ABC is airing The Mystery of Richard Simmons: A Diane Sawyer Special at 9 p.m., a one-hour broadcast that returns to the disappearance of one of television’s most recognizable fitness personalities. Richard Simmons abruptly vanished from public view in 2014, and the silence that followed set off years of speculation.
Friends and journalists tried to reach Simmons after he stepped back, but those efforts were unsuccessful. He later denied reports that he was being held against his will by his manager and family in a phone interview with the Today show, but the uncertainty only deepened after a mysterious hospitalization and the closing of his Beverly Hills exercise studio soon after his disappearance.
The special arrives with the story now sealed by Simmons’ death in 2024. The Los Angeles Coroner’s office reportedly said he died from complications from recent falls and heart diseases, but the bigger reason the broadcast matters today is that it returns to the unanswered question that followed him for a decade: what happened in the years after he left public life?
That question is what has kept Simmons in the conversation, and it is what the ABC special is built around. It revisits the speculation that grew after 2014, when his absence became a story in itself and when no amount of checking by friends or reporters produced a clear account of where he had gone or how he was living.
ABC is available through local affiliates, and the special can also be watched through several live TV services. DIRECTV carries ABC in its MyNews Genre Pack, which costs $39.99 a month and includes a five-day free trial. Fubo includes ABC in its Sports + News package, normally priced at $55.99 a month, with a $10 discount for new signups; that package includes 28 channels, unlimited cloud DVR recording and viewing on up to 10 screens at once. Sling Select offers 10+ live TV channels, thousands of on-demand titles and streaming on up to three devices at once, though it does not offer a free trial at this time. ABC is also available on Hulu + Live TV, which includes 100+ live television channels.
For viewers, the special is less a look back at a celebrity’s peak than an attempt to make sense of a public disappearance that never fully made sense while he was alive. The broadcast does not resolve every gap in the record, but it does put the known facts back in one place: the 2014 retreat, the unanswered calls, the denial, the hospitalization, the closed studio and, finally, the death that ended the chance for Simmons to explain it himself.
