Dan Taberski, host of Missing Richard Simmons, returns to the podcast feed to acknowledge Richard Simmons' death at age 76 at his home in Los Angeles. Simmons had fallen the night before and opted not to go to the hospital. Taberski reflects on the ten years since Simmons withdrew from public life, describing how his isolation transformed him from a celebrity into something almost mythic: a disembodied presence hovering above Sunset Boulevard, the spiritual capital of Look at Me, while choosing to abstain. He notes the tragic timing: Simmons died just as he appeared to be reconsidering his seclusion, having hinted at a Broadway musical, his own biopic, and a scheduled interview with Diane Sawyer that never took place. His last tweet, a photo of himself dressed as Barbra Streisand with the caption hello gorgeous please dont rain on my parade, was likely scheduled and posted the day he died. Taberski then shares a revelation he had been keeping private. A fan had spotted something in an old TMZ paparazzi photo taken during the height of the media frenzy outside Simmons' home: the woman identified as another housekeeper walking the dog appeared, on close inspection, to be Richard Simmons himself in a black wig and sunglasses, walking right past the paparazzi in plain sight. Taberski had asked the fan to delete the tweet to preserve Simmons' fun. He closes by saying he prefers the ending where Simmons was never really gone, just milling around in the world wearing a wig, trying different lives on for size.
