In a phone interview, Andy's brother Michael Kaufman makes comments on his brother's death hoax claim, saying, 'I never came out with, 'He's alive.' '
- Nov 15, 2013
AceShowbiz - Andy Kaufman's brother, Michael Kaufman, backpedaled on his statement which suggested that his actor/comedian brother pranked his own death. In a phone interview with The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday morning, November 14, Michael said that he was overwhelmed with the amount of media attention these days.
"This is so, like, out of my league what's going on here," he said. Michael told the news outlet, "I think I've been misquoted, OK? I never came out with, 'He's alive.' I'm as skeptical as anybody else."
Andy passed away because of lung cancer in 1984 at the age of 35. At the 9th Annual Andy Kaufman Awards at the Gotham Comedy Club in NYC on Monday, Michael told audience members that he received a letter in 1999 which allegedly was written by Andy. The letter suggested that the comedian wanted to escape from spotlight.
In a video obtained by TMZ, a 24-year-old woman then appeared onstage. Claiming to be Andy's daughter, she said, "I'm not trying to prove anything. He didn't tell me specifically to impart anything. ... He was really thinking about coming." She added, "He just wanted to be a stay-at-home dad. That's why he wanted to leave the showbiz and whatever. And so he's pretty much a great dad and raised us."
In a separate interview with CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper", Michael said that he was a victim of hoax. "Now that it's Thursday, not Monday anymore, I believe I am part of a hoax. I don't believe that she's acting on her own, though," he said of the woman.
The Smoking Gun reported that the woman was an actress named Alexandra Tatarsky and she is a daughter of a 58-year-old psychologist. Michael was reported meeting her earlier this year to recruit her to pose as Andy's daughter. Michael, however, insisted that he had never met her.
"Just to reiterate, you now don't think that it's true - you think that this is a hoax and you were a victim of the hoax?" Tapper asked, to which Michael answered, "Correct." He added that he was not a part of the hoax.
On Thursday, the Los Angeles County Coroner office re-released the "Taxi" star's death certificate. "Andy Kaufman is dead," they said. Andy's manager George Shapiro, who was with the actor during his passing at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, stated, "Andy's very much alive in our hearts, but I don't think his body is around. He died. I was in the hospital."
