Maintenance Phase

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Maintenance Phase

Richard Simmons Isn't Missing

November 21, 2024

The internet gets weird investigating the "disappearance" of America's gay best friend.

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[Maintenance Phase theme]

Aubrey: Man, I'll tell you what. All I ever want to drink when we're recording is fizzy things and it's the worst idea.

Michael: I know because you have fizz in the background and you have the burps.

Aubrey: Yeah. [Michael laughs] You get just lovely little gurgles to join us on the podcast.

Michael: The gurgle cut, releasing the gurgle cut. [Aubrey laughs] 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. This is what I was promised. This is why I'm here.

Aubrey: You're really selling it.

Michael: I'm fucking-- I'm leaving if you make me cry.

Aubrey: Listen, I think the main arc of this episode is Richard Simmons rise to stardom and then decision to disengage from stardom.

Michael: I'm Michael Hobbes.

Aubrey: I'm Aubrey Gordon. Oh, my God. We hadn't said our names through all that shit.

Michael: Forgot again. You have to say your thing.

Aubrey: If you'd like to support the show, you can do that @patreon.com/maintenancephase or you can subscribe through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the same audio.

Michael: Same stuff.

Aubrey: Michael.

Michael: Aubrey.

Aubrey: We're talking about Richard Simmons again. Can you give us a brief nutshell overview-

Michael: Yes.

Aubrey: -f what we learned last time?

Michael: 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, [Aubrey laughs] ends up moving back to LA and essentially having a very severe eating disorder to lose100 pounds and then discovers a group exercise and opens a gym and then a chain of gyms.

Aubrey: 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?

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, let's do it.

[video clip starts]

Male Speaker: What was it that compelled you to lose all that weight?

Richard Simmons: I had a friend who had a friend who died from obesity from just being fat. And that's when I started going to autopsies. 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.”

Male Speaker: Weren't you afraid that if you lost weight, you couldn't get work as an actor if you were thin.

Richard Simmons: Every fat person has the fear that they will change in some way, mentally, physically, spiritually and sexually if 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, you're looking at a four door Cadillac paid for when you look at this face.

Male Speaker: What's to prevent other people from looking at you and saying, “Hey, Richard did it, why can't I do it?”

Richard Simmons: Because they shouldn't make the same anguish mistake that I made because I almost died.

[video clip ends]

Michael: I didn't know he had that much plastic surgery.

Aubrey: Yeah, he had quite a bit of, I assume there was some loose skin removal stuff to do. But yeah, he was very open about having had a lot of work done.

Michael: He also has this weird thing of “I lost weight the wrong way” so that's why I had this kind of drooping face. But my understanding is that like you have that no matter what, like, if you lose weight, you just have extra skin on your face.

Aubrey: 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 including your face.”

Michael: People just lose weight. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: And then your skin hangs a little lower and there you go.

Michael: I feel like it makes me respect the message a little bit less. If he's promising people, that they can look like Richard Simmons after losing so much weight when he's presumably spent thousands of dollars on a bunch of plastic surgery.

Aubrey: This is some of the selective stuff that people listen to with Richard Simmons.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: He was very consistent about saying that he starved himself and that was a bad idea. 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 about being to blame for their own deaths, basically, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: That's not even-- what?

Aubrey: Yeah, [laughs] it's exactly right. They write, “Off camera, Simmons himself has even been known to accost strangers caught in the act of overindulging. 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.”

Michael: 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. [laughs]

Aubrey: Yeah, totally. And I will say he doesn't really talk a ton in interviews about his relationship with food, but when you get little glimpses of it, it's very clearly not an easy relationship.

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Aubrey: There's one Men's Health interview where he lists off just dozens of foods that he can't have in his house.

Michael: Oh, wow. Okay.

Aubrey: Let yourself have a potato chip once in a while, my guy.

Michael: So, he probably just has a low-grade eating disorder for essentially the rest of his life. It's how he keeps the weight off.

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He can't ever be seen to gain any weight.

Aubrey: 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?”

Michael: Yeah, it's a scared straight stuff.

Aubrey: I think people tend to think of him as the antidote to toxic weight loss messages. And I think that's the part that people listen to the loudest, but he had plenty of extremely judgmental messages in there because that is how he felt about himself.

Michael: So, is this just a show that's just like, “Here's a random guy.”

Aubrey: It's the TV show equivalent of get a load of this guy.

Michael: Like the guy who got calf implants on True Life on MTV that I still remember for some reason.

Aubrey: Oh, boy.

Michael: Remember that one?

Aubrey: No.

Michael: What? I think about that all the time.

Aubrey: And here you said you didn't get TV references. Nice try.

Michael: That's all I did as a kid was go over to friend’s house who had cable and-- [crosstalk]

Aubrey: Watch MTV.

Michael: And I will be like, “Go away. I'm watching MTV.” [laughs]

Aubrey: Were your parents like a, “We refused to have cable house.”

Michael: We were a cheapskate house. And cable was $32 a month.

Aubrey: That's where you get it.

[laughter]

Michael: It is Aubrey. Yes, it's a genetic trait.

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: Oh, here come the weird references to things the youths will not understand.

Aubrey: Yeah. General Hospital is an extremely long running American soap opera. And soap operas, I would say are like telenovelas that never end.

Michael: We have to give it to people in MrBeast, imagine MrBeast, but there's a script that he talks and there's 50 MrBeasts and they work in a hospital. That's how young people will understand.

Aubrey: Imagine you unwrap your shredded cheese and there's a big pile of blue mold. [Michael laughs] The way that he talks about getting the role is another one of these, 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?”

