April 6, 2026 • 42 mins
Richard Pryor redefined comedy by telling the truth, even when it scorched him. In this raw, riveting episode, Kai and Emmanuel unearth BBC archival tape to explore how Pryor rose from a Peoria, Illinois brothel to become comedy’s GOAT, only to then wrestle with racism, fame, desire, and self‑destruction. From Cosby‑clean beginnings to volcanic honesty, this is the story of a man who changed culture by refusing to lie — even to save himself.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Before we get going here, some real talk. The BBC
has been sitting on decades of tape, and Emmanuel and
I are just two guys trying to make sure the
good stuff doesn't get buried. The way you can help
us do that. Leave a review doesn't have to be
a long one, just a few lines about how the
show is changing your thinking. And think about who in
your life has a strong opinion about David Attenborough or
(00:40):
Muhammad Ali or Meg Ryan or anyone else we've covered
for them this episode, Because you know, I'm saying whatever
they think they know, they probably don't know the whole story.
It's kind of the point. Okay, let's get started. Just
let you know there's discriminatory language and content in this episode. Okay, Emmanuel, yes, Kai,
(01:01):
What is the first image that comes to mind? First
sort of caricature even that you have when I bring
up Richard pryor oh.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Man, Can I just say I feel like the image
that was fed to me is of this comedian. He
was really funny but kind of just kind.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Of like a hot mess.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, the thing is, though, Emmanuel, You're not wrong. I
snarted cocay for about fifteen years. My dumb ass.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I started off smarting.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Little tiny Pinches said, I know I ain't gonna get hooked.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
I don't know coke, you can't get hooked.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
My friends have been snarting fifteen years. I ain't hooked.
I start snorting, little teen. Didn't he make noise? Coke
et get.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Past the album?
Speaker 5 (01:53):
Please no more for me?
Speaker 6 (01:55):
Six months later, I mean that is like a meaningful
part of what happened in Richard Pryor's life. You know,
I think there's more to that story, and particularly the
questions around why.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. This is big Lives.
I'm Kai Wright. We are both journalists and cultural obsessives
who love trying to understand the world through an individual
person's life. These are architects of our culture, people who
have just had a huge impact on the way we live,
the way we take in art, the way we think
of ourselves, but who have been flattened over the years,
(02:39):
and so we want to bring them back to life,
look into their complicated big lives. And we're using the
treasure trove of the BBC Archive to do that. There
is over one hundred years of tape of some of
the biggest cultural figures in our world. The BBC's got it,
and so we're digging through it. So listen. First off,
(03:03):
if the basics of Richard Pryor, if you don't know
who he is, he is a genre defining comedian. If
you talked to almost any comedian today, certainly of his era,
they would say he's the goat.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
He just had a titanic career, five Grammys, He was
the first black person to host SNL. He first black
person to make a million dollars in a movie.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Wait what Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So, as I've been rooting around in the archive for
Richard Pryor, there's this clip I found of his daughter
rain prior in two thousand and six, so it's right
after he died. They did a documentary about his life,
and she said, this interesting thing, listen to this.
Speaker 7 (03:42):
There was always truth. He didn't make up things just
to get a laugh or you know, tell a story
that That's the one thing that I love about the
man is that you maybe at times you didn't know
what Richard you were going to get personally, but you
always knew you were going to get Richard. If that
makes sense, You're always going to get the man, whether
(04:03):
messed up or not. And he would tell you he
was messed up.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
And you know, like that honesty thing, the telling the
truth piece, right, Like that's the core Richard Pryor. That
is like what was at the core of his fame
and what people loved about him. And the messed up part. Also,
you know, he is simultaneously, as you said at the beginning,
just wildly self destructive. But the two I think they
(04:27):
got something to do with each other. And you know,
that is the thing that I am drawn to. There's
a way in which the disruptive behavior is why he
had such a massive impact on the culture. And I
want to talk about that. That's good, welcome back. This
(04:51):
is big lives and we are talking about Richard Pryor. Okay,
so Richard Franklin, Lennox, Thomas Pryor.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
The third it's always those sources of names that someone
is like, right, we're going to reproduce this and put
it on a job three times.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Times, three times. The third I almost didn't take it
in the third part.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
He had a life, a young life as complicated as
his long name. Born in December nineteen forty in Peoria, Illinois, he.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Grew up in a brothel, oh okay.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Like an actual brothel. His mother was a sex worker,
his father was a pimp and a boxer.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Well, and his.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Grandmother, you know, was really who raised him. She was
like the big personality in his life. He called her Mama.
