Talk-show host Wendy Williams to star in 'Chicago' on Broadway

By Jamie Wetherbe

April 15, 2013 12 AM PT

How you doin’, Broadway? Daytime talk-show host Wendy Williams announced Monday that she’ll join the cast of the Tony-winning revival of “Chicago.”

Williams will step in as corrupt key-wielding Matron Mama Morton, currently played by Christine Pedi, for a seven-week run starting June 25 at the Ambassador Theatre.

Williams showed off her footwork as a short-lived contestant on “Dancing With the Stars” (she was dismissed during Week 2), but viewers have yet to hear her sing.

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Williams joins a growing list of talk-show show hosts who’ve done time onstage.

Jerry Springer, best known for the brawls on his self-titled talk show, started as Billy Flynn in a 2009 West End production of “Chicago.”

“The View” host Whoopi Goldberg starred in “Xanadu” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and won a Tony for producing 2002’s “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”

In 2010, she pulled double duty in the West End stage adaptation of her 1992 film “Sister Act,” playing Mother Superior and serving as a consulting producer.

The same year, fellow “View” host Sherri Shepherd joined of Nora Ephron’s off-Broadway hit “Love, Loss and What I Wore.”

On-again, off-again talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell starred on Broadway as Golde in “Fiddler on the Roof” and Rizzo in “Grease.” She also twice hosted the Tonys and financed the Boy George flop “Taboo.”

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