Talk show host Wendy Williams in Chicago to launch new charity at Snacks & Sweets Expo

Talk show host Wendy Williams was at the Sweets & Snacks Expo Wednesday at McCormick Place to launch her new partnership with SNAXsational Brands, where proceeds of every bag of the popcorn and pasta snack sold this year will be donated to Williams’ new charity.

It was Williams’ first public appearance since her show’s Season 11 debut and her own life drama, including struggle with addiction, divorce, that’s made headlines in recent months.

It was easy to find the booth where talk show queen Wendy Williams — in the headlines recently over the drama in her own life — was holding court at the Sweets & Snacks Expo this week at McCormick Place.

It was the booth where the large crowd gathered Wednesday, to hear Williams launch her new charity partnership with SNAXsational Brands. Under the partnership, proceeds of every bag of the brand’s signature popcorn and pasta snack sold this year will be donated by its foundation, SNACKGIVING.ORG, to Williams’ new charity.

That would be the new charity she is launching after dissolving The Hunter Foundation, founded in 2014 with estranged husband Kevin Hunter. That nonprofit focused on supporting drug education, prevention and rehabilitation programs for recovering addicts — like herself.

“For every snack, we give back. What my new nonprofit will be doing is giving away backpacks for children in homeless shelters in New York City,” the 54-year-old host of the Wendy Williams Show said as she took a break for an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times.

“There are thousands and thousands of children at these shelters, and they are in need. A backpack is something that’s so simple and yet so essential for them to be able to carry their things, to tuck it up and be ready. You know, the streets can be very mean out here. But this is Chicago. So you know what I’m talking about.”

The Chicago visit was Williams’ first public appearance since last fall’s Season 11 debut of her 10-year-old show, a season that has been a rocky one for the “Queen of Celebrity Gossip,” who is currently the only black woman with her own talk show on daytime TV.

Talk show host Wendy Williams chats with her team Wednesday at the Sweets & Snacks Expo at McCormick Place, where she launched her new partnership with SNAXsational Brand.

Williams, who suffers from Graves’ disease, announced at year’s start she was taking a hiatus from her show to recuperate from complications of the disease and hyperthyroidism.

In March, after returning, she made an on-air confession that she’s been struggling with her past drug addiction for several months, moving into a sober living house to address it.

In April came the announcement she’d filed for divorce from her husband of nearly 22 years, around whom rumors of infidelity had long swirled.

On May 15 came the announcement she was dissolving the nonprofit they ran together.

And just Wednesday, as Hunter appeared at the annual trade show featuring the world’s top packaged dessert, candy and snack brands, reports surfaced that her son and his father got into a physical altercation earlier in the day, resulting in police being called.

Williams, whose brazen personality and penchant for candid commentary — on real issues like racism and frivolous topics like shenanigans of celebrities — have taken her from her start as a radio disc jockey to the household TV name she is today, wasn’t interested in discussing any of that.

“I am here representing SNAXsational brands. I’m here to talk about giving back,” said Williams, chatting as her 19-year-old son Kevin Jr., kept a watchful eye nearby.

Talk show host Wendy Williams’ son, Kevin Hunter Jr., sat nearby as his mother launched her new charity partnership with SNAXsational Brands, where proceeds of every bag of the popcorn and pasta snack sold this year will be donated to her charity.

“Ultimately, if you have a little, you have to give a little. That way you can sleep well at night,” she said. “I grew up in a family — my mother and father are still alive, thank God — where we were taught to give back, through the Candy Stripers or Girl Scouts, or by being Santa’s elves. So it comes very natural to me, and it’s very important to me.”

Williams, a prolific author of several New York Times best-sellers whose FOX-TV show has received multiple Daytime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host and Outstanding Talk Show/Entertainment, has never considered herself a role model, and has been adamant about that in past interviews.

But Williams, whose show has in the past traded spots with Ellen DeGeneres as the number one female host on daytime TV — currently renewed through 2020 — is passionate about impacting inner-city youth who are falling victim to drugs, as her own son did.

Potentially helping others is the reason she speaks openly not only of her own past cocaine addiction but of her son’s one-time addiction to K2, the packaged synthetic marijuana entrapping so many teens in the inner city.

“I don’t know what to say to the kids these days, except for hold on tight to somebody in your community. You can overcome,” Williams said.

“I mean yeah, you can look at people like me, and their stories, but you’ve got to get a reality,” she said. “I’m not their reality. I’m just a lady on TV. The reality has got to be, like, how my mom is my superhero. I love Oprah and I love Howard Stern, but I don’t know them like that. I do know Shirley, who just turned 85 yesterday. And we go at it sometimes, but she’s my superhero. She’s my tangible person. To the youth: Get yourself somebody tangible.”