What do Elvis Presley, Tupac Shakur, and Andy Kaufman have in common?
All three are icons in their genres, whom a sizable portion of the population believes is secretly alive. According to reports, a 23-year-old actress named Alexandra Tatarsky is claiming to be Kaufman's daughter and insisting he faked his 1984 death of lung cancer.
Earlier in the week at the 9thAnnual Andy Kaufman awards at Gotham Comedy Club, Kaufman's brother Michael said he came across a plot Andy concocted to fake his own death, then reappear at a restaurant on Christmas Eve in 1999. Michael showed up at that restaurant, where an attendant gave him a note, supposedly written by Andy, claiming to be alive and living with a new family. He read that letter, and brought Tatarsky on stage.
While most believe this to be a prank being pulled in Kaufman's honor, former WWE wrestler and current announcer Jerry "The King" Lawler, who infamously participated in one of Kaufman's long games, isn't sure.
"I don't know," Lawler told MTV News. "I just know that would be like Andy or, possibly, this is just an elaborate hoax that they're doing in Andy's honor. I really don't know."
Despite reports surfacing that purport the entire incident was, in fact, an elaborate joke, the producer of the ceremony Al Parinello is a believer. "I witnessed the entire thing and I can tell you without a doubt this was not a prank."
Lawler, who was unable to attend the award show, tried to rationalize the whole affair. "I had a couple of thoughts. Andy and I worked together back in the day, and I feel like we became really pretty close friends. I know that Andy talked even back then a lot about the idea that the ultimate prank that he could ever pull would be to fake his own death and then come back 10 or 15 years later."
© Copyright 2024 Sports World News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
