Shortly after Pauly Shore announced on Wednesday that he’d be playing Richard Simmons in an upcoming biopic, the now-reclusive fitness guru attempted to distance himself from the project.
“You may have heard they may be doing a movie about me with Pauly Shore. I have never given my permission for this movie. So don’t believe everything you read,” Simmons, 75, shared on Facebook, though Shore never specifically made such a claim.
“I no longer have a manager, and I no longer have a publicist. I just try to live a quiet life and be peaceful. Thank you for all your love and support, Simmons concluded.”
“While we would love to have him involved, we respect his desire to privacy and plan to produce a movie that honors him, celebrates him and tells a dramatic story,” The Wolper Organization, producers of the film said in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. “We know he is deeply private and we would never want to invade that, how ever [sic] he is an amazing person, that changed millions of peoples [sic] lives and the effect he has had on the world needs to be recognized.”
Mark Wolper of the Wolper Organization said in an earlier statement that the goal of the biopic was “something heartfelt, with the tone of Little Miss Sunshine,” per the outlet.
The project was inspired a meme pointing out the striking resemblance between Shore and Simmons.
Shore can currently be seen as Simmons in the teaser to The Court Jester, a short that will run during February’s Sundance Film Festival, but is reportedly unrelated to the feature, according to the trade.
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