Even now, says manager Bernie Yuman (left), "Siegfried and Roy are constantly challenging each other, collaborating, thinking about how to make a difference." Photo by: ART STREIBER |
Days that used to be organized around the evening's main event at the Mirage – the anchor of what used to be a nearly $60 million-a-year empire for the duo – now begin at 8:30 a.m. with a nurse assisting Roy onto an exercise bike and strapping his feet into the pedals. "I do about seven minutes," says Roy, who still lives at the six-acre Jungle Palace compound eight miles northwest of the Strip but can no longer climb the staircase to his second-floor bedroom, where his pet tigers used to lie down with him. (While awaiting the construction of an elevator, he has been moved into an adjacent single-floor home on the property, equipped with access ramps.) After the bike warmup, he works in the garden until the sun grows hot. Then he attends to business issues, including producing an upcoming Havana-themed Vegas show and vetting scripts for
Father of the Pride, NBC's new computer-animated spoof based on the outlandish entertainers and their menagerie. Unable to needle his friend of 45 years onstage, he sees opportunities in television. "They send me all the scripts and I send it back and complain. I tell them, 'I pay you $5 extra if you make Siegfried shorter than me.' "
Many more hours are put into grueling physical rehab – including walking in a pool or straddling parallel bars – with therapists at home and in local clinics and hospitals. "The process has been a slow, methodical one," says Siegfried and Roy's friend and manager of 29 years, Bernie Yuman. "It's two steps forward, then one step back. But then there are two more steps forward." Recently, he spent two weeks at Denver's Craig Hospital, which specializes in spine and brain injuries. "I saw different people going through the same stuff I'm going through," he says. "Some of them haven't talked or smiled, so I got some of them to talk back to me and smile. I crack jokes. It opened my eyes. It showed me the light at the end of the tunnel. If they can do it, I can do it." Back home, he and Siegfried (who maintains a bedroom suite in the compound but has his own house across town) work out by hitting a balloon back and forth with racquets. "Siegfried comes and we play badminton," Roy says. "I'm a little bit slower. He usually wins. That's why I don't like him anymore."
