Richard Simmons laughs off reports he’s transitioning

THE fitness guru’s been missing from the spotlight for three years, leading to rumours that he is changing his gender. But his manager says that’s not the case.

OFFICIALLY, Richard Simmons is not missing.

His publicist, manager, brother and two officers from the Los Angeles Police Department have all said the 68-year-old fitness guru is at his Hollywood Hills mansion and doing fine.

Simmons said the same himself when he called into TV’s Entertainment Tonight last year, explaining he was safe and well and that “it’s time right now for Richard Simmons to take care of Richard Simmons.”

But he has been missing from the spotlight for three years — and that was enough for Dan Taberski, a former producer of The Daily Show, to create the Missing Richard Simmons podcast. Taberski has spent six episodes investigating his subject’s whereabouts, making it most popular podcast in the US and inspiring a national obsession with Simmons’s wellbeing. The final episode was released this week.

Billed as an act of love by Taberski, Missing Richard Simmons has been “harmful,” said Michael Catalano, Simmons’s manager and friend for 30 years.

It resurrected old rumours — that Simmons is changing his gender or being held hostage by his housekeeper — and heaped unwanted attention on his respite.

“I said to him the other day, ‘There are people that think you are a very overweight, depressed woman.’ And he laughed. He just laughed,” Catalano told People magazine.

Richard Simmons speaks to the audience before the start of a summer salad fashion show at Grand Central Terminal in New York in 2006.

“He didn’t need this intrusion to validate his contribution to people,” Catalano added.

“He knows the reception (the podcast) is having. He knows how people are responding to it. But it’s also hurtful. It’s humiliating, you know? It’s damaging. It just is ...

“Anywhere he goes now there’s going to be — more than there was before — pointing and speculation. Has he transitioned into a woman? Is that him behind that beard? I don’t envy that. I don’t envy that for someone, who at this time, has chosen to retreat. He has the right! I just don’t think because you are on the public stage for 40 years that you have to continue to remain there until your last breath.”

Simmons did not participate in the podcast and hasn’t given any interviews since speaking to Entertainment Tonight in March 2016. Once ubiquitous on talk shows, celebrity-home tours and at his own Beverly Hills workout studio, he hasn’t been seen publicly since February 2014. He also stopped corresponding with former students and friends.

“Look, it’s not like he’s missing,” Catalano said.

“He’s not ill. He’s not 350 pounds. I was with him a few days ago. It’s not like I don’t know where he is. I know exactly where he is, believe me. And I understand, people don’t want to hear it from me, they want to hear it from him, and when he’s ready, you will. You’ll hear from him.”

Richard Simmons arrives at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2013.

Originally published as Richard Simmons laughs off reports he’s transitioning