It started with a piece of paper tossed from the fifth-floor window of a luxury assisted living facility in New York City.
The note read "Help! Wendy!!," according to US media.
When police were called to conduct a welfare check, they took a 60-year-old woman living on the facility's memory ward to hospital.
That woman was Wendy Williams, a beloved TV personality in the US, whose long-running talk show once rivalled Ellen Degeneres for the top slot in the syndicated daytime ratings.
Three years ago, her life seemed to implode.
After a series of health issues and a very public divorce from her husband, Williams' show was cancelled in 2022.
Her bank accounts were frozen because Wells Fargo said she was "incapacitated" and a "victim of undue influence and financial exploitation".
The court appointed a lawyer to act as her guardian, overseeing her finances and welfare, and Williams' spokesperson later said the star had been diagnosed with progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
"Over the past few years, questions have been raised at times about Wendy's ability to process information, and many have speculated about Wendy's condition, particularly when she began to lose words, act erratically at times, and have difficulty understanding financial transactions," her team said.
Williams has been living in the care facility for almost three years, but after she was taken to a New York hospital this week, she was given a series of mental competency evaluations.
She then phoned up a local TV news station and told them she "passed with flying colours".
Her niece Alex Finnie has previously stated that her famous aunt is "being denied her freedoms".
"She is being held, and she is being punished, for whatever reason that other people are coming up with as to why she has to be kept in this position," she said.
The furore has reopened a debate in the US about whether the practice of legal guardianships — in some states, known as conservatorships — is rife with abuse.
Several female celebrities, including Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes have both been placed under conservatorships, and had to fight the courts to regain their legal and financial autonomy.
As the #FreeWendy movement gains momentum, her legal guardian says coverage of Williams' predicament is "untrue, inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading".
But Williams' loved ones say a system designed to protect vulnerable people is being used to deny an adult woman her freedom.
The unbridled joy and chaos of The Wendy Williams Show
The Wendy Williams Show, with all its chaos and messy gossip segments, had legions of fans for its 14-year run in the US.
At its peak, it was averaging more than 1.6 million viewers an episode, many of them young women.
And while it wasn't broadcast in Australia, you'll probably recognise Williams anyway, because she was eminently meme-able.
Ever heard the trending audio: "she's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment"? That was Williams talking about rapper Lil Kim.
Or what about: "Lucy, denial is a river in Egypt. Your husband is gay"? That was Williams dispensing advice to a radio caller having marital issues.
The show would veer from wildly entertaining, to slightly chaotic, to sometimes outright offensive, as Williams gave her views on pop culture and current events.
In 2012, she was swarmed by the Beyhive for saying that Beyonce "talks like she has a fifth-grade education".
And she caused controversy while gossiping with her audience about Spears' struggles to free herself of a conservatorship imposed by her father.
"How dare you, Mr Spears, you had me fooled. And you too, Mrs Spears. Death to all of them," she declared before her stunned audience.
But in 2017, during a Halloween-themed episode, Williams passed out live on air while dressed as the Statue of Liberty.
"That was the first sign something was really wrong," Finnie said during an interview with People Magazine the following year.
Williams said the fainting incident was likely due to Graves' disease, an autoimmune condition that affects the thyroid.
In 2019, Williams, who has always been open about her history of drug dependency, announced that she was living in a sober house, and had broken up with her husband after she learned he was having a baby with another woman.
"You know I've had a struggle with cocaine in my past, and I never went to a place to get the treatment," Williams told her audience with her trademark candour.
But as the years passed, her health struggles spiralled, and more diagnoses followed: lymphedema which causes painful swelling in the feet, a shoulder fracture, and alcoholism.
Her show scrambled to find guest hosts when she was unwell, and entire seasons were delayed to give her time to recover.
In the documentary Where Is Wendy Williams?, her former employees said she often struggled to communicate, and her short-term memory was sometimes impaired.