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: 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.”

Michael: Nice.

Aubrey: I was like, “I don't think this exchange happened at all in this way.”

Michael: Yeah, no.

Aubrey: And I don't think you stumbled into a role on General Hospital. 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.”

Michael: Oh, what?

Aubrey: No, you didn't.

Michael: I feel like a theme in celebrity memoirs is people write out their ambition oftentimes.

Aubrey: Yep.

Michael: 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 like, “I'm so special that people couldn't help but notice.”

Aubrey: I think he had gotten a taste not only of being on camera, but of the kind of adulation that he had absolutely never gotten in his life before, right?

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: Everything up until now has been mostly people rejecting him.

Michael: Right.

Aubrey: And then he gets this thing where people not only accept him, they adore him, right?

Michael: Right.

Aubrey: He talks during this era about how there were whole bags of fan mail just for him.

Michael: Oh, wow.

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: Oh, my God.

Aubrey: Even when he's on the road and on a really busy day, he'd go up to 100 phone calls.

Michael: This is my bad place.

Aubrey: Hellscape.

Michael: This would kill me. [laughs]

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: I don't know.

Aubrey: Yeah. And his dad's response is basically, “Why don't you have your own show?”

Michael: [laughs] What the fuck? That's such garbage.

Aubrey: So, from there, Richard went on to host his own daytime talk show, The Richard Simmons Show.

Michael: Wait, really? Like, immediately?

Aubrey: Yeah. He started General Hospital in 79, and he started The Richard Simmons Show in 1980.

Michael: Oh, wow.

Aubrey: Okay, we're going to watch the intro, which will give you a taste.

Michael: Good, good, good, good.

Aubrey: I sent you the link.

[The Richard Simmons show intro in background]

Michael: Intro. Okay. The Richard Simmons show, it’s him doing fitness. Great transitions. PowerPoint transitions.

[laughter]

Okay. There's like a preacher skit. Okay. Fitness in top hats.

Aubrey: Vaudeville Fitness.

Michael: Oh, it's like pranking people in grocery stores.

Aubrey: In the grocery store.

Michael: He is getting into the hot tub.

Aubrey: Getting into a hot tub fully clothed for some reason.

Michael: Fully clothed.

[laughter]

Michael: God. He's driving a car with “Y R U Fat on the license plate?”

Aubrey: Why are you F-A-T-T?

Michael: Why are the comments turned off? They're afraid of people roasting him.

[laughter]

Michael: It's too spicy [crosstalk].

Aubrey: I really hope that that's not for bad. But listen, this was uploaded by someone with 13 subscribers.

Michael: Yeah, 13 subscribers. Okay, fair enough.

Aubrey: In that intro, Mike, we get Richard Simmons, among other things, we get him doing a lot of fitness with a lot of costumes.

Michael: Very weird. Yeah.

Aubrey: At one point, we see him dressed as angel. That costume is for a character he called The Weight Saint-

Michael: Oh, no.

Aubrey: -who was the angel on your shoulder reminding you to count calories, right?

Michael: That's what he was doing in the grocery store was telling that lady-- [crosstalk]

Aubrey: Don't get that, get this.

Michael: Oh, my gosh. She was in the produce aisle, Richard.

Aubrey: He had other characters on the show. He frequently did sketches on the show.

Michael: [laughs] I don't know if that's his gift. I don't know if that's his gift.

Aubrey: He played a nun named Sister Mary Lo-Cal.

Michael: Wait, is it a whole talk show dedicated to weight loss. This sounds so boring.

Aubrey: It is a fitness-themed half-hour talk show every day.

Michael: Oh, my God. Why would anybody watch this? [laughs]

Aubrey: He has another character named Anna Maria Spaghetti. [Michael laughs] He plays a reverend named Rev. Pounds.

Michael: Okay. God.

Aubrey: Who is a man of the tablecloth.

Michael: Oh, my. Okay, that's pretty good. All right, fair enough.

Aubrey: Who says things like, “Twinkies are my shepherd, I shall not want.”

Michael: What?

Aubrey: “And though I waddle through the valley of linguine and clams, I shall fear no evil.”

Michael: Richard, [laughs] that's terrible.

Aubrey: He has a sketch about broccoli going to the unemployment office because, “People just don't eat vegetables anymore.”

Michael: Oh, God.

Aubrey: He plays a cop from the slob squad. He gives out tickets at grocery stores to people who are buying fattening foods. [Michael laughs] He had celebrity guests on. Bob Barker came on. Betty White came on. Phyllis Diller, Jack LaLanne and Barbara Eden. You wanted your 70s celebrities, let's go.

Michael: Oh, man. We're not explaining a single one of those.

Aubrey: Barbara Eden, Just I Dream of Jeannie. That's all you need to know.

Michael: Oh, I didn't actually know that one. I didn't actually know that one.

Aubrey: Pa pada pa pa pada… It was my ringtone for years.

Michael: Mine is just My Neck, My Back song in its entirety.

Aubrey: 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 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 this house. And he calls his family and says, “Come out to LA. I'll fly you 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.

Michael: [laughs] That's such toxic dad behavior.

Aubrey: It is such a specific parent move.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The pipes a little loose here, Richard. You're like, “What? What am I supposed to do about this right now?”

Aubrey: The appliances are all stainless steel, which is like a very fucking fancy thing in the early 80s.

Michael: Okay?

Aubrey: And he just keeps going. They're going to be covered in fingerprints.

Michael: Ooh. Anti-cybertruck king Richard Simmons' dad.

