Slightly more than six years ago, I had a 10 a.m. meeting in the offices of V-103, with the crew behind the Atlanta radio station’s former flagship show, “Frank and Wanda in the Morning.”
It was Friday, Sept. 14, and cohosts Wanda Smith and Frank Ski had just come off the air. Katt Williams had just left the building after making a guest appearance on the show in which he and Smith engaged in a comedic roasting session with each other.
Credit: Jeremy Freeman / Dagger
Credit: Jeremy Freeman / Dagger
One of the responsibilities of my position as V-103′s digital program director was overseeing production and distribution of the station’s radio programming on digital channels. If something happened over the radio airwaves, it was my job to make sure it got to our audio stream, the station’s website and social media channels, including YouTube.
The meeting was called to decide if everyone involved with the show, from station management to on-air personalities and producers, was OK with me doing my normal job on that particularly abnormal day. When asked, everyone in the room, including Smith, agreed that the captured video of the joke battle between Williams and Smith was cleared to be released to the public.
I walked back to my desk, wrote a quick headline and description for the video, and directed our digital content producer to upload the video to YouTube. The rest, as we know, is history. Within the hour, the video went viral, and it has been viewed more than 10 million times since.
A few months later, after an incident involving Smith, her husband, LaMorris Sellers, and Williams at an Atlanta-area comedy nightclub, Smith was removed from the talent roster at V-103.
Anyone who remembers that moment as it happened would likely agree that public sentiment fell heavily in favor of Williams and against Smith. To this day it doesn’t take significant search manipulation for Google to show how people saw the exchange between the two comics, who won and who got what was deserved.
We’ve since learned of Smith’s death.
I heard the news on social media before it was credibly confirmed, and I immediately wondered if people would keep that same energy, as they say. Of course, I assumed they wouldn’t, because I believe people are inherently good and feel driven to respecting the deceased, at least for the most part.
Of course, some did not let the gravity of Smith’s passing deter them from taking a road less elevated.
“May she rest in peace but I honestly don’t know Wanda Smith outside of Katt Williams,” was shared by @bettawerkbish, an account on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
There are, of course, a lot of examples of celebrities whose controversies resurfaced and were reexamined after dying. There seems to be at least some level of disagreement on what society owes to the deceased in terms of how less-positive aspects of their lives are addressed when they are no longer here.
Tributes from people who knew Smith, including former coworkers Ski and Ryan Cameron and fellow comedians like Rickey Smiley, have been pouring in on social media.
Ski told his social media followers he was home with his family, celebrating the christening of his newest son, when the news arrived, moving him to tears. “It’s difficult when you lose somebody you love,” he said in the video, which in three days received almost 20,000 likes.
“I just wish that she was happy and healthy,” Smiley said in a video posted to Instagram. “I just hope y’all keep her family lifted up in prayer.”
Smiley’s wish has been granted for the most part, as there continue to be public statements eulogizing Smith. There seems to be almost universal agreement that she was a giving soul, whose generosity was not often displayed in view of the public.
Rick Caffey, who oversees the cluster of radio stations owned by V-103′s parent company Audacy, remembers Smith’s philanthropy and sense of community responsibility.
“That’s how she was wired. She was always looking to help other people, even when the spotlight of radio and video wasn’t present. That didn’t matter to her,” Caffey said over the phone.
An official statement from Caffey was posted Saturday on V-103′s Instagram page, sharing his condolences on behalf of the station.
I also asked him about the Katt Williams video from 2018, which after searching Google, Bing and social media, was nowhere to be found. Links that seemed to direct to the source video were redirected to other search results, mostly praising Smith after her death.
I wondered if the station decided to remove the video from YouTube. We had discussed that near the end of my time at V-103 in 2019, even though the clip was continuing to garner significant attention and revenue from YouTube. It had gone from a successful distribution of content to a certified revenue driver, something our digital content had never done before.
Caffey said he was not aware of the video being deleted, but, he said, he wouldn’t be upset if that decision had been made without his input.
“I wouldn’t want it on now anyway,” he said. “I wouldn’t think it would be appropriate. That one broadcast doesn’t define Wanda Smith. There were more things not captured via video and audio of what Wanda has done for people — things we individually supported and as a station.”
I discovered later the video is still live, at least at the time this story was published, on V-103′s YouTube channel, although it appears to be undetectable by Google’s and Bing’s search engines.
After talking to my former V-103 boss, I thought about the last time Smith and I spoke to each other, before she parted ways with Entercom, V-103′s parent company. It was winter 2018, and there was a sense that her time with the station was coming to an end, following the altercation at Atlanta Comedy Theater in Norcross.
I remember Smith being angry at me because it was the video and not the radio broadcast that had gone viral. She said she thought I had some responsibility for everything that happened after the show — most of which I admit was not positive — and I remember she had begun sharing that position with others at the station, who made me aware.
In a closed-door meeting between the two of us, after defending the video’s publication as something we had all agreed to do, I told Smith that I would never intentionally do something to damage her reputation, and I hoped my experiences with her before the video went live proved that.
After Williams went viral yet again in January, I reached out to Smith to ask if she had a comment about him. Years had passed, and the dust of 2018 — I presumed — had settled. She didn’t respond to my outreach, and I left it alone.
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
Smith had a legion of fans — some of whom knew her far better than I ever did. As we all speak of her today, I hope it is with an honest assessment of the relationships, however big or small, we had with her. I never doubted that she cared deeply about Atlanta, her listeners and even her haters. I still believe she found herself in the unexpected position of discovering what it feels like when virality happens in unflattering ways, and how fame doesn’t always bring good fortune.
I believe she would want us to keep it real. If we weren’t checking in before and are only realizing now that she was the person we understandably wish to honor today, we should ask ourselves if it’s worth keeping that same energy between the moments when it’s convenient to comment on someone we say we miss.
Rest in peace, Wanda. No faking the funk for likes, just a recognition of a real one gone before she could see her flowers blooming again.
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