"I don't know what the hell is going on. I think she's losing memory. She doesn't know who I am sometimes," her driver said in the docuseries.
In 2022, The Wendy Williams Show was cancelled.
The show had been the mainstay in Williams' life, her identity and her source of connection.
The loss was devastating.
But Williams had no idea that her biggest battle was yet to come.
The bank, the guardian and the fight for Williams' freedom
Williams says her journey into the care facility began with a simple request to access her bank statements because she suspected a financial advisor of misconduct, and was considering moving her money elsewhere.
When Wells Fargo refused, Williams alleged that she defaulted on several bills.
The matter ended up in court in early 2022, with Wells Fargo seeking a guardianship for Williams, claiming that she was an "incapacitated person".
Through her lawyer, Williams insisted she was of sound mind.
"It saddens Wendy that Wells Fargo, has chosen to believe the allegations of a former employee who is upset because she no longer has direct and unfettered access to Wendy's financial affairs," LaShawn Thomas said.
Wells Fargo denied any wrongdoing, saying its priority was Williams' financial wellbeing.
Williams has never denied living large, but she has always maintained that the money she has earned over the years is hers to spend as she wishes.
In the docuseries about her life, she said she spent $US120,000 ($190,000) on her son's birthday party and contributed $US80,000 to his rent.
But as her health issues worsened, a New York court questioned whether her son was an appropriate guardian to look after her finances.
"While [her son, Kevin] apologised for past mistakes and inappropriate behaviour, the court is not convinced that he can keep her safe and wouldn't willingly or unwittingly expose her to financial exploitation," court documents said.
So the court appointed lawyer, Sabrina Morrissey, as Williams' guardian.
Her representatives said the star was diagnosed with progressive aphasia and FTD in 2023, and moved into the assisted care facility where she has remained for almost three years.
FTD is an umbrella term for a group of neurodegenerative disorders that affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, causing changes in behaviour, personality.
"I am not cognitively impaired but I feel like I am in prison," she said when calling into The Breakfast Club podcast.
"I'm in this place with people who are in their 90s and their 80s and their 70s […] These people, there's something wrong with these people here on this floor. I am clearly not."
Williams said she couldn't leave the facility without permission, and her family couldn't visit her or call her without seeking approval.
"I don't have frontotemporal dementia … I am not a baby," she insisted.
Last month, Williams signed an affidavit asking for the guardianship to be removed, saying she has "regained the capacity" to live independently.
No longer able to wait for the judge's response, she took matters into her own hands this week and tossed a scribbled plea for help into the street below.
'I've been doing important things all my life'
It's unclear exactly how many Americans live under conservatorships or guardianships, but lawyers estimate it's more than 1 million people.
Some have disabilities, others are living with cognitive issues like dementia.
But legal experts and advocates have long maintained that the system is shrouded in secrecy and difficult to escape, meaning that some fully grown adults have no power over their own destinies.
After Spears alleged her own family used a conservatorship to control her for nearly 14 years, several states moved to clean up the legal practice.
In New York, where Williams is based, the state governor Kathy Hochul is being asked to consider a massive overhaul of legal guardianships.
"Too many people have been failed by this system, and a real overhaul is long overdue," New York City Council member Crystal Hudson said in January.
"We need a system that instils confidence — one that guarantees people in need of guardianships a dignified existence."
Williams' court-appointed guardian has pushed back against the star's claims about her predicament and the state of her health.
Her representative says the care facility where Williams is living has "excellent medical care, a spa, a workout room, excellent food, a dining room and outside terraces".
She also said it is ultimately up to a judge to determine whether to terminate the guardianship he ordered, and Williams is free to petition the court.
For her part, Williams says she wants to regain control of her own fate, and will never give up the fight.
"I've been doing important things all of my life," she said during a phone interview on talk show The View.
"These people don't look like me. They don't talk like me. They don't act like me. They will never be me. I need them to get off my neck."