Aubrey: And he's like, “There are too many steps in one house. I've never seen this many steps in my whole life.”

Michael: Jesus Christ.

Aubrey: So, Richard gets his family settled into their rooms, and his dad immediately starts shouting to him about how there's no hot water, like the hot water is out.

Michael: Okay, I would complain about that. I would complain about that.

Aubrey: So, I'm going to send you his quote from his memoir explaining what happened next.

Michael: We're back in the crying in the driveway section of the podcast episode.

Aubrey: Get ready to get sad about it, dad.

Michael: “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 how I spent Christmas that year. The next day, December 26, I put the house up for sale. I didn't want to clean all those windows anyway. Oh, that's so sad.

Aubrey: It's so sad. So, 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.

Michael: It's sort of like, “What did his dad want? What did he expect?”

Aubrey: Well, I mean, I think. Listen, I'm just spitballing here, but I think his dad was a showbiz guy who gave it all up to have kids. And here Richard is having a good amount of success in showbiz.

Michael: Right.

Aubrey: And who said that he didn't want showbiz kids because they are annoying. And I'm like, “Well, you got annoying kid who is having a great deal of success in the thing that you left.”

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: I will say, over time, Richard says that his relationship with his father starts to soften. He doesn't give a lot of great examples of that. The closest he gets is, there is a conversation that he recounts where his dad says, “I'm really proud of you.”

Michael: Oh, okay.

Aubrey: And it's clear that meant a lot to Richard. I remain skeptical in a protective way. Be like, “Leave him alone.”

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: You know what I mean? Because this dad has been bad news. And also, as part of that relationship softening, Richard's like, I started sending him gifts and it's like, Cashmere sweaters and tailored shirts and nice ass shit.

Michael: Look at what my gay son got me. Look at the gay things that my son got me.

[laughter]

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: Oh, really? Like, famously difficult-to-care-for dogs.

Aubrey: Every Dalmatian is named after a character in Gone with the Wind.

Michael: Oh, wait, really?

Aubrey: Scarlett, Hattie, Ashley, Rhett.

Michael: Dude, Richard Simmons and I would not have been friends if we met each other under different circumstances.

Aubrey: He also collected dolls. So, many old dolls in the house.

Michael: Oh, my God.

Aubrey: Yeah. How you doing, buddy?

[laughter]

Michael: There's no way I want to maintain my affection for this man. These are not choices as an adult that I have made.

Aubrey: 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.”

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: Her name's Teresa. She lives with him for decades working as his housekeeper.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: When people ask him if he's married, he says, “I live with a wonderful woman named Teresa.”

Michael: Oh, man. Ooh. Okay.

Aubrey: Yeah. According to Teresa, who has shared this since he passed, he also bought two grave sites side by side, one for him and one for her.

Michael: Huh.

Aubrey: 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. He talks about seeing him in his hospital bed and starts scarcely recognizing him.

Michael: He should walk around his dad and criticize all the flaws with it. [Aubrey laughs] Your nose doesn't look right. Be like, “Oh, your ears are garbage.”

Aubrey: 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.”

Michael: What?

[laughter]

Aubrey: And say a prayer with him for me.

Michael: This is like some three riddles to cross this bridge type shit. This is like a video game character. He's like, “Go on this quest.”

Aubrey: I'm going to go cameras on for a second so that you can see.

Michael: Okay. Okay, okay. Wait. What?

Aubrey: That is Richard Simmons meeting the fucking Pope.

Michael: Wait, so he actually pulled this off somehow?

Aubrey: He went to Rome and he met the Pope. He does not explain the mechanics of how that happened.

Michael: He sat next to him on a plane. I think he sat next to him on a plane? [Aubrey laughs] Yeah. What do you do?

[laughter]

Aubrey: He like, “Really? Yada yadas 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, that is not a sufficient explanation, Richard.”

Michael: I wonder if he told the Pope that he's Jewish.

Aubrey: By the spring of the next year, Leonard Simmons, Sr., died on April 18, 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.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: And I think for anybody who's grieved somebody who you-- [crosstalk]

Michael: Who sucked? Who sucked? You can say who sucked.

Aubrey: Yeah. Who was really close to you and also who sucked. You know how complicated it can be to feel grief and relief and anger and all of that at the same time.

Michael: This is how I felt when Queer as Folk went off the air. It was not good, but it was very important to me.

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: Is this supposed to be a pun on Never Say Die?

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: [laughs] He takes these little things and he makes them so much worse.

Aubrey: [laughs] They're so sweaty.

Michael: Live-it.

Aubrey: So, he's talking in this section about people who've tried everything and just can't lose weight and why should you listen to me about this? He's credentialing himself.

Michael: 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.” This is kind of mean?

Aubrey: Yeah. And also, like, “I'm so sorry you beat the fat and came out a winner.” That's how you're describing hospitalization induced by starving yourself. What are you talking about?

Michael: He just said this more succinctly on the show with the “Y R U Fat license plate?” That's his whole thing. Yeah.

Aubrey: I think the other thing to know here is that, this is absolutely the template for how former fat people are urged to feel about themselves whether or not they feel that way. Their urge 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.” And I should say he is not a person who has mentioned any formal training at any point in any of this.

Michael: [laughs] Yeah, good point. Yeah. He's just a guy.

Aubrey: I think a lot of his shit is based on vibes.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And his own experience-- crosstalk]

Aubrey: And your own experience.

Michael: Of course, your own experience is not replicable. Yeah.

Aubrey: While all of this is happening, he keeps teaching his classes at the Anatomy Asylum now called Slimmons.

