Wanda Smith, Miss Sophia out at V-103. Did the Katt Williams controversy lead to Smith’s surprise demise?
One of the most recognizable voices on morning radio in Atlanta has been abruptly muted.
It is a new year and there will be a new staff of personalities on V-103’s “Frank and Wanda In the Morning” — and a new name to the show — as Wanda Smith and Miss Sophia were fired from the popular morning radio show.
Both personalities were longstanding co-hosts with Frank-Ski with large loyal followings. Smith had been with the station for more than two decades and co-hosted the show with Ryan Cameron until he left one year ago. Sophia enjoyed nearly five years in the game at V-103.
Normally, the popular station declines to remark on the rationale for any termination. However, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution speculates on why the move was made now.
“[Frank] Ski will be paired up with a younger female co-host soon – though I am not 100 percent sure who it is,” said AJC writer Rodney Ho.
Wanda Smith’s departure comes in the aftermath of the infamous blow up with superstar comedian Katt Williams late last year.
Williams skewered Smith after their seemingly innocuous on-air banter escalated into a brutal volley of insults with Smith getting the worst of the exchange. Video of the exchange quickly went viral nationally.
That same weekend, Williams and Smith confronted one another in the parking lot leading to the Atlanta Comedy Club in Norcross, Georgia. Smth’s husband, Lamorris Sellers, reportedly stepped in and was prepared to check Williams as he reportedly brandished a firearm.
In a video, Williams and his companion can be seen dashing from the scene and running for their lives in a nearby supermarket, leading many to believe that Sellers did, in fact, have a gun on him and that Williams saw it.
The Gwinnett County Police Department in suburban Atlanta were called to the scene and conducted an investigation. But Williams, who called the police, later refused to cooperate with the investigators and the probe quickly fizzled out and died.
While pop culture fans are going to immediately make the connection to Wanda Smith’s ouster and her almost legendary run-in with Williams, Miss Sophia could not provide definitive confirmation as to why Smith was fired.
“I can’t say, I don’t know,” she told CBS 46 news. “But that may have something to do with it. But, of course, they aren’t going to share that information with us. I can only assume. So I don’t know. Me personally, I felt something big was going to happen because it put the station in a bigger light — not the Katt Williams situation (at the radio station) — but afterward at the club with her husband bringing the gun and that became a big story.
“You all know that we have in our contract that we can’t bring any embarrassment or shame to the employer that we are working for,” Miss Sophia added.
You can recap Katt Williams’ devastating verbal smackdown of Wanda Smith below, followed by Smith’s teary debate with Frank Ski in the successive episode of “Frank and Wanda in the Morning.”
