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Wendy Williams was once the queen of New York radio and made many friends – and one big enemy – through her popular Hot 97 show.
The former host, 60, had a long history of feuds with Sean “Diddy” Combs and even accused the Bad Boy billionaire of being solely responsible for getting her fired from the program in 1998 and kicked off the airwaves for good.
Years later, Williams found success with her own self-titled talk show but not without repeated claims that Diddy tried to sabotage her career along the way. Williams recently broke her silence on Diddy’s arrest after a federal investigation and told the Daily Mail, “It’s about time.”
Wendy Williams resented Diddy for years after she claimed he ruined her career. (Getty Images)
Williams’ beef with the powerful producer began before she was fired from New York’s biggest radio station. She claimed on a 2005 episode of “The Wendy Williams Experience” that women from one of Diddy’s girl groups, Total, nearly beat her up.
During a 2019 episode of her talk show, Williams hinted that Diddy was involved in the scuffle, and she recalled the moment she came face-to-face with the women after signing off the air.
Sean “Diddy” Combs during the 1999 MTV Europe Music Awards. (Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc)
“Once upon a time, there was a music mogul who sent his all-girl group to beat my a– in front of the radio station. Fact!” she said. “I finished my shift, round up my headphones, put my bag [on] my arm and I see everybody lined up at the window looking down on the sidewalk.
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“I find this girl group, jump out of a gypsy cab, to come after me,” she alleged. “To beat my a–! For what? You know what I said was true. You all were broke, and you were living in the projects and that was that.”
Fox News Digital contacted members of Total for comment.
Diddy was in attendance at the “Wendy Williams Brings The Heat, Vol. 1” release party in 2005. (Getty Images)
She wrote in her 2004 book about a “certain level of contempt for Puff” because he “single-handedly tried to ruin” her career. “The hell he put me through. I will never forget. But I don’t hate him,” she wrote.
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Williams hinted in 2013 how her Hot 97 firing was due to the “I’ll Be Missing You” singer, who had a stronghold over the New York hip hop music scene at the time.
“The hell he put me through. I will never forget. But I don’t hate him.”
— Wendy Williams
“There was a radio personality once upon a time and her name was Wendy Williams, and she was practically burned at the stake for talking about such, and now it’s all come full circle,” she said on Vlad TV. “There were many situations back in the day in my career, and it’s all coming full circle.”
Williams was working in radio in the ’90s when she claimed Diddy got her fired. (Getty Images)
Wendy Williams from 107.5 FM (Johnny Nunez/WireImage)
Williams regularly made fun of Diddy’s name changes throughout his career. The recording tycoon had a history of changing his moniker and at one point was known as Puff Daddy, then Puffy (a Williams favorite), followed by P. Diddy, Sean John and then simply “Diddy.”
“I don’t like when people change their names in the middle of our relationship,” Williams said during an episode of “The Wendy Williams Show” in 2015. “Like don’t tell [me to] call you Diddy, I know you as Puffy, that’s it.”
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Charlamagne Tha God, Williams’ former co-host, addressed her Hot 97 firing on a May episode of “The Art of Dialogue.”
Charlamagne tha God knew intimate details about Wendy’s history with Diddy. (Getty Images)
“That was Wendy,” he said. “Wendy’s whole thing was Diddy was gay since the ‘90s. Wendy was throwing that out there. … That’s why Wendy got fired from Hot 97. Wendy got fired from Hot 97 by Diddy because that’s when Bad Boy was smoking hot and, yeah, she got fired for putting that out there.”
When Diddy and Cassie briefly split in 2015, she alluded to power dynamic issues between the couple.
“My thing about when you date a mogul, it’s really difficult to avoid them because if you use your head, you never know when they’ll pop up on the scene,” she said. “He can hire a plane right now … land on the roof of the hotel she’s staying, pay people off at the front desk. ‘Give me a key and let me up in her room.’ I’m already paranoid as a person.”
In 2017, Wendy and Diddy put 15 years of beef behind them when he appeared on her talk show to plug his new film, “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story.”
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“The drama of it all … welcome,” Wendy said after Diddy walked on stage. “Thank you, thank you very much,” he said. “I must say it’s been a long time coming, and I just want to tell you how proud I am of you because I don’t think you get enough credit for being the first one to really cover our culture, hip hop culture, hip hop celebrities … but you started shedding light on our culture and our people and thank you very much.
Before Diddy appeared on her show, Wendy and Diddy appeared to mend fences at a party in 2015. (Getty Images)
Diddy roamed the Bayfront Park Amphitheater for Pitbull’s New Year’s Eve festivities. (Getty Images)
“I know I pissed a lot of people off, including you, but this is a full-circle moment everybody. Get into adult conversations,” Williams said. At one point during the conversation, Williams’ son, Kevin Hunt, Jr., was brought up, to the dismay of the talk show host.
Williams said, “And let me tell you something, as the mother of a now 16-year-old,” before Diddy interrupted, saying, “Mmm, who I met backstage. He’s a great young man.” Williams appeared to be flustered by their meeting.
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When Cassie and Diddy finally broke up for good in 2018, Williams wanted the pair to get back together but then changed her mind after witnessing Diddy’s attempts to woo Cassie back via social media.
“I suggest don’t use social media though to reach out. I think this was a grand overture from Puffy. I don’t believe he really wants her back,” she said. “I believe he probably treated her, at some point, like a possession. If you really cared then you’d reach out privately not publicly.”
Wendy has one son, Kevin Jr., with her ex-husband. (Getty Images)
Cassie filed a sexual abuse suit against Diddy in November, and it was settled one day later. (Getty Images)
This week, Williams, who has largely stayed out of the spotlight since her dementia diagnosis earlier this year, broke her silence on the Diddy scandal and admitted she was horrified to see the 2016 video footage of Combs allegedly attacking Cassie in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel.
“What is really weird is that I have been told by so many people, “Wendy you called it,’” she told the Daily Mail. “Including some people from my family who have said the same. You know how I feel about that? It is about time. To see this video on TV of [Cassie] getting pummeled. … it was just horrific. But now you have to think, how many more times? How many people? How many more women? It’s just so horrible.”
Representatives for Williams did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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Diddy was arrested Sept. 16 and charged the next day with racketeering conspiracy; sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and transportation to engage in prostitution. He entered a not guilty plea hours after an indictment detailing his alleged sex crimes was unsealed. If found guilty, he faces a minimum of 15 years behind bars or a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Authorities alleged Diddy ran a criminal enterprise through his businesses, including Bad Boy Entertainment, Combs Enterprises and Combs Global, among others. He used “firearms, threats of violence, coercion and verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse” to fulfill his sexual desires, according to the unsealed indictment obtained by Fox News Digital.
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Diddy and his employees would “intimidate, threaten, and lure female victims into Combs’ orbit, often under the pretense of a romantic relationship. Combs allegedly then used force, threats of force and coercion to cause victims to engage in extended sex acts with male commercial sex workers that Combs referred to as, among other things, ‘freak offs.’”
Sean “Diddy” Combs sits between his lawyers, Marc Agnifilo, left, and Teny Geragos, in Manhattan Federal Court last month. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
Prior to the U.S. Attorney’s press conference in September, Combs’ attorney said they plan to fight for the rapper to be released.
“His spirits are good. He’s confident,” Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said outside the courthouse Sept. 17. “He is dealing with this head-on, the way he’s dealt with every challenge in his life. And he’s not guilty. He’s innocent of these charges. He’s going to plead not guilty, obviously.
“He’s going to fight this with all of his energy and all of his might and the full confidence of his lawyers. And I expect a long battle with a good result for Mr. Combs.”
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