Richard Simmons Isn't Missing

man i'll tell you what all i ever want to drink when we're recording is like fizzy things and it's the worst idea i know because you have fizz in the background you have the burps yeah you get just lovely little gurgles to join us on the podcast the gurgle cut we're releasing the i think i mean i think maybe i'll go literal welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that will make you cry slightly less in this episode than the previous episode okay this is what i was promised this is why i'm here you're really selling it i'm fucking i'm leaving if you make me cry but i think look listen i think the main arc of this episode is richard simmons rise to stardom and then decision to disengage from stardom i'm michael hobbs i'm aubrey gordon oh my god we haven't said our name we haven't we forgot again you have to say your thing if you'd like to support the show you can do that at patreon.com maintenance phase or you can subscribe through apple podcast or spotify it's the same audio same stuff michael we're talking about richard simmons again can you give us like a like a brief nutshell overview yes of sort of what we learned last time grew up louisiana he talks a lot about being bullied for being fat by his father and also other kids then he moves to italy becomes a happy little meatball ends up moving back to la and essentially having like a very severe eating disorder to lose a hundred pounds and then discovers a group exercise and opens a gym and then a chain of gyms yeah because his gym is based in beverly hills and because he is such a theatrical dude it is not long until the media takes note richard and anatomy asylum are ultimately featured for the first time on tv on a show called real people are you ready to watch a clip yeah yeah let's do it what was it that compelled you to lose all that weight i had a friend who had a friend who who uh died from obesity from just being fat and that's when i started going to autopsies like you know looking at people's hearts and being able to take this picture into the classroom and go do you see this heart this heart is covered with cookies and pies and grease and your heart may look like this and you never know when it's going to stop beating weren't you afraid that if you lost weight you couldn't get work as an actor if you were thin every fat person has the fear that they will change in some way mentally physically spiritually and sexually if that's how that weight loss goes i tried every diet in the whole world i had the jaws wired i tried the pills i tried the shots and finally i basically starved i lost 123 pounds in two and a half months my hair fell out the eyes drooped the chin drooped if you don't exercise while you're losing the weight you will end up to look like a very thin glad bag i had to go to a plastic surgeon chin had to go up eyes had to be done nose fixed 900 hair transplants i mean it was a lot of work to do i had to go to a plastic surgeon chin had to go up eyes had to be done nose fixed 900 hair transplants i mean it was a lot of work to do i had to go to a plastic surgeon chin had to go up eyes had to be done nose fixed 900 hair transplants i And you're looking at a four door Cadillac paid for when you look at this face. What's to prevent other people from looking at you and saying, hey, Richard did it. Why can't I do it? Because they should make the same anguish mistake that I made because I almost died. I didn't know he had that much plastic surgery. Yeah, he had quite a bit of I assume there was like some loose skin removal stuff to do. But like, yeah, he he was very open about having had a lot of work done. He also has this weird thing of like, I lost weight the wrong way. So that's why I, you know, had this kind of drooping face. But my understanding is that like you have that no matter what. It's like you if you lose weight, you just have extra skin on your face. Yes, absolutely. It's the same thing as like when people are like ozempic face and you're like, yeah, that's just people losing weight and you got less fat everywhere. People just lose weight. Yeah. And then your skin hangs a little lower and there you go. I feel like it makes me kind of like respect the message a little bit less if he's promising people, you know, that they can look like Richard Simmons after losing so much weight when he's. He only spent thousands of dollars on a bunch of plastic surgery. This is some of the sort of selective stuff that people listen to with Richard Simmons. He was very consistent about saying that he starved himself and that that was a bad idea. Yeah. A lot of people missed that message. He was pretty consistent about talking about having work done. A lot of people chose not to pay attention to that. And he was also pretty consistent, as you see in this clip, with really haranguing fat people. Yeah. About being to blame for their. Their own deaths, basically. Right. Yeah. In a People magazine profile from the time called Former Fatty Richard Simmons is the Grand Duke of Diet and the Clown Prince of Fitness. That's not even. What? It's exactly right. They write, quote, Off camera, Simmons himself has even been known to accost strangers caught in the act of overindulging. Oh. I'll see an overweight woman eating a butterscotch sundae, he says, and I'll sit at her table and say, what is this? For me, this is not a job. It's a mission. He's like, bullying worked for me, so I have to bully people. But it's like, Richard, it doesn't sound like it actually worked for you. Yeah, totally. And I will say, he doesn't really talk a ton in interviews about his relationship with food. Yeah. But when you get little glimpses of it, it's very clearly not an easy relationship. Oh, yeah. There's one. men's health interview where he lists off just like dozens of foods that he can't have in his house. Oh, wow. Okay. Let yourself have a potato chip once in a while. My guy probably just has like a low grade eating disorder for like essentially the rest of his life. It's like how he keeps the weight off. Well, and now not only is it his perception of his own health and his perception of his own social value and other people's perceptions of those things too. It's also his fucking job. Yeah. Yeah. He can't ever be seen to gain any weight. I think the thing that I took home from this clip when I first saw it as I was like, holy hell, his message was so much gnarlier and more like tough talk than I remembered, you know? Yeah. It's a scared straight stuff. I think people tend to think of him as the antidote to like toxic weight loss messages. And I think that's the part that people listen to the loudest. Yeah. But he had plenty of extremely judgmental messages in there because that is how he felt about himself. So is this just a show that's just like, here's a random guy. It's the TV show equivalent of get a load of this guy. Like the guy who got calf implants on true life on MTV that I still remember for some reason. Oh boy. Remember that one? No. What? I think about that all the time. And here you said you didn't get TV references. Nice try. That's all I did as a kid was go over to friends house who had cable. And watch MTV. Go away. I'm watching MTV. Were your parents like a, we refuse to have cable house. We were a cheapskate house. And cable was like $32 a month. That's where you get it. It is Aubrey. Yes. It's a genetic trait. So unsurprisingly after his appearance on real people, Richard is a huge hit. And the next thing he did, Michael, was that he landed a recurring role as an aerobics instructor on general hospital. Oh, here come the weird references to things the youths will not understand. Yeah. Uh, general hospital is an extremely long running, uh, American soap opera and soap operas. I would say are like, uh, telenovelas that never