He talked about her a lot throughout his career. And
here is again his daughter Rain Pror talking about Mama
in that two thousand and six documentary.
Speaker 7 (05:50):
You know, Mama was proud of herself for having this
whorehouse because it's the one thing that put food on
the table. And my dad's perception in growing up with
that was a little warped in that environment, and women
were to be used and to be bought with money,
and he sort of had that, I think throughout obviously
his entire life.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
If you grew up in a brothel in that way,
and it's just like it sounds like it's your family
business and family home, that's your whole world view.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, and not surprisingly, you know, he was sexually abused
as a child. If you grew up in that environment
and then at age fourteen gets thrown out of school
because they discover he lives in a brothel.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Wait, yes, sir, So he basically came to school a
bit like, oh, we discovered that you are living in
a brothel, which is potentially like unsafe situation, and we're
just going to kick you out.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
That's right, you need help go so you know. So, yeah,
he gets kicked out of school. And he does, though,
go and find sanctuary in this place, this community center
in Peoria, where he meets what he calls the angel
in his life. It's this woman who's a drama teacher
and sees real potential in young Richard Pryor and starts
(07:08):
coaching him and giving opportunities to perform, and he starts
heading down this road. So nineteen sixty three, he moves
to New York City with ten dollars in his pocket. Yeah,
dollar in a dream, and he starts performing in the
Greenwich Village scene. And I don't know how much you
know about that scene from the early sixties.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I don't know. Mostly just like everywhere you walk the
as like Bob Dylan singing with somebody.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
That's right, that's right. It's this intimate place. And you know,
Bob Dylan, Woody Al and Miles Davis, like John Coltrane,
all these people are performing in these little clubs. The
Village Gate is like one of the big ones. So
Richard Pryor gets booked at the Village Gate on one
of his first nights, he's opening for a Nina Simone.
(07:57):
I love thinking of like young Richard Pryor through Nina
Simone's eyes. She's talking about he is so scared, right,
like to get up on that stage that apparently she says,
he shook like he had malaria. He was so nervous.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
That is such a specific description of.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Right, that the man chook like malaria. So she says,
to get him up on stage, she would rock him
like a baby, like put her arms around him and
just rock him till he calmed down. So she did
that on the first night, and then the next night
was the same, and the next I rocked him each
time until he calmed down.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Wow, she like midwife him into being basically that's.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Right, yes, Heimone midwife Richard Pryor. And you know, he
says at the time, the kind of comedy he started
to develop was essentially copying Bill Cosby. Right, So like
this is you know the mid sixties. Bill Cosby is
the certainly the reigning black celebrity, but probably like one
(09:01):
of you know, because he's on TV right as a
black man. That's really unusual at this time. And he's,
you know, Bill Cosby is like telling Cosby jokes right.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Right, right, right, right right right about children. And then
somebody's pitting something on a rug.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yes, and so Richard Pryor thinks this is comedy, and
so I'm going to do that. There's this clip I
found from his closest collaborator in comedy, Paul Mooney.
Speaker 8 (09:29):
He sort of modeled his career after Bill Cosby in
the early stages, and that allowed him to be accepted
by white audiences.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
With a tone of voice.
Speaker 8 (09:41):
If you didn't notice you were watching, you might have
mistaken him for Bill Cosby.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
You can't get a cab in New York City, right,
especially when it rains all the cabs owned by one
company off duty.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And he's pretty good at it, actually, And he starts
to take off and he gets on the Ed Sullivan Show.
