Starting in 2014, Richard Simmons (most famous for his “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” exercise videos that became cult favorites) went from being a cultural touchstone to a virtual recluse. His once close friends (and some unnamed sources) expressed concern to reporters about his dramatic change in behavior and attitude:
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“He could be the brightest, happiest person you’ve ever met,” says the source, who attended the classes regularly.
But in the months leading up to Simmons’ abrupt and unannounced retreat from the spotlight a few years ago — which the 67-year-old has attributed to a knee injury — the source admits “there were days where it seemed like there was no life in him at all.”
Though one week he would be jumping around and tickling his students as he led them in a routine, “the next time you’d see him he’d have no energy and could barely force a smile,” adds the source.
A long investigative piece in the New York Daily News had similar stories, reporting that he abruptly stopped talking to longtime friends and stopped leaving his home. The piece concluded that Simmons might be held captive by his housekeeper:
Oliveira, a 49-year-old from Brazil with the burly arms and trim physique of a gym rat and close-cropped black hair, had met Simmons 13 months earlier, and the two became fast friends. But he was catching a weird vibe lately, and hadn’t seen him in a while, before the then 65-year-old Simmons summoned him to the mansion, saying only that they needed to talk.
“What’s going on, Richard?” Oliveira asked. “Why are you saying that?”
“I don’t know,” Simmons replied. “I just want to be by myself, and I want to be in the house, and we’re never going to see each other again.”
[…]
“Let’s talk it over,” Oliveira said. “I want to sit here, and make sure you’ll be OK. 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 gotta go.”
The piece created widespread concern, which Simmons’ rep and then Simmons himself dismissed as unfounded. The rumors began to pick up again, though, when Simmons was hospitalized in early June 2016 for “bizarre” behavior. (He later said that he was just dehydrated.)
Sweatin To The Oldies Songs
The rumor mill was kicked into high gear just after that, when the National Enquirer published a cover story about the fitness guru, reporting that he had been in hiding for the past few years while he decided to transition, with the help of hormonal treatments and secret “boob job” and “castration” surgeries, into a woman named “Fiona”.
Sweatin To The Oldies Online
Tom Estey (Simmons’ long-time spokesman) blasted the report, however, calling it “crap” and “a complete fabrication”:
His spokesman also told People magazine: “He is not transitioning into a woman. He had knee surgery a few years ago and has a bum knee. When he decides to come back, he will come back.
The National Enquirer stands by its story.
If ‘Sit and Be Fit’ and Richard Simmons’ ‘Sweatin’ to the Oldies’ decided to have a kid to save their failing marriage, but spent more time playing mind games with each other than child-rearing and then got divorced anyway, that kid would grow up to be ‘Chair Dancing Through the Decades.’
Sweating To The Oldies With Richard Simmons
It’s a well-intentioned video for the elderly and mobility-impaired, but a) it has the distinction of featuring the God’s-honest worst muzak I have yet to hear in an exercise video, where the ‘hip-hop’ sounds like off-off-brand Jock Jams and the rest fades into soul-deadening blandness; and b) the commercial tries to sell it as a rousing family activity or lunchtime pick-me-up for the office. As if!
And yet, I’ve watched this clip like 5 times, alternately cringing and staring in awe. Maybe it’s instructor Jodi Stolove’s Russian madame makeup. Or the arrangement of tropical flora behind her.
Maybe it’s the feigned excitement on this granny and Kidz Bop ‘you betcha!’ head-nod from this little girl when (1:03–1:08) Stolove’s voice gets an echo effect and sounds like the ghost of Maude Flanders saying, ‘Let’s get ready to hip-hop! Y’all ready for this?’
God bless this commercial, which my tipster said she discovered on late-night airtime, for entertaining untold scores of slack-jawed viewers snacking on nachos and cruising for syndicated TV to pass out to after coming home from the bar. This is the kind of as-seen-on-TV gem that can send you to sleep bemusedly content with this bizarre world of ours.
However, of this I’m sure: If I’d suggested to my dear late grandma, even when she was 92 and wheelchair-bound, that we decorate a couple paper plates and wave them around in our chairs, she’d have said, sweetly, ‘Honey, I’d rather not.’