end. We have to give it to people in Mr. Beast. Imagine, uh, Mr. Beast, but there's a script that he talks and there's 50 Mr. Beasts and they work in a hospital. That's how young people will understand. Imagine you unwrap your shredded cheese and there's a big pile of blue marbles. The way that he talks about, getting the role is another one of these sort of, I don't know, Richard kind of ingenue stories where he's like, I was on a plane to Las Vegas and I got into my seat and I was sitting next to a professional looking brunette in a three piece suit who asks him, aren't you that guy who jumps around on television? Okay. And he says, yes, I guess I am. And she says, you're very funny. I've never seen anyone like you on TV. And he says, well, that's because there isn't anyone on TV like me. Nice. Like I was like, I don't think this exchange happened at all in this way. And I don't think you stumbled into a role on general hospital. She, this professional looking brunette then says, Hey, I'm in casting for general hospital. And I'd like to write a role for you on the show. And he's like, I turned her down. I was like, no, you didn't. I feel like a theme in celebrity memoirs is people write out their ambition. Oftentimes it sounds like he probably wanted to get on TV. He got a little taste of celebrity. He liked it. And he's like, okay, what other opportunities are there? And he probably went out of his way to try to make these opportunities happen. There's nothing wrong with that, but people want to make it seem as if it's this, like, I'm so special that people couldn't help but notice. I think he had gotten a taste, not only of sort of being on camera, but of the kind of adulation that he had absolutely never gotten in his life before. Right. Yeah. Everything up until now has been mostly, people rejecting him. Right. And then he gets this thing where people not only accept him, they adore him. Right. Right. He talks during this era about how there were whole bags of fan mail just for him oh wow this is around the time that he starts his pretty legendary relationships with his fans in his memoir he writes that he usually makes 40 to 50 phone calls a day oh my god even when he's on the road and on a really busy day he'd go up to 100 phone calls this is my bad place hellscape this would kill me hellscape so richard lands this role on general hospital it goes really well he's really loved on the show he calls his dad to tell him he's on general hospital yeah and his dad's response is basically why don't you have your own show what the fuck that's such garbage so from there richard went on to host his own daytime show talk show the richard simmons show wait really like immediately yeah he started general hospital in 79 and he uh started the richard simmons show in 1980 oh wow okay we're gonna watch the intro which will give you a taste good good good good good i sent you the link intro okay the richard simmons show it's him doing fitness great transitions powerpoint transitions okay there's like a preacher skit vaudeville fitness oh it's like pranking people in the grocery store getting into a hot tub fully clothed for some reason god he's driving a car with why are you fat on the license plate why are you f a t t why are the comments turned off they're afraid of people roasting him it's too spicy i really hope that that's not for bad but listen this was uploaded by someone with 13 subscribers okay fair enough in that intro mike we get richard simmons among other things we get him doing a lot of fitness with a lot of costumes very weird yeah at one point we see him dressed as an angel that costume is for a character he called the weight saint oh no who was the angel on your shoulder reminding you to count calories right that's what he was doing in the grocery store was like telling that lady don't get that get this oh my god she was in the produce aisle richard he had other characters on the show he did frequently did like sketches on the show that i don't know if that's his gift i don't know if that's his gift he played a nun named sister mary locale wait is it a whole talk show dedicated to weight loss this sounds so boring it is a fitness themed habit Let's do a half hour talk show every day oh my god why would anybody watch this he has another character named anna maria spaghetti he plays a reverend named reverend pounds okay who is a man of the tablecloth oh my okay that's pretty good all right fair enough who says things like twinkies are my shepherd i shall not want what and though i waddle through the room i'm not a shepherd i'm not a shepherd i'm not a shepherd the valley of linguine and clams i shall fear no evil richard that's terrible he has a sketch about broccoli going to the unemployment office because quote people just don't eat vegetables anymore god he plays a cop from the slob squad he gives out tickets at grocery stores to people who are buying fattening foods he had celebrity guests on bob barker came on okay white came on phyllis diller jack lelaine and barbara eden you wanted your 70s celebrities yeah let's go oh man we're not explaining a single one of those barbara eden just i dream of genie that's all you need to know oh i didn't actually know that one i didn't actually know that one it was my ringtone for years mine is just the my neck my back song in its entirety so doing the richard simmons show allows richard to buy a house for himself he doesn't really want a house he's never really home for it but i'm not going to buy a house for him so i'm going to buy a house for him so i'm everyone keeps telling him there's this gorgeous house and he just ought to buy it so he buys this house he can afford it he buys his house and he calls his family and says come out to la i'll fly y'all out i'm hosting christmas i got a house i'd love for you guys to come out and see it his family arrives and his dad walks through the entire house making note of all of the flaws that's such toxic dad behavior it is such a specific parent yeah yeah the pipe's a little loose here richard you're like what what am i supposed to do about this right now the appliances are all stainless steel which is like a very fucking fancy thing in the early 80s okay and he just keeps going they're gonna be covered in fingerprints anti-cybertruck king richard simmons's dad and he's like there are too many steps in one house i've never seen this many steps in my whole life christ so richard gets his family settled into their rooms and his immediately starts shouting to him about how there's no hot water like the hot water is out okay i would complain about that i would complain about that so i'm gonna send you his quote from his memoir explaining what happened next we're back in the crying in the driveway section of the podcast episode yeah sorry get ready to get sad about it dad my father said we fly all the way out here and now we're in a mansion this big modern thing and there's no hot water do something richard i called the beverly wilshire hotel and managed to get a string of rooms that's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna go to the hotel and i'm gonna go to the hotel and i'm gonna how i spent christmas that year the next day december 26th i put the house up for sale i didn't want to clean all those windows anyway oh that's so sad it's so sad so like he bought the house because other people thought he should buy the house and he sold the house because other people didn't like the house it's sort of like what did his dad like want like what did he expect well i mean i think listen i'm just spitballing here but i think his dad was a showbiz guy who gave it all to have kids and here richard is having a good amount of success in showbiz right and who said that he didn't want showbiz kids because they uh are annoying right and