That's his big moment, Like and he starts doing these
bits on the Ed Sullivan Show in the sixties and
becomes known as like a rising star as a consequence,
you know, this is the new Bill Cosby. But that
(10:15):
is not going to hold for a man who grew
up in a brothel.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Right, because I know of Bill Cosby's comedies, is is
it clean? From most it's And I'm also not really
about race and not no.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Gets on with white people. And so Richard Pryor is
trying to get on with white people. Okay, So it's
nineteen sixty seven. He's now become quite popular for doing
this Bill Cosby kind of humor right on the Ed
Sullivan Show, No Less. And he's booked at the Aladdin
Hotel in Las Vegas, and it's a big gig, right
(10:53):
sold out audience, and he's standing backstage, you know, kind
of weirdly reluctant to get on stage, looking out at
the audience, right, and he's looking out at like a
sea of white faces, like it's just like a white, white,
white audience. And he's like, I don't know what am
(11:13):
I doing? And he has what he describes that, Oh man,
it's epiphany, you know, like I just I don't want
to do this. I don't want to do this. This
is not what I want. I don't want to go
out on this stage, you know. But he walks out anyway,
and before he tells a single joke, right, Like, the
very first thing he does is blurts out, what the
(11:36):
fuck am I doing here?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Wait?
Speaker 9 (11:39):
What?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
And he's just like why am I here? You know,
in the most profane way. So after he gets that
out of his system, he gaus on and tries to
do the gig that he's signed up for. He starts
telling these jokes right and about midway through the set,
he's just like nah and just walks off stage.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Wait wait, So he goes out on stage and is
like basically says the thing he's thinking, which milk, and
then he recovers and is like, okay, let me get
a clean joke, sorry, folks. And then it's like actually this,
I'm just gonna go.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I'm just gonna go and just just walks off stage.
And he's so petulant about it. He doesn't even walk
off stage in the right direction, like he like deliberately
walks off stage in like the wrong direction. So it's
like awkward to get off the stage, and it's like
a whole mess of night. And it's the disaster that
you think, right, Like, his agent's like he'll never work again,
(12:36):
and indeed he like stops getting booked. You know, he's
pushed into the small clubs and college towns and stuff
like that. Like he's destroyed his career, right, you know,
But it's in this moment as a consequence that he
starts to rethink that career and he leaves New York
and he moves to the Bay Area. Now this is
(12:58):
you know, this is the sixties, right, and he starts
getting involved in the sort of Bay Area counterculture. He
starts getting involved with the black power movement, right that
grows up out of Oakland, and that starts to change
his understanding of like the world and his place in
it and what he could do. And he starts to
think about comedy that is more raw and honest, right,
(13:23):
And so he begins this process and he says, like
he says later, like that he realized comedy, real comedy,
wasn't just telling jokes, it was about telling the truth.
And just to sort of give you an example of
where this kind of comedy goes. Yeah, So he starts
making albums nineteen seventy one. His second album, it's called
(13:45):
Craps right like after the Dice Game, and it's a
wildly profane album and I want to play you like
one of the jokes. Okay, it's toward the end of
the show. He goes on this truly profane riff about
sex and then like the last twenty five thirty seconds
of this is what I want you to pay attention to.
(14:06):
But here it all. And yes, dear listener, this is
a clip with the discriminatory language in context.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
This this is the stuff you needed the warning vault, so.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Be ready, all right, So here's Richard Pryor in nineteen
seventy one.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
You know, like, you can't talk about fucking in America, right,
people say you're dirty. But if you talk about killing somebody,
that's cool. I don't understand it myself. I'd rather come,
(14:40):
Oh wow, I've had money and never felt as good
as I felt when I come.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Do nothing matter.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
But when you get in a nut, especially if it's
a girl, niggas be signifying dounia. I knew, you know,
they only children. I was the only dude in the
neighborhood would fuck this fagin though a lot of dudes
don't play that shit in the daytime. I don't fucking
(15:08):
flag night you kiss him, right, But it's embarrassing because
I meant to dude, like ten years later, Hi, rich.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
So, man, this is nineteen seventy one that he does
this joke right when I heard this for the first obviously,
not in nineteen seventy one, many years later, Like I
heard this album, but I was a teenager and it
was the first time in my life I had ever
heard a man, certainly a black man, talk matter of
factly about having sex with another man. And he uses,
(15:48):
you know, this language and this framework. But he's like saying,
you know, we all do it, like people men have
sex with each other. Why do y'all act like you
don't do it? And it just blew my mind, Like
I have an emotional memory of hearing it, you know,
and being like what.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Well, yeah, because it's it's interesting because the way he
says it is very matter of fact.
Speaker 9 (16:10):
Me.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, Actually, the way the Owyers reacts is a law
that also is normalizing.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
That's right, that's like, oh, you know, you told the truth.
You know, yeah, y'all know, like we're all a little gay,
but that's the kind of truth telling we're talking about.
