Confronting a Celebrity Near You: The Wendy Williams Show

Blunt and confrontational. Addresses every rumor, no matter how crude or politically incorrect. Dispenses advice like "poke a hole in the condom and lock him down." In short, she goes there more often and with less tact than anyone else in entertainment. Kathy Griffin? Joan Rivers? Tyra? No, it's Wendy Williams, and her nationally syndicated talk show premieres today on Fox. How you doin'?

If you haven't heard (or heard of) radio and now television talk host Wendy Williams, I direct you to her definitive work: a 2003 profanity-charged FM throwdown with Whitney Houston. During the on-air spat, Wendy attempted to counsel Whitney on her Diane Sawyer interview, drug use, marriage with Bobby Brown, God, budget cutbacks and numerology. Whitney did not like Wendy's tone and responded with phrases like "Who are you talking to?," "I am a mother. Don't talk to me like a child," and "You low down dirty piece of s**t."

After bringing her combativeness to Fox during a six-week trial run of the talk show last summer, the New York Times called Williams "startlingly mean-spirited," and went on to say that if The Wendy Williams Show goes national, it could mark a turning point in television etiquette."

Wendy's executive producer, Rob Dauber, described the appeal to her rough handling as "really entertaining, in much the same way Judge Judy's is. I don't know if anyone is watching Judge Judy to learn about the legal process, they're watching her to see her yell at some guy."

Wendy's yelling will be distributed across several segments: fashion, cooking, hot topics and celebrity interviews. The sacrificial guest today is Vanessa Williams, who already talked to Wendy last summer about Playboy, hair maintenance, family and the staff she employees. Later in the week, Brooke Burke and NeNe from The Real Housewives of Atlanta step up to the plank, but if Wendy has her way, she'll soon have guests with more star power.

She recently told Time Out Chicago why she'd like to talk to Jennifer Aniston:

Jennifer Aniston made a temporary maxi pad and she was on a photo shoot and she didn't feel like taking a break or asking anybody. And she opens her legs a little too wide. I swear to God, it's there. Me and Aniston, we're gonna talk about that pad, when I meet her...you know there is a way of doing this...You take the tissue and you wad it up, and you leave a pull tie, so you can just pull it out afterwards. That's what she should have done.

It's hard enough for Jimmy Fallon to get big guests with his antiseptic interview style and inoffensive segment producing, but in a cultural moment when every celebrity faux pas requires an apology and TMZ breaks news faster than CNN, a show that prioritizes scandalous revelations and confrontation might have difficulty generating buzz moments. When your goal is to create something surprising or shocking, the result is usually the opposite. That said, I would love to see Jennifer Aniston dishing on makeshift feminine hygiene devices and her favorite safe words for rough sex. Unfortunately, even Jennifer Coolidge probably won't be available for that kind of one-on-one.