i'm like well you got an annoying kid who is having a great deal of success in the thing that you left yeah i will say over time richard says that his relationship with his father starts to sort of soften oh he doesn't give a lot of great examples of that the closest he gets is like there is a conversation that he recounts where his dad says i'm really proud of you oh okay it's clear that that meant a lot to richard i remain skeptical in a protective way yeah leave him alone yeah yeah yeah you know what i mean because this dad has been like bad news and also as part of that relationship softening richard's like i started sending him gifts okay and it's like cashmere sweaters and tailored shirts and like i don't know what to do with that i don't know what to do with that like nice ass shit look at what my gay son got me look at the gay things that my son got me richard eventually ends up buying another house and he wants to hire a housekeeper to look after the house because he has gone so much richard simmons has many dogs and they are all dalmatians oh really like famously difficult to care for dogs every dalmatian is named after a character in gone with the wind oh wait really scarlet hattie ashley rat dude richard simmons and i would not have been friends if we met each other under different circumstances he also collected dolls so many old dolls in the house yeah uh how you doing buddy there's no way i want to maintain my affection for this man these are not the choices as an adult that i have made so he's interviewing housekeepers and he interviews someone and he says hey do you like dogs and she says yes i like dogs and when i was a kid i had a dalmatian and he goes you're hired okay her name's theresa she lives with him for decades uh working as his housekeeper okay when people ask him if he's married he says i live with a wonderful woman named theresa oh man oh okay yeah huh according to theresa who has since he passed he also bought two grave sites side by side one for him and one for her huh while richard is doing the richard simmons show his father falls ill he goes in for surgery for kidney stones and richard is like how bad do you need these kidney stones removed you're 85 there are complications from the surgery so richard flies out to new orleans to see his dad because he's 85 and he's experiencing complications from surgery and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put together the risk there right he talks about seeing him in his house and he's like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna hospital bed and sort of scarcely recognizing him he should walk around his dad and criticize all the flaws with it your nose doesn't look right you're like oh your ears are garbage once his father's released from the hospital richard gets him all settled in and then says okay is there anything else that i can do for you and his father says yes richard there is one other thing you can do for me go to rome and meet the pope what and say a prayer with him for me this is like some sort of like three riddles to cross this bridge type shit this is like a video game character he's like go on this quest i'm gonna go cameras on for a second so that you can see okay okay okay wait what that is richard simmons meeting the fucking pope wait so he actually pulled this off somehow he went to rome and he met the pope he does not explain the mechanics of how that happened he sat next to him on a plane i think he sat next to him on a plane what do you do he like really yada yada's it where he's like i called my agent who worked out the details and i was on a plane to and i'm like no yeah that is not a sufficient explanation richard i wonder if he told the pope that he's jewish by the next year spring of the next year leonard simmons senior died on april 18th 1983 this is a big loss for richard his relationship with his dad was complicated and rough but even in its complication and roughness it still loomed large in his life in a big way yeah and i think for anybody who's grieved somebody who you who sucked who sucked you can say who sucked yeah who who was really close to you and also who sucked yeah you know how complicated it can be to feel grief and relief and anger and all of that at the same time this is how i felt when queerest folk went off the air it was it was not good but it was very important to me so he's lost his father while all of that is happening his career continues to take off in addition to his talk show in addition to general hospital in addition to all of that he releases a diet book it's his first book called never say diet is this supposed to be a pun on never say die yes he says he doesn't like the word diet because the first word is die the first part of the word is die so his is a live it program is what he calls it throughout he takes these little things and he makes them so much worse they're so sweaty a live it so he's talking in this section about people who've tried everything and just can't lose weight and like why should you listen to me about this right he's credentialing himself he says the difference is that you've failed and i haven't i used to weigh 268 pounds i used to be fat and round and miserable and i didn't like it so i found the way to beat the fat and come out a winner and i know where you've gone wrong and why you've failed so far well this is kind of mean yeah and also like i'm so sorry you beat the fat and came out a winner that's how you're describing like hospitalization induced by starving you're like what are you talking about he just said this more succinctly on the show with the why are you fat license plate that's kind of like his whole thing yeah i think the other thing to know here is that like this is absolutely the template for how former people are urged to feel about themselves whether or not they feel that way yeah they're urged to feel and say like i was fat that was bad i made a decision to be thin i had the grit to achieve it and i came out a winner right and i should say he is not a person who has mentioned any formal training at any point in any of this yeah good point yeah he's just like a guy i think a lot of his shit is based on vibes yeah yeah yeah and his own experience and of course your own experience is not replicable yeah while all of this is happening he keeps teaching his classes at the anatomy asylum now called slimmons finally he's becoming himself he's starting to believe he starts teaching classes his regulars really love him and one of his regulars is named ellen she became a favorite of his she made these teeny tiny little teddy bears and would sell them at local gift shops and would bring them to him as a gift she'd bring little bears every so often he doesn't see her in class for a while and asks after her and finds out that she has passed away and he's like what happened and the person is like well she was anorexic for a really long time oh wow and he says that at this point anorexia is not a term that he has heard so he asked another couple of regulars who are both nurses what anorexia was oh wow this is the passage that he writes about it in his memoir he says so an anorexic is a person who stops eating for no reason and millions of reasons it's someone who gets smaller and smaller just like those little teddy bears that alarmed me because i had once starved myself to lose weight i asked the nurses when i starved was i anorexic not necessarily though it's a fine line they told me you starve to lose weight anorexic starve to disappear there are usually feelings of self-loathing or lack of self-worth connected with anorexia in italy when i'd starved it was because i finally realized my own self-worth so i thought i'd wanted to live and to look my best so i would fit in although i'd gone about it in a very harmful way oh this is