Have You Thanked God for Wendy Williams Today?

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. [View in Browser]( [Subscribe]( [Image] with Kevin Fallon Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - An ode to our Lord and savior, Wendy Williams. - Bowing down to Cloris and Cicely. - Just some hot actors… - Mandatory wig play with Zendaya. - The most cursed Hollywood history. We Don’t Appreciate Wendy Williams Enough It has come to my attention that Wendy Williams: What a Mess, the documentary on [the dirt-dishing daytime TV supernova](’s life, [career, struggles, and triumphs](, begins with Williams reclined on a chaise lounge under a chandelier, crying while eating caviar off a Dorito. This is important information, as the airing of this documentary immediately follows Saturday night’s premiere of the [Lifetime original movie]( Wendy Williams: The Movie. As an alleged opening scene, it does a great service: reminding viewers that the outrageous personality and outlandish stories you just watched unfold for two hours in the scripted movie aren’t an exaggeration—at least not from Wendy Williams as the star sees herself, and wants the world to see her, too. [Alternate text] I use the word “alleged” to describe that opening scene, as an advanced screening link of the documentary was not made available to me despite the fact that several journalists I know had seen it and multiple reviews and features were published online, proving that one existed. I can think of no greater slight than to deprive a gay pop-culture critic desperate to watch a documentary on the life of Ms. Wendy Williams—one that begins with a deeply emotional Frito-Lay fish egg amuse bouche—the opportunity to do so. But I did get to watch the bona fide masterpiece that is Wendy Williams: The Movie—it is important that you understand that this is not snark and I am absolutely serious—and am therefore emboldened to channel the Queen of Dirt and gossip and mention all the behind-the-scenes drama behind the making of this piece of writing. The real lesson I took from watching the Lifetime film is, for however much we appreciate and exalt Wendy Williams right now, we’re not doing it enough. Salacious, unfiltered, brazen, spiteful, unbothered, authentic, shrewd, luminous, hilarious, domineering, selfish, successful: it all amounts to an irresistible charisma that seems effortless. It’s been crafted over decades in the public eye, first during Williams’ time as a trailblazing antagonizer and now in what might as well be seen as essential worker capacity: a person who distracts, diverts, and makes us feel good in the midst of dark times. There’s been undeniable appeal to Williams’ persona throughout her entire career; that’s how she built her empire. But this Lifetime double-bill victory lap, timed after weathering personal tumult and damning tabloid controversy—on the receiving end of what she’s famed for dishing out—is a well-timed celebration. Unlike so many made-for-TV biopics that exist solely to titillate with an [absurdist exploitation of stars’ scandals](, Wendy Williams: The Movie could only exist in that outrageous “Lifetime movie” tone. In fact, it capitalizes on the very kind of filmmaking critics typically make fun of to tell the story as Williams herself would tell it if she was gabbing on her show. The result is a coronation of sorts, the realization that, for her fruitful and long career, she may actually be the perfect celebrity for right now. If you saw the [brief teaser that went viral]( earlier this week, then you have a pretty spot-on sense of the kind of brisk, campy tone the film takes on. It’s a clip of the Halloween episode in which Williams, while dressed as the Statue of Liberty, stammers over her words as her eyes roll to the back of her head and she faints. It was a terrifying moment quickly made humorous by Williams’ a) immediate recovery and b) candor about how ludicrous and over-the-top the whole incident must have looked to the audience. [Alternate text] Ciera Payton, the actress who plays Wendy, acts out the sequence with all the subtle nuance of my performance as Willy Loman in a selected scene from Death of a Salesman in my Theatre 101 class sophomore year of high school. She approaches playing Wendy Williams like it’s her Fantine in Les Misérables, and, you know what, why shouldn’t she? If Wendy Williams is about one thing, she is about the juicy parts of a person’s life, and, with her intimate involvement in producing this movie, she delivers the goods. Body image. Sexism. Rape. AIDS. Cocaine. Racism. Miscarriages. Plastic surgery. A husband’s secret second family. Alcoholism. Autoimmune disorder. 