The View‘s highly publicized interview with former talk show host Wendy Williams was pretaped Thursday afternoon, with two audience members who were inside the room exclusively telling Entertainment Weekly that the 60-year-old TV personality’s segment (set to air Friday) was “heartbreaking” to watch amid her ongoing conservatorship battle.

Speaking to EW moments after Thursday’s taping at ABC Studio B in Manhattan, the View audience members — New York City drag staple Kiki Ball-Change and friend Tamara Rotela, who showed EW screenshots of their tickets for the taping — confirm that Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Sunny Hostin, Ana Navarro, and Alyssa Farah Griffin conducted the phone interview for approximately 15-20 minutes across two segments. Kiki says that it took a few moments for the crew to set Williams up with a phone connection, and that they had to take a break because the line “started cutting out” in the middle of the chat.

“I’d say, for the most part, she sounded pretty normal. She doesn’t sound anywhere near needing any sort of guardianship,” Kiki says, adding that Hostin — who has known Williams for years — observed during the taping that her friend sounded “normal” on the phone.

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The Drag Me to Dinner contestant also recalls one notable story that Williams reportedly told the cohosts, in which she recalled getting permission to go out to eat with her niece, though “someone told her that they’d called the cops because she wasn’t allowed to be out, and they thought her niece was going to be arrested, which was crazy.” Kiki further recalls Williams saying that she wishes that those responsible for her conservatorship would “get off my neck,” and that “she never wants to work with the judge or the guardian again” because “she wants to be free” from her conservatorship battle.

“It was really heartbreaking, which was something I wasn’t expecting,” Kiki says, also recounting an instance between takes in which Williams and Behar tried to make plans to see each other socially outside of the interview, though Williams reportedly told Behar that she couldn’t accept phone calls from outsiders, and that she would have to get the comedian’s phone number so she could call her herself.

In the end, Kiki stresses that she hopes those in power “free Wendy” soon. “There needs to be a good, hard look at conservatorships and guardianships and who it’s really protecting at the end of the day.”

EW has reached out to a representative for The View for comment.

Wendy Williams in 2023.Johnny Nunez/WireImage

Earlier this week, doubts arose over Williams’ previously announced View appearance, after Williams was removed from her assisted living facility in New York and taken to a hospital in an ambulance following an NYPD welfare check.

The New York Post initially reported that Williams threw a handwritten note from her window, which read, “Help! Wendy!!” The move reportedly prompted police to conduct the wellness check. (A representative for Williams didn’t respond to EW’s request for comment.)

Williams was diagnosed with Graves’ disease in 2018, though concerns over her health arose in February 2024 when she was reportedly diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and aphasia. It was later revealed that she was under a conservatorship, with her legal guardian, Sabrina Morrissey, claiming that Williams was “cognitively impaired, permanently disabled, and legally incapacitated.”

Williams has since spoken out from inside her facility, calling her situation “emotional abuse” and comparing her life to “prison,” and further alleging that she was misdiagnosed and doesn’t have dementia.