like what he's telling himself he's like i didn't hate myself i just did it because i hated myself it's so sad yeah and self-soothing by being like even though i behaved indistinguishably from someone with profound anorexia yeah being thin is still healthier than being fat even if you starve to do it it's like someone who is really bending over backwards to tell himself stories that make sense of his own experience and sort of protect it it's also so interesting how you can like you can make somebody stare this stuff in the face yeah right of being like starving yourself because of low self-esteem and poor body image etc is unbelievably bad for you and an actual like diagnosed medical condition and he can look at that information and still be like i mean i did that but not in like the bad way yeah yeah like it's not it's not that you can like tell people that this exists and they'll have this eureka moment be like oh my god i shouldn't do that it's like oh oh but i don't count we are now michael solidly in the mid 80s and 1985 is the dawn of the infomercial era oh yeah another thing we have to explain i did not know why infomercials sort of showed up in the 80s i just sort of knew that they did do you have a guess about why infomercials showed up the invention of it was so good they were like let's put this on tv six hours a night the sham wow they just had to look they had to get the word out this is part of the reagan administration's massive deregulation effort what so reagan's changes to the fcc abolish the fairness doctrine that had been in place since 1949 which was the doctrine that required broadcast television to fairly cover differing viewpoints on controversial issues should chicken rotate should chicken not rotate this deregulation also removed restrictions on advertising to kids so this is when we also start to get a huge wave of ads aimed directly at children during children's programming and it loosened restrictions on how long an individual advertisement could last so now you could have a 30 or 60 minute advertisement wait those were advertisements i thought they were just like talk shows that only ever existed for one episode all of them had the same catchphrase which is just like there's got to be a better way the thing is i did watch them when i was like six years old and like i absolutely fell for it i was like oh i learned on a talk show about like this knife that can cut paper or whatever i grew up in a house with cut coat knives and a miracle thaw i am not above the infomercial miracle thaw was the best one it was just like a cutting board on the counter it's like meat defrosts like yeah and it's metal so meat does not defrost it just makes the metal cold now everything's cold congratulations so at this point when infomercials sort of roll around richard simmons had a two-minute tv ad for his product deal a meal which is sort of like a hybrid board game diet it's like a very bad board game and a okay diet we don't have time operating we don't have time we're not doing it we can't run through every part of the richard simmons empire because we would be here for i would come out of my office with a rip van winkle beard the diet board game deal a meal for many of our listeners in our age group will have been their first diet because it's sort of a gamified kid friendly is it like you spin a wheel and you can like eat an apple or a blueberry or something no you have like a little play wallet and you have cards in the wallet that are like you get seven vegetable cards and two lean protein cards oh my god it's a roguelike and you move them over to the other side of your wallet when you eat them it's belatro i don't know any of the words you're just don't worry about it not a single one of them welcome to my world aubrey anytime you mention survivor to me i don't watch survivor or whatever 90 day fiance and you know that are those different direct your hate mail to michael.com so the ad his two-minute ad for deal a meal was a big hit uh and so was the product so the production company approaches him about doing an infomercial for deal a meal he does and it becomes a big hit and richard just sort of keeps doing infomercials yeah the very next year 1986 richard simmons starts making exercise videos oh in 1982 jane fonda's complete workout came out and was a massive hit right one of the things that people say about that time is that the video was so popular it increased vcr sales right i couldn't find confirmation of that anywhere but like that's like i think it's a gesture at how popular those videos were yeah my understanding is that the rise of the vcr was like 99 pornography oh that makes more sense 0.5 was probably at home fitness there's only two things that you need privacy to watch most of those tapes were cranked out oh few of them used any recognizable songs richard describes them as elevator music oh interesting okay so and i went back and did watch some other i watched richard simmons workout tapes and i watched some others from the time and you're like yeah it's a little bit like the um angela lansbury positive moves one right where you're like oh it's just like sort of synthy vibes or uh in today's parlance creative commons it's poddington bear so the production company once again approaches him and this time is like what if you made an exercise tape and he was like cool cool but i want it to be like my classes where we play my records and he wants it to be his favorite songs that he listened to as a kid in the 50s and 60s so he plays it's my party and he's a rebel and beyond the sea and these right older timey songs for the 80s and for his middle age audience which is actually like very smart yeah he casts the videos like his classes they are mostly women but not exclusively women they include fat people and they include super fat people and they include visibly disabled people it's radical inclusivity for that era yeah radical right but it's also inclusive in the name of making those fat people thin yeah it's all on a relative scale it's totally advancing from what it was before but it still has a long way to go yeah i'm gonna go cameras on again up until this like a ballet dancer oh what tights and a leotard and he looks gorgeous oh wow the hips right yeah like he looks stunning yeah he looks great yeah i also recently discovered leggings oh you're gonna start getting into leggings i found them at the children's section of goodwill like everything else i wear i'm a very small man he's like people always told me i had great legs that they're right i do and i'm like yes you do richard you do have great legs and i'm like good job yeah man in the lead up to sweat into the oldies he meets a wardrobe person named leslie wilshire who he calls quote my own edith head which i'm like boy richard the references are not getting timely oh my god she is the one who brings him a pair of dolphin shorts for the first time wait explain dolphin shorts to me people have been tweeting this at us too why are they dolphin shorts uh it was the brand name d-o-l-f-i-n but then people over time thought it was like just the animal okay i've never heard of this but those are like the little tiny short shorts that he's wearing in like every video yeah they're the little tiny short shorts they're like the dude version of hot pants this is my only like traditional like we used to be a proper country take it's like bring back short shorts on men shocking take from a gay man just want to see more of the gentlemen she brings him the dolphin shorts which he describes as being like very in at the time like this was like the look yeah and she gives him a flowy flashy like tank top and he writes in his memoir about trying it on for the first time i just sent you a quote he says in that tank top and those shorts i finally knew what