Siegfried & Roy special airing Friday on ABC
NEW YORK -- Siegfried & Roy's special return performance Saturday at Bellagio during the Keep Memory Alive fundraiser for the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute will be the focus of a special hourlong edition of the "20/20" newsmagazine.
"Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Returns" airs at 9 p.m. Friday on KTNV-TV, Channel 13.
ABC News' Elizabeth Vargas also visits with Roy Horn and Siegfried Fischbacher at home, and hears about the grueling five years endured by both of them since Montecore, a massive white tiger, brutally mauled Horn during a 2003 performance at The Mirage.
"Up to now, the focus, understandably, has been on Roy and the catastrophic injuries he suffered," Vargas says. Even after cheating death, "he was told by doctors he would never walk or talk again, and he's doing both.
"But an unreported part of the story was what Siegfried went through. He suffered from something we know as 'caregivers' syndrome' -- when people who take care of others forget to take care of themselves.
"Roy, for all his improvements, is still terribly, terribly injured. But Siegfried has had struggles of his own. He really lived for the stage, and then it was taken away in one moment.
"He's honest in talking about how, after that, he suffered from severe depression."