Michael: Finally, he's becoming himself. He's starting to believe.

Aubrey: 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 them 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.”

Michael: Oh, wow.

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: Oh, wow.

Aubrey: This is the passage that he writes about it in his memoir.

Michael: He says, “So 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. Anorexics 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.”

Aubrey: It's so sad and self-soothing by being like even though I behaved indistinguishably from someone with profound anorexia, 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 protect It.

Michael: It's also so interesting how you can make somebody stare this stuff in the face, of being like, starving yourself because of low self-esteem and poor body image, etc., is unbelievably bad for you and an actual diagnosed medical condition. And he can look at that information and still be like, “I mean, I did that, but not in the bad way.”

Aubrey: Yeah, yeah.

Michael: It's not that you can tell people that this exists and they'll have this eureka moment and be like, “Oh, my God, I shouldn't do that.” It's like, “Oh, oh, but I don't count.”

Aubrey: We are now, Michael, solidly in the mid-80s and 1985 is the dawn of the infomercial era.

Michael: Oh, yeah. Another thing we have to explain.

Aubrey: I did not know why infomercials showed up in the 80s. I just knew that they did. Do you have a guess about why infomercials showed up?

Michael: The invention of the Ronco Rotisserie Oven. [Aubrey laughs] It was so good. They were like, let's put this on TV six hours a night, every night.

Aubrey: The ShamWow. They just had to.

Michael: Look, they had to get the word out.

Aubrey: This is part of the Reagan administration's massive deregulation effort.

Michael: What?

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: Should chicken rotate? Should chicken not rotate?

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: Wait, those were advertisements? I thought they were just talk shows that only ever existed for one episode.

Aubrey: All of them had the same catchphrase, which is just like, “There's got to be a better way.”

Michael: [laughs] The thing is, I did watch them when I was like 6 years old and I absolutely fell for it. I was like, “Oh, I learned on a talk show about this knife that can cut paper or whatever.”

Aubrey: I grew up in a house with Cutco knives and a Miracle Thaw. I am not above the infomercial.

Michael: Dude the Miracle Thaw was the best one. It was just like a cutting board on the counter. It's like meat defrost, yeah.

Aubrey: And it's metal. So, meat does not defrost. [Michael laughs] It just makes the metal cold. Now everything's cold. Congratulations. So, at this point when infomercials roll around, Richard Simmons had a two-minute TV ad for his product Deal-A-Meal, which is a hybrid board game diet. It's like a very bad board game and an okay diet.

Michael: We don't have time, Aubrey. That's too much.

Aubrey: We don't have time. [Michael laughs] We're not doing it. We can't run through every part of the Richard Simmons empire because we would be here-- I would come out of my office with a Rip Van Winkle beard.

Michael: The diet board game.

Aubrey: Deal-A-Meal for many of our listeners in our age group will have been their first diet because it's a gamified kid friendly.

Michael: Is it like you spin a wheel and you can like eat an apple or a blueberry or something?

Aubrey: No, you have a little play wallet. And you have cards in the wallet that are like, you get seven vegetable cards and two lean protein cards.

Michael: Oh, my God. It's a roguelike.

Aubrey: And you move them over to the other side of your wallet when you eat them.

Michael: It's Balatro.

Aubrey: I don't know any of the words you're saying.

Michael: Just don't worry about it.

[laughter]

Aubrey: Not a single one of them.

Michael: Welcome to my world, Aubrey. Anytime you mention Survivor to me.

Aubrey: I don’t watch Survivor.

Michael: Or whatever.

Aubrey: Its 90 Day Fiancé and you know that.

Michael: Are those different?

Aubrey: Direct your hate mail to michael.com.

[laughter]

So, his two-minute ad for Deal-A-Meal was a big hit, 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 keeps doing infomercials.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: The very next year, 1986, Richard Simmons starts making exercise videos.

Michael: Oh.

Aubrey: In 1982, Jane Fonda's Complete Workout came out and was a massive hit.

Michael: Right.

Aubrey: One of the things that people say about that time is that the video was so popular it increased VCR sales. I couldn't find confirmation of that anywhere. [laughs] But I think it's a gesture at how popular those videos were. Yeah.

Michael: My understanding is that the rise of the VCR was 99% pornography,-

Aubrey: Oh, that makes more sense.

Michael: -but 0.5% was probably at home fitness. There's only two things that you need privacy to watch.

Aubrey: Most of those tapes were cranked out. Few of them used any recognizable songs. Richard describes them as elevator music.

Michael: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Aubrey: And I went back and 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 Angela Lansbury's Positive Moves, one.

Michael: Right.

Aubrey: Where you're like, “Oh, it's just sort of synthy vibes.”

Michael: Or in today's parlance, Creative Commons, it's Poddington Bear, [crosstalk] Pottington Bear.

Aubrey: 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 older timey songs for the 80s.

Michael: And for his middle-aged audience, which is actually like, very smart. Yeah.

Aubrey: 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, radical right? But it's also inclusive in the name of making those fat people thin.

Michael: Yeah. It's all on a relative scale.

Aubrey: Totally.

Michael: Its advancing from what it was before, but it still has a long way to go.

Aubrey: Yeah, I'm going to go cameras on again. Up until this point, Richard's personal uniform is like a ballet dancer.

Michael: Oh, what?

Aubrey: Tights and a leotard and he looks gorgeous.

Michael: Oh, wow. The hips. [gasps]

Aubrey: Right?

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: He looks stunning.

Michael: Yeah, he looks great. Yeah. I also recently discovered leggings.

Aubrey: Oh, you going to start getting into leggings?