superman must have felt like when he put on the cape for the first time my legs looked great and the tank top covered my waist it camouflaged the area where my underwear made little love handle dents around my waist it also gave me an incentive to work a little harder on my chest and arms it was the perfect outfit i just love him having this moment of like i look awesome i feel awesome it makes me sad that built into that is like my waist is covered and i need an incentive to work on my arms and that kind of thing right but i'm like this is a moment of richard feeling straightforwardly like great about how he looks and how he feels in his body and all of that stuff and i'm like i love this for you this doesn't use driving to find any like moments of joy in this book that is so joyless you're like we found one so this becomes his signature look of course sweat into the oldies also became a huge hit in the exercise tape world it made him even more of a household name and it opened the floodgates for sort of richard simmons ink right yeah yeah he starts making branded clothing he starts making richard simmons workout shoes he starts making all popcorn has fat free popcorn what it's just popcorn with like a bunch of nutra sweet sprinkles on it just dry plain air popped popcorn also one thing we have not talked about yet is is the economics of all this home videos for like 20 dollars in like 1985 money which is like 45 or 50 bucks now like it must have been so profitable to have like a home videotape empire he also starts making huge appearances in malls and big box stores oh in order to promote this merch like he releases a steamer at one point okay he goes and does like a big like exercise class in the middle of a mall with the steamer so they can't sell the steamer richard simmons keeps sort of energizer bunneying his way through his work life right yeah until 1999 when his beloved mother shirley simmons passes away and richard describes this very openly in the memoir as a real turning point for him it is sort of an earthquake in his personal life this is from one of the final passages in richard simmons memoir he says after shirley passed away i was asked to do several national television shows even though i was so proud of myself for being so strong i had lost my enthusiasm remember the saying the show must go on well i just didn't feel that way i just didn't feel like being funny jay leno's parents had both died recently and he had any moving tribute to them on his show i remember that i had been a guest during the time he'd returned from his father's funeral i was there for him and now i guess he was going to be there for me i still had my doubts but i knew i couldn't hide forever eventually i said yes of course i'll go on i feel like i know what's gonna happen people aren't gonna let him be serious about his mom because he's richard and he's a clown and nobody wants to hear him be serious that's not the story that he tells god i want to cancel jay leno again god damn it well you can do that for other reasons for the cars due to the cars due to the denim after this little passage he writes about having a pep talk from his late mom that he heard her voice telling him to just be himself and to not say anything to aggravate his brother which i absolutely believe his mom said to him a lot mr business mr heterosexual so that is where the memoir ends is like i don't feel like being funny anymore but i guess i kind of have to yeah i gotta go on jay leno and get made fun of yeah yeah it is hard to read and i think to me it has the tone of an editor being like you can't end on such a sad note it's funny because his like alleged happy ending is also kind of a sad ending yeah it's like continue being the clown for everyone yeah i mean i think that is sort of the chapter that we're leading into is like culture does not let him yeah have some space yeah from there richard continues to make some media appearances but he is sort of slowing down from the 80s and 90s right how old is he at this point he's born in 46 you said right he's born in 48 48 okay so in 2000 he would have been uh 52 as i've gotten older i used to have like two hours a day of extroversion in me and now i'm down to like one interaction with a trader joe's cashier he probably started at a higher baseline than me but i can see how some of the energy that he's using on this is probably dwindling by 52 it's funny because like at the time when people kind of noticed that he had disappeared from public life it was sort of in some ways constructive to him because he was constructed as a mystery but it seems like this book kind of answers this question yeah he was a guy with a lot of hurt that he was carrying around and nobody really took any of that seriously or like listened to him and he had this kind of one-dimensional public persona so like yeah of course he was just like i don't really want to do this anymore that makes perfect sense to me doesn't it so i felt like i had sort of even just after reading the memoir i was like oh well i feel like i have a real good sense of why he disappeared from public life he was experiencing grief right and he just like was like i don't have this level of like you know be the life of the party in me right what an extremely human response yeah totally yeah yeah and he didn't step away from public life entirely at this point he just started to slow down like people like our fellow people in middle age tend to do cut to mike and aubrey going we're not going to produce as many episodes yeah it's like a normal thing so we start getting these reports of richard getting short with people and which is something that doesn't really exist in previous media about him yeah so in march of 2004 the smoking gun reported that richard simmons was charged with assault oh in the phoenix airport i do not remember this at all so here is the report from the smoking gun it says the 54 year old fitness guru laid the smackdown on one chris farnie a 23 year old mesa vessel in his spare time. According to the Phoenix Police Department When Farney spotted Simmons walking through the Sky Harbor International Airport, he said, look, Richard Simmons, drop your bags. Let's rock to the 50s. Farney told cops he was referring to an old Simmons workout tape. The diminutive star, guys, the diminutive star responded by walking over to the strapping Farney and saying, it's not nice to make fun of people with issues. He then slapped Farney's face. The motorcycle salesman, who was not injured, called cops who cited an emotional and repentant Simmons for assault. I mean, don't slap people, but also I can see how you would sort of snap. Yes. And also, Richard Simmons tells a very different version of this story. Oh, OK. In 2012, Richard gives an interview with Men's Health and he talks about this instance. Richard Simmons says that Chris Farney was talking shit about fat people and making fun of the fat people. That, I believe. Dude, have you seen the video of Bjork attacking that paparazzi? Why are you saying it like this when I'm sure that you know it's not? I've heard a lot of Icelandic people get it wrong, but it's actually Bjork. Oh, OK. Have you seen the video, though? Of Bjork slapping someone? Dude, it's wild. It's like normal paparazzi video of like a celebrity leaving an airport. You know, you've seen this clip a million times. And then this lady goes, welcome to London or like, welcome to New York. Or. Whatever city it is. And Bjork just goes fucking nuts on her. Like, feral. Like, jumps at her, grabs her microphone and is just like beating her fucking ass with this microphone. And it's like, out of context, you're like, what the fuck? Like, this, like, this pop star is completely unhinged. But, according to Bjork later, this is this paparazzi lady who had been hounding her for like weeks. And showing up in her, like, private vacations and fucking with her. And, like, it felt super passive aggressive. Just like, welcome. And that's when she, like, really snapped. