Although her show features such daytime staples as interviews, shopping segments ('Trendy@Wendy'), and advice ('Ask Wendy'), its core is 'Hot Topics,' ostensibly a gossip roundup but really a kind of free-associative performance art, in which Williams riffs on celebrity divorces, pop-star feuds, and 'Real Housewives' antics." As CNN's Don Lemon, who has guest-hosted The Wendy Williams Show, put it: "Her talent is being Wendy. She has this degree of comfort on television, like she’s sitting in your living room talking to you." Schulman adds: "You don’t have to know the people she’s discussing to be engrossed by her chatty, opinionated commentary, which converts even operatic gossip into relatable mini-dramas. Assessing the news that Kim Kardashian was keeping a sixty-million-dollar mansion after her divorce from Kanye West, Williams shrugged and concluded, 'It’s best for the kids. The kids know the house.'"