Amazonian superhostess Wendy Williams has finally revealed the origins of her famous “How you doin?” catchphrase! In an interview with BET.com’s Clay Cane, the 48-year-old talk show host says she first began saying it while on a Philadelphia radio morning show as a greeting for her cohost’s gay character named Shantay.
“First of all, you have to say it like a drag queen,” Wendy begins. “The best way to pronounce ‘doin” is dz,” she explains before articulating, “‘dzzzouy”” She then moves on to the catchphrase’s origin saying, “when New York left me for dead, you’ll remember many years ago — and yes, you did leave me for dead — on I-95 South Philly picked me up and I was on a radio station there called Power 99. I was one of three people doing a morning show. There was a comedian on the morning show who would affect a gay character. He was not gay, but he would affect a gay character. But he had nobody to talk to because everybody in the room was just so damn hard that he wanted to talk to Shantay.
“So you know I love my gays! So Shantay, he would affect walking onto the room and I would say, ‘Hey Shantay! How you doin?’ And that’s about as good as I do my drag, but yeah, you say it in the way of gay boys: ‘How you dooehhh?’
“So now it’s become my official catchphrase of this show, because what I found through the years, since the beginning of ‘How you doin?’ is that it makes everybody laugh and smile and it breaks up the room, and I need that now more than ever because I am five-feet-eleven flat feet. I’m very assured of myself. I am a very stacked woman, you know, I’m not a skinny girl. I have a lot of hair. When I put my heels on I’m six-feet-five. When I walk in a room, I have to say something so that people understand that I am there in a place happy and good, not here in a place to tell you about yourself and everything.
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People get frightened of big women, you know? So when I say ‘How you doin?’ everbody’s like, ‘Oh! Hahahahahahahaha!’ And then I continue from there.”
Wendy also talked about the movie about herself that was going to star Robin Givens. “That movie has been shelved,” she reveals. “It’s actually owned by me and my husband. We financed it wholly. I would never wish that on my worst enemy! Jeeeez Louise!
“What happened with that movie is the month after we wrapped the movie four years ago we got a telephone call and the telephone call was from Debmar-Mercury, who they’re partners in the show. They were calling from L.A. saying to my husband, ‘We want to do a talk show with your wife, we hear you’re her manager.’ And it literally took no time at all. Within one year I was on TV with a six-week sneak peek. When we saw that this talk show could possibly be something big, we decided to shelve the movie because then we’ll just eat the money that we paid to get the movie done. If someone wants to do a movie on my life based on my New York Times best-selling autobiography and the movie that we did, they pay for it, whether it be Lionsgate or whoever. And of course we would be executive producers on it, so we didn’t want to put that product out when, possibly, an even better one could be made one day.”
So there is a completed feature-length Wendy Williams biopic starring Robin Givens out there that has never seen the light of day?!? Where’s Wikileaks when you need them?!?
Anyway, here’s a “How you doin?” tutorial from Wendy herself followed by a Wendy Williams “How you doin?” montage clip!