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you have the full context, it's like, I mean, again, it's not defensible to sort of blow up and, like, physically attack somebody, obviously. But it actually kind of makes sense in context. Or at least it's like more legible as human behavior in context. And I can see something like that happening with Richard Simmons. You imagine that this must have been some sort of prolonged interaction. So when Men's Health asks Richard Simmons in 2012 about this instance, this is his response. He says, you can't just do that in front of me. You can say anything you want to me, but you better not say anything that's going to upset me about obese people. I've gotten emails where they go, my wife's a fat pig. She'll buy your videos, but then she eats Doritos. I'll email that man back and say, you should be ashamed of yourself. You are there to support your wife, not call her animal names. How dare you? This is the woman that loves you. She's the mother of your children. You need to embrace her. Tell her that you love her and never call her names or embarrass her in front of other people. Yeah. Slap that motherfucker, Richard. Right. I was like, I read that quote and I was like, I have been fully turned. Turned around on the slap. Yeah. Some people do deserve violence. This is the kind of energy that you never actually see from thin people or from formerly fat people who are now thin people. Right. Yeah. Oh, sorry. You were going to yell about fat people in the middle of the airport. I'm absolutely going to fucking. Yeah. Yeah. The human being equivalent of like getting out the squirt bottle and being like, hey, I would respect him more if he had a literal squirt bottle. That would be amazing. This is the thing that I was thinking about recently. If I got into a fight, I'm not confident that I would know how to throw a punch. Wait, really? You've never been in a fight, Aubrey? A physical fight? You've never been in a physical fight? Sorry. What about me? Oh, because you went to a fancy school. Somebody didn't go to public school. No, that is not what's happening here. I'm just docile. I'm just chill. I think I was in my 30s before I would consider being like, hey, you got my order wrong. At a restaurant. Dude, the last day of eighth grade, I was getting bullied by this other. This is like a chronicle of me being bullied in middle school. Now, this this podcast. Were you too sleepy to be bullied? No, this was after this was not after the seventh grade roller skating. This was after the eighth grade cruise. And this this kid whose name I really want to say, but I'm not going to say it. Who had bullied me all fucking year was fucking with me. And he shoved me down and I tripped and fell. And he started. He was like, oh, bitch or whatever. And he started walking away from me. And I got up and I like. I tapped him on the shoulder and I was like, oh, hey. And he turned around and I just did the cheapest fucking shot. I just punch him in the face as hard as I could. And it felt so good. I'm just like, boom. And he had fucked me all year. And then he like fell down. It was like it was like Mike Tyson's punch out with like they go like different directions. And it takes like hella long to fall down. And like as he was falling down, I like realized what I had done. I was like, I just punched like a popular kid in the face. And I'm like not a popular kid. So like as he was like still slow motion. Falling, I turned around and ran. So I was like, if he gets up, he's going to beat the shit out of me. Obviously, the only way I could have done this is with a cheap shot. So I like I booked my ass off to the school bus because I'm like, if I can get to the school bus, it's the last day of school. I'm just never going to see this person again. And like, if I can get to the school bus, I'm like in safety. I booked as fast as I could to the school bus. I like jump on. I'm like, get on the school bus. And this this kid goes, I heard you just punch somebody in the face. I was like, how did the rumor. Get. Here. Travels fast. Before I got here. What the fuck? And everyone's like, is it true? I'm like, how the fuck do you people know about this? But yes, it was. And I feel great about it. And I never saw that guy again. God, my heart was just pounding for Tiny Mike. Oh, dude, I know for teeny tiny. I was like, the stakes could not be higher. And then I was like, I know how it turns out. You're here. You're fine. I did live, but I'm still Tiny Mike. So in that same men's health interview, Richard Simmons talks about some more things that I personally found really troubling. He talks about keeping himself strictly to a 1500 calorie a day diet, which is again, like Minnesota starvation study levels ish, a little bit lower. He was born with what he calls quote unquote, a crippled leg and has been wearing corrective shoes since early childhood. It's so weird. He doesn't say that in the book. He just deals with it. It's painful, but he says, quote, thank goodness for ice and hot baths. So. So you get the impression that he is in pain with some regularity enough that he has a routine around it, right? And his job is exercising in public. It's also funny how, again, it's like he was telling us in public, like I'm a more complicated public figure than you think I am. And just like nobody listened. Yeah. He said he described his role in the world as being part priest and part clown. Yeah. Oh God. There is no mystery at all that this was a person who needed a break. Yeah. Yeah. So in February of 2014, just a couple years after that men's health interview, Richard Simmons stops making public appearances. It's not long before rumors start to circulate about his quote unquote disappearance, which is a sort of wild word choice in this case. Right. Right. It's not someone who's vanished off the face of the planet. It's a guy who's at home. He's like a, by that point, like 60 something year old guy who just like isn't out and about doing stuff anymore. Absolutely. Just like totally. He's basically retired. The wrench in the works here is that he also sort of stops responding to a bunch of people that he knew through Slimons. Yeah. Friends start calling. Some of them show up at the house and Teresa turns them away and she tells them that he doesn't want any visitors right now. Mm. So at this level, I can absolutely understand how that would be like really hurtful and confusing. Mm. But also this is not an unclear boundary. Well, his life probably feels like a prison of his own making, right? Because if he's playing this role where he's everybody's therapist, he might not want to play that role anymore. And he might feel like a lot of those relationships, even as, you know, you can say it's kind of self-inflicted and on some level, these people, of course, do care about him. You can see somebody who's created this life for themselves that they just don't really want to participate in anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's not like necessarily defending it. I'm like, my feelings would be hurt too, but also it's like, you kind of, it's understandable and human. So in January of 2015, TMZ reports that the LAPD did a welfare check on Richard Simmons. They had gotten an anonymous tip. They reported out publicly like he's okay. He's quote responsive and alert. Like he's fine. Then. Over. Later. The New York daily news runs a story called the haunted twilight of Richard Simmons. Oh my God. This is where the sort of disappearance quote unquote story really seems to take off. It's just a bunch of people who they considered him a