9/11 (?!). It’s all out there in Wendy Williams: The Movie, a film that features Wendy pulling over at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike to rip lines of coke in one scene set in the ’80s, and donning oversized sunglasses to incognito graffiti the garage door of the house her husband bought for his mistress in an uproarious sequence set in the just-recent past. The beauty of the film is that, no matter how soapy or silly, Williams counts on the intimacy and trust she’s honed with her fans to ensure that her stories are never exploited or laughed at—even if things veer towards the loudly absurd. Case in point: The film runs for barely a minute before the action stops, Payton-as-William breaks the fourth wall and looks into the camera, and, as Wendy is wont to do, spills the tea: “Now it’s time to dish my own dirt and, honey, nobody does it better.” She beckons at the camera. “If you really want to know my truth, come here, closer, closer. [Whispers] Come walk a mile in my size 11s.” I’ve always been entertained by Williams and her talk show. And I’ve appreciated how, in an increasingly controlled celebrity space, she manages to cut through the bullshit and get to the truth of the matter: Rich and famous people lead messy lives that may be none of our business, but they also profit off our intrusive interest in it. That arguably (at least to Williams) makes it our business. If nothing else, this Lifetime movie and documentary prove that Williams is willing to turn that scrutiny onto herself. But there’s something about the way Williams has navigated being a public figure muddling through scandal in a pandemic that I’ve found not just entertaining, but, in a way, healing. There’s the no-fucks-to-give of it all that we all need stronger doses of in our lives. Seared into my memory is one of her first days shooting her talk show remotely from home during the early weeks of quarantine lockdown last spring. The episode launched with her venting honestly about how annoying it is to her that her producers are making her do it. Not only did I get it, it was astounding television. I’m not the first to celebrate this—[John Oliver did an entire segment]( of Last Week Tonight on this—but it still sticks with me. As does the way she’s manifesting resilience over personal hardship. In the promotion of these Lifetime projects, she has mentioned by name the musician she says raped her, the woman who had an affair with her husband, and the name of the children they now share together. Is any of this appropriate? Well, that’s the question that hovers over Williams’ entire career. But I can appreciate how stark that mindset is compared to how every other celebrity behaves, and the fact that she is still a capital-C character while doing it. (When an interview with The View cut to commercial this week, you can hear her say, “We’re going to break?” and then grab her bowl of salad and start chowing down while still on camera.) Should we all be using this never-ending pandemic as the setting for a grand airing of grievances in tandem with a self-produced tribute to all the things we’ve accomplished in our lives? The sheer chaos of it all is terrifying, yet tantalizing. That description is kind of how many people feel about Wendy Williams, and I can’t imagine a more baller impression to make. Cloris and Cicely: Two Legends [Hank Aaron](. [Larry King](. And now, [Cloris Leachman]( and [Cicely Tyson](. The night sky is looking much darker without its stars. (Full disclosure: That is an unforgivably terrible line, but I snorted so loudly after I wrote it that I had no choice but to publish it, if for no other reason than to keep myself accountable in never writing something so cheesy again.) Of course, we’re talking about celebrity deaths, so flippancy and jokes should have no place in the conversation—except in this case, I’d imagine the star would appreciate a wily streak to make the darkness a bit more playful. That was Leachman’s specialty. One of many. [Alternate text] And when it comes to performers that truly earn the right to be called stars, the kind of light that will burn bright long after they’re gone, there are few trailblazers who measure up to Cicely Tyson: her talent, her ferocity, and her grace. It struck me after the sad news of these screen legends’ passing this week that we have become so accustomed to the social-media age cycle of public mourning—quote tweets of “oh no!,” retweets of esteemed co-stars’ remembrances, and then an all-about-me anecdote of your favorite performance or that one inconsequential time you met them in line at an airport—that we’ve started to autopilot through the grief-tweeting and onto the next task at hand. There’s rarely a breath to reflect on what the person’s work meant. In other words, are people properly understanding what a genius Cloris Leachman was? Do they truly get what Cicely Tyson has contributed to our culture? Leachman’s was an astonishing career, evidenced by an Oscar win and a record-setting eight Primetime Emmy wins (a feat that still holds, tied with Julia Louis-Dreyfus). It encompassed a breadth of almost implausibly varied performances that different fans with different tastes can point to as