Michael: I found them at the children's section of Goodwill. Like everything else I wear, I'm a very small man.

Aubrey: He's like, people always told me I had great legs. And they're right, I do. And I'm like, “Yes, you do, Richard. You do have great legs. Good job.”

Michael: Yeah, man.

Aubrey: In the lead up to Sweatin' to the Oldies, he meets a wardrobe person named Leslie Wilshire, who he calls, “My own Edith Head.” Which I'm like, “Boy, Richard, the references are not getting timelier, my guy, [Michael laughs] she is the one who brings him a pair of Dolfin shorts for the first time.

Aubrey: Wait, explain Dolfin shorts to me. People have been tweeting this at us too. Why are they Dolfin shorts?

Aubrey: It was the brand name D-O-L-F-I-N, but then people overtime thought it was like just the animal.

Michael: Okay, I've never heard of this, but those are like the little tiny shorts that he's wearing in every video.

Aubrey: You've seen them. Yeah. They're the little tiny shorts. They're like the dude version of hot pants.

Michael: This is my only traditional, we used to be a proper country take. It's like, bring back short shorts on men.

Aubrey: Shocking take from a guy man.

Michael: Just want to see more of the gentleman.

Aubrey: She brings him the Dolfin shorts, which he describes as being very in at the time. This was the look.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: And she gives him a flowy, flashy, tank top. And he writes in his memoir about trying it on for the first time. I just sent you a quote.

Michael: 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.”

Aubrey: I just love him having this moment of, like, “I look awesome. I feel awesome.” It makes me sad that built into that is “My waist is covered and I need an incentive to work on my arms and that kind of thing.”

Michael: Right.

Aubrey: But I'm like, “This is a moment of Richard feeling straightforwardly great about how he looks and how he feels in his body and all of that sort of stuff.” And I'm like, “I love this for you.”

Michael: This is also you striving to find any moments of joy in this book that is so joyless. You're like, “We found one.”

Aubrey: So, this becomes his signature look. Of course, Sweatin' to 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 Richard Simmons, Inc., right?

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: He starts making branded clothing. He starts making Richard Simmons workout shoes. He starts making fat free popcorn, which I would argue. “Oh, popcorn has fat free popcorn. What?”

Michael: It's just popcorn with a bunch of NutraSweet sprinkled on it.

Aubrey: Just dry, plain air popped popcorn.

Michael: Also, one thing we have not talked about yet is the economics of all this. Home videos for $20 in1985 money, which is 45 or 50 bucks now. It must have been so profitable to have a home videotape empire.

Aubrey: He also starts making huge appearances in malls and big box stores in order to promote this merch. He releases a steamer at one point. And he goes and does a big exercise class in the middle of a mall with the steamer so they can sell the steamer. Richard Simmons keeps Energizer Bunnying his way through his work life. 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 an earthquake in his personal life. This is from one of the final passages in Richard Simmons memoir.

Michael: 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 done a 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 going to happen. People aren't going to let him be serious about his mom because he's Richard and he's a clown, and nobody wants to hear him be serious.

Aubrey: That's not the story that he tells.

Michael: God, I want to cancel Jay Leno again. God damn it.

Aubrey: Well, you can do that for other reasons.

Michael: For the cars, due to the cars.

Aubrey: Due to the denim. After this little passage, he writes about having a pep talk from his late mom that 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.

[laughter]

Michael: Mr. Business, Mr. Heterosexual.

Aubrey: So, that is where the memoir ends, is like, I don't feel like being funny anymore, but I guess I have to.

Michael: Yeah, I got to go on Jay Leno and get made fun of. Yeah.

Aubrey: 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.”

Michael: It's funny because his alleged happy ending is also a sad ending.

Aubrey: Yeah, yes.

Michael: It's like, continue being the clown for everyone.

Aubrey: Yeah. I mean, I think that is the chapter that we're leading into is like, culture does not let him have some space.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: From there, Richard continues to make some media appearances, but he is slowing down from the 1980s and 1990s. Right.

Michael: How old is he at this point? He's born in 1946, you said? Right.

Aubrey: He's born in 1948.

Michael: 1948, okay.

Aubrey: So, in 2000 he would have been-- [crosstalk]

Michael: 52.

Aubrey: 52

Michael: As I've gotten older, I used to have two hours a day of extroversion in me. And now I'm down to like one interaction with a Trader Joe's cashier. [Aubrey laughs] 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 at the time when people noticed that he had disappeared from public life, it was in some ways constructed as a mystery, but it seems like this book answers this question. He was a guy with a lot of hurt that he was carrying around and nobody really took any of that seriously or listened to him. And he had this one-dimensional public persona.

So, yeah, of course, he was just like, “Eh, I don't really want to do this anymore.” That makes perfect sense to me.

Aubrey: Doesn't it?

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: So, I felt like I had 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?

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: And he just was like, “I don't have this level of like, be the life of the party in me.” What an extremely human response to get.

Michael: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: And he didn't step away from public life entirely at this point. He just started to slow down like our fellow people in middle age tend to do.

Michael: Cut two Mike and Aubrey going, “We're not going to produce as many episodes.” Yeah, it's like--[crosstalk]

Aubrey: 100%

Michael: A normal thing.

Aubrey: So, we start getting these reports of Richard getting really short with people which is something that doesn't really exist in previous media about him. So, in March of 2004, The Smoking Gun reported that Richard Simmons was charged with assault in the Phoenix Airport.

Michael: I do not remember this at all.

Aubrey: So, here is the report from The Smoking Gun.

