Wendy Williams says she's leaving sober house

Wendy Williams, who has been candid about struggles with substance abuse, says she is ready to leave the sober-house facility where she announced on her daytime talk show last month she has been living "for some time now."

"I'm moving out of [the] sober house in just a few days," Williams, 54, declared Monday on her talk show, to studio audience cheers and applause. "It'll be Wendy on her own," she went on, alluding to her filing last week to divorce her husband of 21 years, Kevin Hunter, who is also her manager.

"You know I've been dealing with issues with addiction, alcoholism," Williams continued, "and I have a whole new life that I planned for myself and my son," Kevin Hunter Jr., who is in his late teens. "Believe me you, when you lay in a room with no TV and four gray walls all day and no telephone … and you lay there and you think about your life — this is my life at the sober house. It's one of the best things, honestly, that could have ever happened to me," she insisted, saying it forced her to think about how she has been "delivering to the world, especially here on the show."

She later added that, "Addressing my sobriety, my addiction, head on, has really helped me sort out every single compartment of my life. … I have a commitment to me and my son to come out of here better, stronger and faster than ever."

Williams' attorney, Mary T. Vidas of the Philadelphia firm Blank Rome, confirmed Friday that the talk-show star had filed for divorce in Essex County, New Jersey, where Williams has a home.

Williams did not mention her estranged husband on air Monday. While she has not commented publicly on their separation, an Instagram video posted Thursday by the show's makeup artist, Merrell Hollis, shows Williams sitting backstage with stylists and displaying her hand for the camera — prominently showing a large, flower-design ring rather than her wedding band. She and Hunter, who is in his mid-40s, married on Nov. 30, 1997.