their favorites. There’s the way she springs from quietly devastating to dramatic fireworks in her Oscar-winning Last Picture Show turn. ([Watch the money scene here](.) That, just a few years later, she delivered one of the greatest absurdist comedy creations in film history as Frau Blücher in Young Frankenstein. There’s almost a decade as Phyllis in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the Phyllis spin-off, the most endearing narcissist there’s ever been. You can hop-scotch through the rest of her career to pick personal highlights: the underrated gravitas she brought to a scene-stealing role in Spanglish; the ribald grandma parts she perfected in Malcolm in the Middle, Raising Hope, and You Again; memorable to certain millennials as the terrifying aunt in that Olsen twins Halloween movie; and, even after her death at age 94, more projects yet to come down the pipeline. [Alternate text] When you think of Tyson, how do you even decide what to praise? The work she did and the talent is overwhelming, even before you consider the path she forged for Black women in Hollywood. Sounder, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Roots, King: The Martin Luther King Story, Fried Green Tomatoes, A Trip to Bountiful, The Help, How to Get Away With Murder: That’s just a highlight reel. When you get into the humility, generosity, and gratitude with which she shared her journey and her life with her Black Hollywood contemporaries, you lose yourself in the praise. To wit, she just [released a memoir this week](, doing press in support of it and sharing stories about her life. Both are women who worked right up until their last days. That’s why I cherish this video clip that was shared this week in memoriam, in which The Hollywood Reporter asks Leachman [if she ever thinks of retiring](. Her response: “Fuck you.” The Hottest a Star Has Ever Looked Earlier this month, people on Twitter got wrapped up in discourse over “What's the best a human being has ever looked on film? Answer with pictures,” [prompted by this tweet](. I was disturbed to learn that there were people engaging in this conversation with any answer besides Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley, a kind of chiseled, tanned beauty so dangerously perfect it’s akin to staring into the sun—if the sun was actually Law’s green eyes, a gaze through which I am certain is the passageway to the fountain of youth, eternal life, ultimate salvation, and constant orgasm. [Alternate text] People got very testy at the joking certainty of this opinion. Yes, obviously Brad Pitt is hot in Thelma and Louise, Marlon Brando is hot in A Streetcar Named Desire, and Paul Newman and Robert Redford are hot in everything. Chill. The point of bringing up any of this is that this week Film at Lincoln Center tweeted this photo of Newman and Redford playing table tennis shirtless while on a break from shooting Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. As my friend Esther Zuckerman [eruditely observed](: “Lol this is porn.” It’s Showtime at Zendaya’s There are few young actresses working today whose work is as electric and thrilling, whose public-facing persona is as hip and fashionable, and whose activism is as immediate and trailblazing as Zendaya. But as I learned in [her Variety Actors on Actors conversation]( this week with Carey Mulligan, the coolest ones in Hollywood are damn weird. This sounds like hell. [Alternate text] An Important, Cursed Bit of Hollywood History [Twitter user Wyatt Duncan]( celebrated a Hollywood anniversary this week that we, frankly, have all egregiously ignored. As he wrote on Monday, 10 years ago the Hollywood Wax Museum held an auction and sold off many of its figures, some fetching thousands of dollars. He curated the most cursed of those in [the week’s one true must-scroll thread](. And so it is in the spirit of how this new year is going thus far—my current emotional state is that I began crying while recording a pop-culture podcast predominantly focused on the song “drivers license”—that I leave you with this photo of wax Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine from Seinfeld. [Alternate text] [Alternate text] - Palmer: Justin Timberlake is very good and you will cry. (Now available on Apple TV+.) - Supernova: Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth are very good and you will cry. (Friday in theaters.) - Wendy Willams: The Movie: I truly believe the world would be a better place if everyone watched the Wendy Williams Lifetime movie. (Saturday on Lifetime.) [Alternate text] - The Little Things: The big thing about this Denzel Washington movie is that I can’t recall ever being so bored. (Friday on HBO Max.) Advertisement [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011 [Privacy Policy]( If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, [click here]( to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can [safely unsubscribe](.