Michael: It says, “The 54-year-old fitness guru laid the smackdown on one Chris Farney, a 23-year-old Mesa man who happens to cage wrestle in his spare time. According to the Phoenix Police Department report, 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, [Aubrey laughs] 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.

Aubrey: Yes. And also, Richard Simmons tells a very different version of this story.

Michael: Oh, okay.

Aubrey: 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 in his videos. That I believe.

Michael: Dude, have you seen the video of Björk attacking that paparazzi?

Aubrey: Why are you saying it like this when I am sure-

Michael: That’s how you say it.

Aubrey: -that you know it's not.

Michael: I don’t know-- So many people get it wrong, but it's actually Björk.

Aubrey: Oh, okay. [laughs]

Michael: Have you seen the video, though.

Aubrey: Of Bjork slapping someone?

Michael: Dude, it's wild. It's like normal paparazzi video of a celebrity leaving an airport. You've seen this clip a million times. And then this lady goes, “Welcome to London or welcome to New York” or whatever city it is. And Bjork just goes fucking nuts on her, like, feral.

Aubrey: What?

Michael: Like, jumps at her, grabs her microphone and is just beating her fucking ass with this microphone. And it's like, out of context you're like, “What the fuck?” This popstar is completely unhinged. But according to Bjork later, this is this paparazzi lady who had been hounding her for weeks and showing up in her private vacations and fucking with her. And it felt super passive aggressive. Just like, welcome and that's when she really snapped.

Aubrey: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael: So, if you have the full context, I mean, again, it's not defensible to blow up and physically attack somebody, obviously, but it actually makes sense in context or at least it's 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 prolonged interaction.

Aubrey: So, when Men's Health asks Richard Simmons in 2012 about this instance, this is his response.

Michael: 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.

Aubrey: Right? I read that quote, and I was like, “I have been fully turned around on the slap.”

[laughter]

Michael: Yeah, some people do deserve violence.

Aubrey: This is the kind of energy that you never actually see from thin people or from formerly fat people who are now thin people.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: Oh, sorry. You were going to yell about fat people in the middle of the airport. I am absolutely going to fucking do the human being equivalent of getting out the squirt bottle and being like, “Hey, fuck it up.”

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would have respected more if he had a literal squirt bottle. That would be amazing.

Aubrey: This is the thing that I was thinking about recently is if I got into a fight, I'm not confident that I would know how to throw a punch.

Michael: Wait, really? You've never been in a fight, Aubrey.

Aubrey: A physical fight.

Michael: You've never been in a physical fight.

Aubrey: Sorry, what about me?

Michael: Oh, because you went to a fancy school, somebody didn't go to public school.

Aubrey: No, that is not what's happening here. I'm just docile.

[laughter]

Michael: I'm just chill.

Aubrey: I think I was in my 30s before I would consider being like, “Hey, you got my order wrong,” at a restaurant”

Michael: 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 podcast.

Aubrey: Were you too sleepy to be bullied?

Michael: No, this was not after the seventh-grade roller skating. This was after the eighth-grade crews and 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 was like, “Ooh, bitch” or whatever and he started walking away from me, and I got up and 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 punched him in the face as hard as I could and it felt so good. I was like boom and he had fucked with me all year, and it was like Mike Tyson's punch out was like [onomatopoeia]. And they go different directions and it takes him hell a long to fall down.

And as he was falling down, I realized what I had done. I was like, I just punched a popular kid in the face and I'm not a popular kid. So, as he was still slow motion falling, I turned around and ran. Because 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 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, if I can get to the school bus, I'm in safety. I booked as fast as I could to the school bus. I, jump on, I'm like [gasping for air], get on the school bus. And this kid goes, “I heard you just punched somebody in the face.”

[laughter]

I was like, “How did the rumor get here-

Aubrey: News travels fast.

Michael: -before I got here.” What the fuck? [Aubrey laughs] And everyone was like, “Is it true?” Am like, “How the fuck do you people know about this?” Yes, it was, and I feel great about it. And I never saw that guy again.

Aubrey: God, my heart was just pounding for Tiny Mike.

Michael: Oh, dude. I know.

Aubrey: For teeny tiny, I was like, [gasps] “The stakes could not be higher.” And then I was like, “I know how it turns out. You're here, you're fine.”

Michael: I did live, but I'm still Tiny Mike.

Aubrey: 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 Minnesota Starvation Study levels. It's a little bit lower. He was born with what he calls, “A crippled leg.”

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: And has been wearing corrective shoes since early childhood.

Michael: It's so weird. He doesn't say that in the book.

Aubrey: He just deals with it. It's painful, but he says, “Thank goodness for ice and hot bath.” So, you get the impression that he is in pain with some regularity. Enough that he has a routine around it, right?

Michael: Right.

Aubrey: And his job is exercising in public.

Michael: 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 nobody listened.

Aubrey: Yeah. He described his role in the world as being part priest and part clown.

Michael: Yeah. Oh, God.

Aubrey: It is no mystery at all that this was a person who needed a break.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: 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 “Disappearance” which is a wild word choice in this case, right?

Michael: Right.

Aubrey: It's not someone who's vanished off the face of the planet. It's a guy who's at home.

Michael: By that point, 60 something year old guy who just like, isn't out and about doing stuff anymore.

Aubrey: Absolutely.

Michael: Just like, totally. He's basically retired.

Aubrey: The wrench in the works here is that he also stops responding to a bunch of people that he knew through Slimmons.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: 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. On a friend level, I can absolutely understand how that would be really hurtful and confusing. But also, this is not an unclear boundary.