And you know, he goes on telling these kind of
jokes about his bisexuality throughout his life.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
And so a couple of things about this right one,
it's a success, you know, like a few years earlier
he was doing Bill Cosby jokes on Ed Sullivan. This
pivot to his more profane self is a success, but
it's specifically a success with black people. And this stuff
is a hit Craps in particular, like was kind of
a cult classic for black people. That's how I encountered it.
(16:55):
My parents had that album, you know, and I was
digging around in it, you know, decades later, but it
would be the beginning of his success. He had a
concert film that in that same year that was a
big hit. His next album, which was tied that Nigger's Crazy. Okay,
but that.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Was like, like that's a huge hit.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
But like even still he's wrestling with this fame and
with his place in the culture. And it kind of
comes to another head with the gay sex thing. I'm
gonna tell you a story about that. So it's nineteen
seventy seven and he's a superstar by this point, right,
and he's booked as the headliner for a show at
(17:41):
the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles that's a fundraiser for
gay rights. Right, Okay, Because so Now this is the
moment in the history of gay rights where it's like
the movement has moved from like stonewall and liberation and
sexual liberation to like a proper civil rights.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Movement, right right, right, right, They able to command venus
like the Hollywood exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
And what goes along with a proper civil rights movement
is like a more proper kind of conversation, yes about
who you you know. And so the event happens and
it's packed. There's seventeen thousand people there, mostly game men.
Most of the other acts are super like. It's got
a human rights framework to it, and so people are
(18:23):
talking about human rights, you know. And Richard Pryor goes on,
you know, and he gets on stage and he's clearly agitated,
like you can see he's agitated. He's pacing around like
he you know. And the first thing he says is,
I came here for human rights. What I found out
(18:47):
is it's really about not getting caught with a dick
in your mouth.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
So not the problem. No, they probably wanted for his benefit,
right what.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
About sex, y'all? And now what we're here talking about.
But the crowd responds exactly as you did. They you
know this is right now, classic Richard Pryor. That's right,
shake it up, you know. And so he goes on
to tell gay sex joke, right like he goes back
to like he talks about the first time he gave
a blowjob, and he names names what was the guy's name,
(19:24):
Wilbur harp In nineteen fifty two is the first man
he sucked.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Oh not that poor man, I.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
And you know, and he describes the experience as beautiful,
and he says, you know, everybody was sucking harpstick. I
was the only one to bring him roses. So it's
the same sort of set up, and so people are
loving it, they're eating it up in the audience. But
the whole time he's telling this joke, he is enraged,
(19:56):
Like inside he's enraged because backstage he had seen so
this is a pretty white event, you know, and there
had been this black dance troupe that went on and
had like some technical trouble and asked for help, and
he witnessed the white production staff be dismissive of them
(20:17):
and like not help them. And then there was a
white dance troupe that had the same technical trouble and
they got all the help they.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Needed naturally, Yeah, and he was just in livid.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
About this, and so he tells these averse jokes. The
audience is with him, they're all in his palm and
they're laughing and enjoying it. And then he stops and says,
how can fagots be racist? And he proceeds and that's
a quote, uses that language and proceeds to light into
them for being hypocrites. So then he just lays into
(20:51):
them for essentially for being hypocrites, you know, for not
wanting to stand up for black people in the way
that they now want everybody to stand up for them
for like and this is Los Angeles, right, Yeah, So
like he's like, where were you during Watts, you know,
and where are you for black civil rights? And you know,
it gets pretty bad, and he, you know, he starts
(21:13):
feeling himself in it, you know, because he's mad. And
he says, I hope you all get arrested when you
leave here, because you know, it's illegal to be gay,
like sodomy is illegal, and that's just a really nasty
thing to say to somebody. Yeah, you know. Yeah, And
so they're booing him and hackling him and all of that.