friend who were like, he's not returning calls. Right. My favorite of his friends was a woman named June who owned a store called wigs today in Los Angeles. Okay. And then Richard became friends because he was a regular customer at wigs today. And I was like, I love this. Okay. I love that. He was like, I'm at the wig store so much. I've made friends. But does she say it's just like we used to hang out and now we don't hang out anymore. Is that like the extent of it? There's a fair amount of that. But the, the bulk of the story, the main source is Moro Olivera. Hmm. Moro Olivera was on Richard Simmons payroll first as a massage therapist and then as a personal assistant, there have been all these rumors that they were partners, right? That they were romantically involved. but richard simmons doesn't say that ever out loud to anybody does the guy does morrow identify himself as a boyfriend or partner uh he never really says either at least not that i have seen interesting okay he lived in an apartment that richard simmons owned and he according to him he sent in a rent check every month that he says that simmons never cashed oh okay so he would just write a check every month and richard simmons would like you know throw it in the garbage or whatever recycle it he seemed like a recycler yeah he did he did so we're going to start with one of his early one of the early passages okay about morrow's story from this new york daily news story let's talk it over olivera said i want to sit here and make sure you'll be okay let's go upstairs i'll give you a massage and relax you simmons called up to theresa revellis his live-in housekeeper of nearly three decades morrow is going upstairs with me he said no no no revellis shouted from the second floor according to olivera get out get out olivera looked at his friend who told him in a soft voice you've got to go olivera leaned in towards simmons is she controlling your life now as olivera tells it simmons looked down and with one resigned word confirmed his worst suspicions yes this was the last time he saw his friend this is sort of the key part of his story he believes and the story that he tells to the new york daily news is that theresa is keeping richard simmons captive in his home okay he doesn't offer a motive for that he just says she is a witch who practices witchcraft oh he literally says this yes he's careful to note in the interview that that isn't part of many americans belief system but that it's a very real thing where he comes from which is brazil and where theresa comes from which is mexico he tells the new york daily news that he thinks that black magic is what caused richard to be in his words tormented oh so a very unreliable narrator would you like another layer of unreliable yeah give it to me he wrote and self-published a book about the whole situation called king rich and the evil witch he learned from richard you could tell maybe they were boyfriends maybe something rubbed off a shared love for terrible titles he calls the book a living fairy tale he self-publishes it characters in the book include the good goofy king rich the evil witch bereza which is there is king rich's brother prince benny lenny it's the fictional story of bitchard bimmons no relation to any real and then there's a character just called the artist and that is very clearly morrow this beautiful and intelligent young man who gets caught in the witchcraft yes and the thing that i find maybe most galling about this piece is that it ignores its own context in this piece they talk to richard simmons manager who's like he's fine he's been on the road for 40 years he's just at home yeah he'd had trouble with his knees it makes sense to me that you would need what he got which was a full knee replacement on one side and he needed another and it reports that richard bimmons in this piece that his last living dalmatian hattie had a terrible long health decline before ultimately being put down morrow says in the piece that he visited at 2 p.m on a sunday and richard was asleep and morrow was like this is out of control you gotta get out of the house and you gotta get up and at him and i was like his fucking dog just died he's in his 60s you let the man nap let the man have a depression nap when he has lost so many beloved people and creatures in his life right yeah i think especially in periods of grief like it does call you to like zoom out on your life and be like is this what i fucking wanted yeah it's very conceivable that in that state you would go i think i'm actually fucking done working yeah in response to all of this dust kicking up richard gives an interview to the today show say he's totally fine he's doing what he wants to do nobody needs to worry man yeah the fact that it is an audio only interview just adds fuel to the fire for people it's true crime brain happening in direct response to richard simmons being like i'm fine please stop they're like this means he's definitely not fine this whole time i'm thinking like okay you're a fan of richard simmons it his maid or whatever or like yeah he's in some like severe depressive funk now what what do you do you don't know this person it really just seems like people were treating him like an atm for validation yeah and not like a person and when he was like hey i'm a person and i need a break people were like where the fuck is my money this atm is busted where did it go weird they're absolutely treating him like a utility that got shut off also you're allowed to just not be a public figure anymore i think you and i are probably both two people who will just one day be like oh i'm done yeah i will also be kidnapped by my housekeeper okay and there will be a strange brazilian man who tells a story about me that's brian bicep i'm gonna be there how dare you call back to that my telephone habits to a bonus episode too ridiculous bold ass brass so in november 2016 richard simmons closes slimmons okay there's not really a formal statement from richard they just like post up signs on the door being like hey this is gonna be our last day i'm sure this just digs up the controversy again right so on the last day people are like maybe he'll show up for the last class he doesn't he hasn't shown up to anything in over two years at this point yeah he finally later addresses it in a facebook post here is that post he says i've never been very good with beginnings and endings well it's been over 40 years now and i'm finally taking my own advice i'm being kind to myself and putting myself first i'm making changes and taking time to do the things i want to do please know that i'm in good health and i'm happy no one has ever been able to tell me what to do and the same is true today i'm still independent determined and opinionated i simply am making a new beginning for myself quietly and in my very own special way slimmons closes in november of 2016 it's four months after even that last chapter that missing richard simmons premieres okay right so at this point there's been the wellness check there's been the today show interview there's been this facebook post about slimmons he's been really clear i am taking time off his manager is saying that and that's when this podcast comes out it's hosted by a journalist who had become a regular at slimmons uh and who had been on the show for a long time and he's been on the show for a long time and he's been on the show for a long time and he's been on the show for a long time and he's been on the show for a long time over to dinner at richard simmons house this is kind of the apex of the richard simmons is missing narrative right this is the biggest stage that it gets the next month on the heels of the podcast release the lapd got more tips to conduct another welfare check man they go so far as to issue a public statement saying