Michael: Well, his life probably feels like a prison of his own making. 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 can say it's 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.

Aubrey: Yeah, totally.

Michael: That's not like necessarily defending it. I'm like, “My feelings would be hurt too.” But also, it's understandable and human.

Aubrey: So, In January of 2015, TMZ reports that the LAPD did a welfare check on Richard Simmons. They had gotten anonymous tip. They reported out publicly, like, “He's okay, he's responsive and alert, he's fine.: Then over a year later, The New York Daily News runs a story called The Haunted Twilight of Richard Simmons.

Michael: Oh, my God.

Aubrey: This is where the “disappearance 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.” My favorite of his friends was a woman named June who owned a store called Wigs Today in Los Angeles and said that she and Richard became friends because he was a regular customer at Wigs Today. And I was like, “I love this.”

Michael: Oh, okay.

Aubrey: I love that. He was like, “I'm at the wig store so much I've made friends there.”

[laughter]

Michael: But does she say, it's just we used to hang out, now we don't hang out anymore? Is that, like, the extent of it?

Aubrey: Well, there's a fair amount of that, but the bulk of the story, the main source, is Mauro Oliveira. Mauro Oliveira 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. That they were romantically involved, but Richard Simmons doesn't say that ever out loud to anybody.

Michael: Does the guy, does Mauro identify himself as a boyfriend or partner?

Aubrey: He never really says either at least not that I have seen.

Michael: Interesting. Okay.

Aubrey: He lived in an apartment that Richard Simmons owned. And according to him, he sent in a rent check every month that he says that Simmons never cashed.

Michael: Oh, okay.

Aubrey: So, he would just write a check every month and Richard Simmons would, throw it in the garbage or whatever. Recycle it. He seemed like a recycler.

Michael: Yeah, he did. He did.

Aubrey: So, we're going to start with one of the early passages about Mauro story from this New York Daily News story.

Michael: “Let's talk it over,” Oliveira 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 Teresa Reveles, his live-in housekeeper of nearly three decades. “Mauro is going upstairs with me,” he said. “No, no, no” Reveles shouted from the second floor, according to Oliveira. “Get out. Get out,” Oliveira looked at his friend, who told him in a soft voice, “You've got to go.” Oliveira leaned in towards Simmons. “Is she controlling your life now.” As Oliveira tells it Simmons looked down and with one resigned word confirmed his worst suspicions. Yes, this was the last time he saw his friend.

Aubrey: This is the key part of his story. He believes and the story that he tells to the New York Daily News is that Teresa is keeping Richard Simmons captive in his home.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: He doesn't offer a motive for that. He just says she is a witch who practices witchcraft.

Michael: Oh, he literally says this?

Aubrey: 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 Teresa 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.

Michael: Oh, so a very unreliable narrator.

Aubrey: Would you like another layer of unreliable?

Michael: Yeah, give it to me.

Aubrey: He wrote and self-published a book about the whole situation called King Rich and the Evil Witch.

Michael: Oh, [laughs] he learned from Richard. You could tell maybe they were boyfriends. Maybe something rubbed off.

Aubrey: A shared love for terrible titles.

[laughter]

Aubrey: He calls the book a living fairy tale. He self-publishes it. Character in the book include the good, goofy King Rich, and The Evil Witch Bereza, which is Teresa.

Michael: Bereza.

Aubrey: There is King Rich's brother, Prince Benny [unintelligible 00:52:42].

Michael: It's the fictional story of Bitchard Bimmons, [Aubrey laughs] no relation to any real--

Aubrey: And then there's a character just called the artist, and that is very clearly Mauro.

Michael: This beautiful, intelligent young man who gets caught in the witchcraft. Yes.

Aubrey: 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.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: 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 in this piece that his last living dalmatian, Hattie, had a terrible long health decline before ultimately being put down. Mauro says in the piece that he visited at 02:00 PM on a Sunday and Richard was asleep and Mauro was like, “This is out of control, you got to get out of the house and you got to get up and at him.” And I was like, “His fucking dog just died.”

Michael: He's in his 60s. Let the man nap.

Aubrey: Let the man have a depression nap, when he has lost so many beloved people and creatures in his life. I think especially in periods of grief, it does call you to like zoom out on your life and be like, “Is this what I fucking wanted?”

Michael: Yeah. Yeah.

Aubrey: It's very conceivable that in that state you would go, I think I'm actually fucking done working. In response to all of this dust kicking up, Richard gives an interview to the Today show saying he's totally fine, he's doing what he wants to do, nobody needs to worry. The fact that it is an audio only interview just adds fuel to the fire for people.

Michael: It's true Crime Brain happening.

Aubrey: In direct response to Richard Simmons being like,” I'm fine, please stop.” They're like, “This means he's definitely not fine.”

Michael: This whole time I'm thinking like, “Okay, you're a fan of Richard Simmons.” It turns out he's like been whatever, semi kidnapped by his maid or whatever or like, yeah, he's in some severe depressive funk. Now what. What do you do? You don't know this person.

Aubrey: It really just seems like people were treating him like an ATM for validation 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?”

Michael: Yeah. I know it is so weird.

Aubrey: They're absolutely treating him like a utility that got shut off.

Michael: Also, you're allowed to just not be a public figure anymore.

Aubrey: I think you and I are probably both two people who will just one day be like, “Oh, I'm done.”

Michael: Yeah. I will also be kidnapped by my housekeeper.

Aubrey: Okay.

Michael: And there will be a strange Brazilian man who tells a story about me.

Aubrey: That's Brian Bicep.