And finally he just turns around, puts his ass in
(21:34):
the air and kiss my happy rich ass and walks
off stage.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Kids, my happy rich black man.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yes, which is still funny. On top of everything else,
you know, this is you know, obviously it's a horrible
you know, I mean, the language is terrible and like,
but you know, he's also telling the truth that we
(22:02):
are still arguing about, Like in the gay community. He
is naming something you know, that we are still discussing,
like the way white gay men are will be there
for their rights but not for anything else, including for
the rights of black gay people.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It's also just an interesting because it feels like the
whole point of the event was to sort of bring
the gay rights movement into sort of like a more
mainstream button up sort of like to make it the
sort of thing that like your average do good old
white housewife of that era probably could be like, oh,
you know, look at them, they're doing this thing, and
(22:41):
he's refusing to basically keep it in that place. He's like, no,
let's talk about what we really need to talk about.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Well he can't.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
He's incapable, Okay, So what is going on for him? Like,
is he just rejecting just like the whiteness of it
all one more time.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Like Emmanuel, This is part of why I'm talking to
you about this because I don't fully know, but I
think that it connects to something that is going on
for the whole generation of black people, this post civil
rights generation for black peopeople. Right, So, like here he is,
you know, he has found this success in these mainstream
(23:17):
white spaces, right, but these mainstream white spaces that are
now letting black people into them, are not they let
stop being.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Racist, you know, like right.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
As we see it's the Hollywood ball right, Like there's
still racist space.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
They're still racist as well. And he's also doing that thing.
I don't know, there's this thing I feel like with
black performers, especially in that era probably, which is, you know,
we're only like a couple of decades removed from sort
of like the dance black man dance kind of nature
of like minstrel shows and people performing four white people
(23:52):
in a way that was totally like black people were
always the joke.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
We're always the joke. And so now are you the
joke or are you laughing with me? You know? So
I'm sure he's wrestling with some of that, and like
adjacent to that is like just what am I doing here? Period?
Like I need I need access to these white spaces
in order to become rich and famous and the way
that I want, you know, but these white spaces remain racist,
(24:18):
you know, Like I kind of don't want to be
here at all, you know, but I do want to
be here at all, And like what do I do?
Do I say something about the racism? Do I not
say something about the racism? And you know, Richard Pryor's
response to that seems to be when he short circuits
is to spit in white people's face, right, right, go
fuck yourselves, right, you know. But I will say part
(24:40):
of my interest in him is, like I my father.
I feel like I watched go through this, you know,
like as this man who you know, was the first
this and the first that in his field. He was
a doctor, you know, and so like he was routinely
in whites only spaces. He really wanted to be in
black spaces, you know, That's where he preferred to be.
(25:00):
But to have the success he wanted, he had to
be in these spaces. And I think it kind of
curdled him, you know. And for all all of them
what ends up happening. And I don't understand why. I mean,
I don't know why this happens, but all of them
start to self destruct, you know. And I guess part
(25:21):
of my like if you talk to a black gen
exer like this is a regular part of my conversation
with my black peers is thinking about this. Is this
something that like your generation talks about, Do you have this?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
I think it's something. Honestly, I think it's something in
my generation when you talk to black kids who grew
up in suburban spaces and just by existing, just by
doing stuff, I'm the first of this. Every other black person,
I meaning is the first person to do this or
is exceptional in kind of some way by virtue of
the fact we were in this room or this place.
But I don't know, I feel like the stakes of
(25:52):
it are way more real for like gen X's or
like people who came before Para.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah, you know, and because part of what is the
struggle to carry that, like what they do, how they
carry that that they had tried so hard to be there.
He worked so hard to go from being you know,
the kid that grew up in a brothel to standing
on the stage being so famous that they would book
him for this even though he obviously was not a fit,
(26:19):
you know.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
And also it's just like it's so telling to me
because he came up doing one type of comedy that
was very white people safe, and then ultimately had a
break with that, and then by necessity it kind of
had to reshape himself in front of black audience.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
In one of the black audiences, and then he was okay.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Right, and then it was okay, and then became famous
doing that, but it still took him to the same
place where it's like he still ends up performing in
front of white people. And as funny as you were
describing this, it kind of reminded me of like what
happened to Dave Chappelle.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
You know what, that's exactly right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
You're making all these jokes you get famous for, like
in Dave Chappelle's case, making the Dave Chappelle Show, which
was like this sort of skitch show that aired in
like the early two thousands, and he got famous for
like doing these very like I haven't got risky, very
raised focused, very honest and honest jokes that black people
(27:18):
loved and then eventually he had to stop because it's
just like, wait, I feel like white people are laughing
at this in a way that is making me very uncomfortable,
and me being the biggest this show has ever been,
at the height of his fame, the attention he's drawing
and trying to figure out just like, Okay, how can
I be this famous when I have white fans right
(27:40):
and in a white gaze?
