NeNe Leakes Reveals Why Wendy Williams Allegedly Axed Her Talk Show!

NeNe Leakes revealed that her feud with Wendy Williams cost her a talk show that was in the works. 

Apparently, Leakes was set to host a talk show along with Tom Arnold with the same people who produce The Wendy Williams Show. However, the potential female/male duo show got axed. 

“The reason they approached me is because they’d seen me go on ‘Wendy,’ and I had a great time,” Tom told Page Six. “The goal was to have [our show] go on right after ‘The Wendy Willams Show.’ And I said, ‘Oh, that sounds great! Let’s get together.’ And then we did.”

According to Arnold, the producers were “jazzed” about the project, telling him they “felt it would be a home run” as the “Wendy” show was “killing it” at the time.

“I thought, ‘With somebody like NeNe Leakes, how do you go wrong there?’ And then I figured out how you go wrong – make fun of somebody’s purse,” he said.

But it all came crashing down after the Real Housewives of Atlanta alum and Williams got into a feud over a designer purse. The feud took place in 2014 when the former Bravo reality star shared on social media a photo of her custom Hermès Birkin bag covered in hand-painted “NeNe-isms” which included some of her iconic RHOA catchphrases like “So nasty and so rude,” “Bloop” and “Close your legs to married men.”

Wendy slammed NeNe during her Hot Topics segment for adding her catchphrase on the purse. Wendy's comments didn't sit well with Leakes and took social media to slam the then daytime talk show host. 

The former Bravo reality star added that the purse was painted over to “raise money for a worthy charity.”

But NeNe clapping back at Wendy ended up costing her a chance of hosting the planned talk show because Arnold told Page Six that it wasn’t long before he got a call from one of the producers, with whom he’d had “great meetings.”

“She called me and said, ‘I got some bad news. We can’t do the show.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And she said, ‘Because NeNe made fun of Wendy Williams’ purse.’ And I go, ‘Who would care about somebody making fun of their purse?’ And the producer said, ‘Black women care.’ She explained to me it was a very personal thing,” he recalled.

“It was a big deal. She said, ‘Wendy has the No. 1 show. What if Roseanne [Barr was put in the same position]?’ I go, ‘Yeah, I guess she probably would get upset about somebody saying something about her purse.’”

“You know, the thing about NeNe that they liked about her was that she’s outspoken, like Wendy Williams,” he continued by adding that “[NeNe] is fun and she’s smart and she has a lot to say. I don’t know how you could do better with a co-host.”

Arnold concluded by sharing that he believed that Wendy “felt competitive with NeNe, too, which is fine, because everybody’s competitive. But I guess the best way to get rid of your competition is to fire them.”

Following Arnold's revelation, Leaked confirmed the news and shared her side of the story. “Wendy saw that I had defaced my Birkin bag, and yes, she posted a comment on her show’s social media page about it,” she told Page Six. “But that wasn’t the trigger. The trigger was what she said about it and me on her ‘Hot Topics’ [segment].”

So why did Leakes get upset with Williams' comments? According to the reality star, Leakes alleged that Wendy suggested she wasn’t wealthy enough to “deface” a purse that can cost upwards of $10,000.

“Kim Kardashian had done the same thing around the same time, ‘defaced’ her [Birkin] bag,” Leakes told Page Six. “Wendy said Kim can do that because she had the money to do such a thing, but basically I didn’t.”

“I responded by saying something like, ‘Now, Wendell, I have four Birkin bags, and I can do the same,’” Leakes recalled, noting that the name “Wendell” quickly went viral.

“Wendy didn’t like it,” she claimed. “Debmar-Mercury pulled the deal and stopped all communication with me. Our deal went dead.”

Photo Credit: Bravo Media/NBCUniversal; The Wendy Williams Show via Debmar-Mercury