Michael: I’m going to be—

[laughter]

Michael: How dare you do a call back to that, my telephone habits.

Aubrey: To a bonus episode too.

Michael: Ridiculous.

Aubrey: Bold as brass. So, in November 2016, Richard Simmons closes Slimmons.

Michael: Okay.

Aubrey: There's not really a formal statement from Richard. They just post up signs on the door being like, “Hey, this is going to be our last day.”

Michael: I'm sure this just digs up the controversy again.

Aubrey: 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. He finally later addresses it in a Facebook post. Here is that post.

Michael: 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.”

Aubrey: Slimmons closes in November of 2016. It's four months after even that last chapter that missing Richard Simmons premieres.

Michael: Okay, right.

Aubrey: 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 and who had been over to dinner at Richard Simmon’s house. This is the apex of the Richard Simmons is missing narrative. 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. They go so far as to issue a public statement saying that Richard Simmons is, “Perfectly fine.” And, “Right now he is doing what he wants to do, and that is his business.”

Michael: Man.

Aubrey: 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.” 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.

Michael: Oh, no. So, then I'm sure the Internet sleuths are like, “Oh, the picture's old, Whatever.” Remember the Kate Middleton psychotic?

Aubrey: Yes. People are like, “It's an old picture. He's faking it.” This is Teresa 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.

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

Aubrey: Especially if you're making a post that's trying to reassure people.

Michael: Also, ultimately, Richard Simmons is a boomer. 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?”

Aubrey: Totally, totally.

Michael: Just like, attach a photo. And the whole Internet is just like, “What about the metadata of the photo?” People just zoom in when, like, he might just not have been thinking about it all that hard.

Aubrey: Right. Richard Simmons was born the same year as both of my parents. And I'm like, “Oh, was he also going to attach a photograph of his TV screen?”

[laughter]

Michael: The post is in all caps for some reason, he doesn't know why. He doesn't know how to turn that off.

Aubrey: He also Face-Timed someone, but it was just showing his ear because he lifted the phone up. [Michael laughs] That same year, the National Enquirer starts publishing a series of articles alleging that Richard Simmons was trans and started accessing gender affirming care.

Michael: What?

Aubrey: One of the headlines was, Richard Simmons: He's now a Woman.

Michael: Oh, my fucking God. Where the fuck is this coming from?

Aubrey: It's the National Enquirer, right? Someone's kicking up some dust. That is all made possible by the he's missing narrative, right?

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: 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 Enquirer probably cares to publish, much less cares to publish at the level that they did.

Michael: It's funny contrasting him with Johnny Carson, who also retired from public life very publicly. 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.” It appears, stopped hanging out with all of his, like, celebrity friends.

Aubrey: Yeah, totally.

Michael: He disappeared from public life and most people were like, “Oh, this is 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.

Aubrey: Absolutely. So, on July 13, 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 media. 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.

Michael: Aw.

Aubrey: 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 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 church was not full.

Michael: What?

Aubrey: Yeah.

Michael: That's shocking.

Aubrey: It really underscores this theory that I've been developing of again, like validation ATM.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: We talked in the last episode about these are all ways that formerly fat people are encouraged to feel. The way that people were interacting with him is as a currently fat person.

Michael: Right.

Aubrey: Which is like he doesn't have a story of his own. He's the fat best friend. Right?

Michael: Right, right.

Aubrey: He's the gay best friend. And he's the bit characters who are there for comic relief and the comic relief just is their difference.

Michael: Just say Rosie O'Donnell in Sleepless in Seattle. This is taking forever. Also, when all the information was so available, too. It's like the man wrote a fucking memoir.

Aubrey: 100%. 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. People take me out of the box when they need entertainment, and then put me back in the box when they don't. I think he was right.

Michael: In the same way, there's, the happy meatball Richard, and the selling his jewelry to people Richard. And, we want the best for all these Richards. There's also, I think, the last 10 years of his life Richard.

Aubrey: Yeah.

Michael: 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 I choose to believe that he got some of what he wanted. And he decided at the end, 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, all evidence is that he did.

Aubrey: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of Internet talk about, like, so and so doesn't owe you anything. And I'm like, “This is a moment where we have to go, Richard Simmons didn't owe us anything.

Michael: Yeah.

Aubrey: That doesn't mean that people didn't have genuine feelings about him and 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 how much of that was us projecting.

Michael: I think it's also worth thinking about people in your life who have that kind of energy, that really social energy. It's always important to check in with those people to make sure there isn't something behind it.

Aubrey: Absolutely.

Michael: They're training you not to see them in a certain way. This is a really dark little transition, but 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 doesn't mean every single person who's bubbly is hiding some dark secret underneath it. But just because somebody is bubbly and, like, “Oh, my God, you seem so happy.” Doesn't mean you shouldn't be checking in with that person.

Aubrey: Yeah. I mean, I think it is incumbent on all of us to do a little relational inventory on that front. Is there someone who you're treating as just entertainment for you, or as a vessel for your complaints or your grievances, or as just a source of guidance for you? Are you treating someone as a wellspring of a resource, or are you treating them as a person?

Michael: And the thing is, if you recognize us from the podcast and you come up to us and I get the slightest whiff that's the way you think of us, I will slap you in the face. I will spin you around like TEKKEN 8.

Aubrey: I might start carrying around a tiny squirt bottle.

Michael: You've had some bad too, I feel like, yeah

Aubrey: Yeah, just a can full of rocks I can shake.

Michael: Yeah, yeah.

[laughter]

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People on this episode

Aubrey Gordon

Host

Michael Hobbes

Host