Speaker 2 (27:42):
And you know, maybe the comparison is apt as well, because,
like I think, you know, the today's Dave Chappelle is
a man who is self destructed. And part of my
interest in this is like the self destruction that Richard
Pryor engages in as a consequence of this stuff was epic,
(28:03):
and I'm gonna tell you about that after a break.
Speaker 9 (28:05):
Okay, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
This is Big Lives. We are talking about Richard Pryor,
and we are now going to talk about his epic
self destruction.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Boy.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
All right, so June of nineteen eighty, Yes, Richard Pryor
is wildly wealthy. By this point, he has already been
the first black person to make a million dollars in
a movie. So you know his Hollywood Bowl flame out,
you know, was not enough to derail him. He's that
famous now. And he co wrote Blazing Saddles. Do you
(28:50):
know the movie Blazing? So he co wrote, Yes, sir,
that's Richard Pryor. So those things have happened. He's like
killing it. Also, he is spending more than a quarter
million dollars a year on drugs, just on drugs alone.
That's what he says in his memoir Wow and So
(29:11):
June and nineteen eighties, he's like on a days long
binge of freebasing cocaine. So it's been going on days.
He's at his mansion in Los Angeles. It's this sprawling estate,
you know, and he's not having fun while he's doing this. Yeah,
you know, he's just really really high. And you know,
(29:36):
he has this moment where his manager describes it as
like he's trying to deal with his guilt for the
crime of being Richard pryor whatever the hell that.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Means, the crime of being Richard Bryan whatever.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I have no idea what that means, but that's what
he's experiencing in the moment while he's on this like binge,
and he takes a bottle of one and fifty one
proof from that. I guess he's drinking while he's on
this day's long cane. He pours it over his head
(30:13):
and he lights himself on fire. A fireball erupts, engulfs
his body. Oh because the free based cocaine also has
these volatile substances in it. Oh wow, you know, flames
cover more than half his body. He runs out of
the mansion, past his security, out the gates, runs down
(30:36):
the street, a streaking ball of fire.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
I mean, it's awful, It's horrific, and you know he
somehow survives this.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
That was my next question. So he survives that, but
probably we've like horrendous bund hondous burns.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
He has six weeks of recovery. I want to play
some of that documentary from two thousand and six again
where people in his life try to make sense of
this moment. And so you're gonna hear from his daughter
again and his son now, and from his closest collaborator
in comedy, Paul Mooney. So here's that he wanted to
(31:19):
end his life.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
Sometimes you get to a point where you can't take
anymore and you don't know how to get away out
of it, or you know, you don't see a way out,
and a lot of times you take matters in your
own hands, saying this is the only option I have.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
Richard was trying to kill himself, definitely, Definitely what makes
you say about it? Because it was the way he
was acting before he did it. He was trying to
get out of here. I'm sure of it.
Speaker 7 (31:47):
He told me straight out, I didn't have an accident, baby,
I tried to kill myself. I wanted it to stop.
He just couldn't take it.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
I couldn't take it.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Could you explain what you were talking about?
Speaker 7 (32:00):
Well, mama had passed away, you know, Mama had passed away,
the thing that was his rock, his foundation. Now what
who's going to tell you off? Nobody in your life
wants to tell you off? Why could you're Richard Prior?
Speaker 1 (32:12):
If that makes sense? Because when you told me the
way in which he did, I'm like, oh, this is
that is a suicidal act.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
But at the time, who knew. You know, it's like
also just the act of a deranged drug addict, right,
you know, but you think about like this balancing act
he had been doing with himself, right of, like chasing
fame in this white space, you know, really wanting to
be in these black spaces. Yeah, and I can imagine Mama.
(32:43):
You know, his grandmother, who raised him in a brothel,
was probably a lot of like what made the balance.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Right, right. It's like he has this grounding presence in
his life.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I could totally see a wald in which his grandma
is his grounding presence that reminds him where he comes from,
that connects him to his childhood in that way.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
You know. So it's a horrible event, but classic Richard Pryor,
he turns this into common when he comes back from this.
In nineteen eighty two, he makes a comedy film, Richard
Pryor Live on Sunset Strip. It's his next concert film.
Speaker 9 (33:19):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And I would say it was my introduction to Richard Pryor.
