Wendy Williams Confirms Ex Kevin Hunter Has a Daughter
Wendy Williams has confirmed that she decided to divorce Kevin Hunter, her husband of 21 years, once she learned that he’d impregnated a woman with whom he was having an affair.
A source had told PEOPLE back in April that Hunter’s affair and child had been the motivator for Williams’ decision to walk away from her two-decade marriage. And in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times Magazine published Monday, the talk show host said just that — explaining that there was “no vacillating” when she learned what had happened.
“Kevin had a major indiscretion that he will have to deal with for the rest of his life. An indiscretion that I will not deal with,” Williams, 55, said. “I never thought that I would be in this position. I’m a very forgiving person, but there’s one thing that I could never be a part of, and that one thing happened.”
Asked what that “one thing” is, Williams claimed, “Kevin has a daughter.”
Hunter did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment, but he broke his silence in a statement to PEOPLE in April, admitting he was “not proud of my recent actions.”
“I am going through a time of self-reflection and am trying to right some wrongs,” he said. “No matter what the outcome is or what the future holds, we are still The Hunter Family and I will continue to work with and fully support my wife in this business and through any and all obstacles she may face living her new life of sobriety, while I also work on mine.”
RELATED: Wendy Williams ‘Confronted’ Her Husband About Allegedly Having a Baby with Mistress: Source
Williams filed for divorce from Hunter in April. She also cut ties with him professionally; he was removed as executive producer of The Wendy Williams Show, and she dissolved The Hunter Foundation, the non-profit organization the couple founded in 2014.
Prior to her filing, Williams — who has struggled with a cocaine addiction in the past — revealed on-air that she was living in a sober house.
In her interview with The New York Times Magazine, she said that learning of Hunter’s affair and child was a major part of the reason she decided to move into the sober house.
“I’d done my detective work. I knew what was about to happen, and I was like, ‘Let me go someplace where you’re not allowed to have the whole bottle of wine,’ ” Williams recalled. “When you see your husband’s mistress with a burgeoning belly and you’re a blabbermouth on TV with a successful show, you know what’s about to happen. I needed to go someplace quiet.”
“My husband was about to have a baby, and I knew that I was about to divorce,” she added. “I knew that there would be headlines. I had to process it so that once I came out, I came out on top. I didn’t work for three decades to land at the bottom over some [expletive] like this.”
Despite how their relationship ended, Williams told The New York Times Magazine that she won’t speak negatively about Hunter.
“He will always be my family, because we have a 19-year-old son [Kevin Hunter Jr.], and we were together for 25 years and married for 21,” Williams said.
“People want me to hate and scream and talk. I won’t,” she added, through tears. “It bothers me that people say, ‘Keep it as clean as you can, because you have a child together.’ That’s not the main reason to keep it clean. The main reason I won’t talk badly about Kevin is that he was my first true love. I will not have people talk badly. I talk filthy about him, but that is when I get in my apartment and the door is closed and I am talking to myself in the mirror.”
The Wendy Williams Show returns for season 11 on Sept. 16 (check local listings).