that richard simmons is quote-unquote perfectly fine and quote right now he is doing what he wants to do and that is his business man in the following month the month after that richard simmons was hospitalized for severe indigestion while he's in the hospital he posts a photo of himself on facebook with the caption i'm not missing just a little under the weather yeah but the picture is from a few years earlier because as we know richard simmons in the hospital is probably not posting a picture of what richard simmons looks like while he's in the hospital oh no so then i'm sure the internet sleuths are like well the picture's old whatever remember the kate middleton psychotic yes saying people are like it's an old picture he's faking it this is theresa doing it i also think there are plenty of public figures who would not elect to post a picture of what you actually look like when you're checked into a hospital yeah exactly especially if you're making a post that's trying to reassure people also ultimately richard simmons is a boomer and he's like he's just posting on facebook he's like oh i'm posting a little thing and i'll just put a photo on there why not totally just like attached and the whole internet is just like what about the metadata of the photo like people just like zoom in when like he might just not have been thinking about it all that hard right richard simmons was born the same year as both of my parents and i'm like oh was he also gonna attach a photograph of his tv screen the post is in all caps for some reason he doesn't know why he doesn't know how to turn that off he also facetimed someone but it was just showing his ear because he lifted the phone up that same year the national inquiry starts publishing a series of articles alleging that richard simmons was trans and started accessing gender affirming care what one of the headlines was richard simmons colon he's now a woman oh my fucking god where the fuck is this coming from it's the national inquirer right so there someone's kicking up some dust that is all made possible by the he's missing narrative right yeah yeah if we don't have the he's missing narrative richard simmons name is not in the news and this doesn't become a story that the national inquirer probably cares to publish much less cares to publish at the level that they did it's funny contrasting him with Johnny Carson who also like retired from public life very publicly right like there was this like series of shows the end of the tonight show and then he just never did anything again he just like played golf and hung out on his yacht but like no one cared there wasn't like a narrative of like he's missing or whatever he also it appears stopped hanging out with all of his like celebrity friends yeah he disappeared from public life and most people were like oh this is kind of cool yeah it's weird that the culture did not allow Richard Simmons to do that when we allow people to do this all the time absolutely so on July 13th 2024 Richard Simmons died at his home in Los Angeles he was 76 years old according to the LA medical examiner his cause of death was a fall the day before with heart disease reported as a contributing factor according to people magazine's interview with Teresa Reveles this is her first time speaking to the L.A. medical examiner and she's like I don't know what to do with this it's after his death she says that he spent his final days doing what he wanted he was working with a well-known composer on a Broadway musical about his life he was in touch with his fans and was writing people letters and he was planning some media appearances for the first time in a while she was like he was kind of starting to feel up to like doing an interview or something so there's a funeral mass for Richard in New Orleans New Orleans has embraced Richard Simmons with its whole heart people from New Orleans love Richard Simmons so much we heard from some listeners who were at that funeral mass and one of them said that they were really shocked and sad to see that the the church was not full what yeah that's shocking it really underscores this sort of theory that I've been developing of like again like validation ATM yeah you know we talked in the last episode about like these are all ways that formerly fat people are able to people are encouraged to feel the way that people were interacting with him is as a currently fat person right which is like he doesn't have a story of his own he's the fat best friend right right he's the gay best friend he's the bit characters who are there for comic relief and the comic relief just is their difference right just say Rosie O'Donnell in Sleepless in Seattle this is taking forever also and all the information was so available too it's like the man wrote a fucking yeah none of this was hidden at any point from anyone he was saying this in interviews for years he was saying it in his book when people asked how he was he would be pretty honest yeah people put me you know take me out of the box when they need entertainment and then put me back in the box when they don't yeah I think he was right in the same way there's like the happy meatball Richard and the selling his jewelry to people Richard and like we want the best for all these there's also I think the last 10 years of his life Richard yeah we don't know that much about that period of his life he never got the chance to write about it he never got the chance to tell us about it but like I choose to believe that he got some of what he wanted and he decided at the end you know like he said in his Facebook post like he's an independent guy he made a decision that this is what he wanted to do with the last 10 years of his life and like all evidence is that he did yeah I mean I think there's a lot of internet talk about like so-and-so doesn't owe you anything right and I'm like this is a moment where we have to go Richard Simmons didn't know us anything yeah that doesn't mean that people didn't have genuine feelings about him yeah don't still that doesn't mean that people aren't allowed to feel close to him it just means that we should do a little check on like how much of that was us projecting I think it's also worth thinking about like people in your life who have that kind of energy that like really kind of social energy it's it's it's always important to sort of check in with those people to make sure there isn't something behind it or absolutely they're training you not to see them in a certain way I always like uh my um this is a really dark little transition but my uh my friend who killed himself when I was in my 20s was very much like that like social butterfly everybody's friend always making jokes the last person you think would be struggling with stuff and then out of the blue he killed himself it's like right people it doesn't mean every single person who's like bubbly is like hiding some dark secret underneath it but like just because somebody is bubbly and like oh my god you seem so happy doesn't mean you shouldn't be checking in with them with that person yeah I mean I think it is sort of incumbent on all of us right to like do a little relational inventory on that front is there someone who you're treating as just sort of entertainment for you or as a vessel for your complaints or your grievances or as just a source of guidance for you right are you treating someone as a wellspring of a resource or are you treating them as a person and things if you recognize us from the podcast and you come up to us and I get the slightest whiff that that's the way you think of us I will slap you in the face I will speak to you around like tech and eight I might start carrying around a tiny squirt bottle you've had some bad interactions too I feel like yeah just a can full of rocks I can shave get you you