I remember watching that with my family, you know, and
he tells the story of this moment as of this
long drawn out bit that becomes like one of his
most famous bits. And I just remember watching my family,
(33:41):
My father particularly just tears crying, you know, at like
that tears funny laugh you get when somebody's telling the
truth that feels real to you.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, like it that it hit close to home, you know,
for your dad and people.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, of that generation of like they got it, you know,
like why he would and I don't get it to
this day. I don't get it. Why this impulse to
self destruction? You know my father absolutely so he wasn't
a drug addict, but he self destructed with like he
was a surgeon who treated people for diabetes and heart
disease and preventable illnesses, and he died at fifty eight
(34:17):
of diabetes and heart disease, right like, and it just
you know, just constantly anything he could do to undermine
his own health. Yeah, and you every time I am
in conversation with other black gen X people, we talk
about this and that they've seen in their parents or
someone in their family. I don't understand it. I don't
(34:37):
understand why it went to self destruction. But I also
want you know, from someone from your generation, is this
at all legible to you? Do you have any idea
what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1 (34:47):
I Mean, it feels ridiculous to say this because it's
so low a stakes and what we've talked about, but
it's like nobody wants to be the black guy at
a white like dance party in the middle of the circle.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
You know what I mean, in the middle of the circle.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
In the middle of everyone looking on you and displaying
that way, Like there's something about that sort of experience,
whether it's you're performing on stage where in front of
means of people, whether it's you're a like a doctor
like your father was, there's something about finding success and
realizing that that success means that you have to exist
(35:23):
in a society that your whole life has never wanted you,
still doesn't really want you. Now it's being made to
accept you, and like facing a choice you even sort
of fully embrace that, you lean in and you end
up changing yourself, probably in ways that are so small
(35:43):
right that you don't even necessarily notice them, like to
probably in your everyday life, you're going about it and
you're like, I'm doing what I've always done, doing the
stuff that has gotten me to this place. But you
are probably on some level changing yourself in these small
ways that maybe don't hurt you in the moment, but
harm you as time goes on, and it becomes sort
of like a stress fracture where like you're just like, oh,
(36:06):
I can't, I can't keep doing this, I can't. Yeah,
like you need to get into therapy.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
You have found it's a different colleague for you. It's
because and so that is the crime of being Richard
Pryor is those small changes to yourself that ultimately become
a fracture.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Right, And it's one of those things for him too,
where probably the more he leaned into, like the Richard
Pryor Act, the stuff that had first had seen maybe
too risky to do in front of white people. Like
if you lean back into the thing that brought you
peace or brought you some fulfillment. What worked in the
late sixties to sort of like get rid of your
(36:49):
white fans and to connect with black people. By the
time of the eighties and the seventies is something that
white people are eager to lappen. They want to be
in on the joke.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
You want to be on the joke. And you got
you know, enough money to have a million dollar a
year drug problem, right you Right, you might be losing
track of who you are period.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
There's no way you could also be be who you
uh man?
Speaker 2 (37:15):
So you know, I mean and from here it's interesting
because like not long after that, so this is nineteen
eighty two, by like I think it was like in
the mid eighties. We now know he got diagnosed with MS.
You know, do you know the film Harlem Knights.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that is a wild film.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
It is a wild film. I love this. This is
Eddie Murphy's first directing opportunity. This is like an all
star cast of black comedians in the eighties. You know,
Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Della Reese, Red Fox, like all
of these legends get together make a kind of slapstick
comedy about like being gangsters in Harlem. It's a total
(37:54):
bomb in the box office, but it is a cult
classic amongst black people. And Richard Pryor in it is
kind of not the funny one. Yeah, you know, he
kind of plays it straight. And Eddie Murphy has said
in public that like he was frustrated by that in
the filming.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Oh, Eddie was frustrated. Yeah, He's like, oh, I want
you to be the Richard pry.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Was my legend, you know, and he blamed like the
film not you know, when it didn't get the kind
of critical response that it was supposed to get. He's
like part of it. He's riffing on why. One of
the things is like I thought me and Richard were
going to be on set yucking it up, figuring things out,
but Richard was just kind of clocking it in. And
then Eddie says, like I later discovered like he had
(38:41):
just been diagnosed with MS oh, and we didn't know that,
but he knew that, and so he was his decline
was beginning, and so you know, he continued to be
in the culture for a bit, but I you know,
I don't remember when his last film was, but he
starts to fade away, and it's just a tragedy, you know,
(39:02):
because I just think he would have still been such.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
A great because you were saying he was born in
nineteen forty, yeah, so he's only five years older than
George W.
Speaker 9 (39:14):
Bush.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah. Or take another example, Steve Martin right old and
Steve Martin who has got a hit TV show right now, right,
you know, and it's still actively making things. I think
Richard Pryor would still be making things, and I wonder
what he'd be doing, you know, to push us, you know,
the kind of truths he'd be telling, yeah that we
(39:36):
don't get, you know, And that is also a little
bit of the tragedy for me of that generation. There's
so many of them, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah, who burn out so young out, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Wow, thank you for processing this with me.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Of course, of course it's interesting because where we're going
next is I think kind of related. It speaks to
a lot of similar ideas that we've talked to you today,
but I think through a very different lens. Okay, and
so I'm gonna play a couple of clips for you,
and I'm curious if you know who we're going to
do it.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Let's do it. I'm ready, all right.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
So this first one is from two thousand and three.
Speaker 10 (40:14):
I don't necessarily think it's specific to England. I think
everywhere there's going to be people that are talented that
can really rhyme or can really make a bait. And
then not necessarily in the forefront of the music industry,
you know, it's just about who the record company is
gonna put out. You know, there's a lot of talented
people everywhere.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Do you have any idea who this might be?
Speaker 2 (40:35):
I recognize the voice that I'm trying to like put
the person with it, but I'm like, I know that person.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
All right. Well, we have another one, this time a
couple of years later, from two thousand and sixty when
I go on stage.
Speaker 10 (40:48):
I like stress as slutty as possible because it makes
me dance, but for some reason. But I do it
because I'm an assertive young woman and I'm not trying
to sell records base on the way I look, and
that's why I do it. Apart from the fact that
I like dressing like that.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
I like her.
Speaker 9 (41:03):
I like you.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yes, I don't know now, I've I've actually lost my way.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Listen, what you are having now is the experience that
meals of people around the world had when they first
heard her, which was I don't know who visits, but
I love this woman and I want to hear more.
I'll play one more clear.
Speaker 10 (41:19):
I'm lucky that I can sing songs that might be
happy that I wrote about stuff that, you know. I'm
lucky that I get to give myself therapy every day
by singing songs about a really tough time in my life.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Not everyone can do that. Everyone's go and talk about
other people.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
I'm very lucky. Yeah, yeah, all right, So don't tell
me now to be But do you feel like you
have an idea?
Speaker 2 (41:38):
I don't it.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Wow, all right, well we have to wait and see.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
But I am very excited to find out. Big Lives
is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. It's
hosted by me Kai writ and Emmanuel Jochi from BBC Studios.
Our producer is Emma Weatherell. Our archi producer is Samira Chowdry.
The sound designer is Melvin Rickaby, Executive producer is Annie Brown,
(42:02):
Production coordinator is Galen Davis Connelly, and production manager is
Mabel Finnegan right from push Industries. Our executive producer is
Constanza Gayato, producer Daphne Chen, legal advisor Jake Flanagan, and
marketing by Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillen. Get AD free
(42:26):
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Show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
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Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Before we get going here, some real talk. The BBC
has been sitting on decades of tape, and Emmanuel and
I are just two guys trying to make sure the
good stuff doesn't get buried. The way you can help
us do that. Leave a review doesn't have to be
a long one, just a few lines about how the
show is changing your thinking. And think about who in
your life has a strong opinion about David Attenborough or
(00:40):
Muhammad Ali or Meg Ryan or anyone else we've covered
for them this episode, Because you know, I'm saying whatever
they think they know, they probably don't know the whole story.
It's kind of the point. Okay, let's get started. Just
let you know there's discriminatory language and content in this episode. Okay, Emmanuel, yes, Kai,
(01:01):
What is the first image that comes to mind? First
sort of caricature even that you have when I bring
up Richard pryor oh.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Man, Can I just say I feel like the image
that was fed to me is of this comedian. He
was really funny but kind of just kind.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Of like a hot mess.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, the thing is, though, Emmanuel, You're not wrong. I
snarted cocay for about fifteen years. My dumb ass.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I started off smarting.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Little tiny Pinches said, I know I ain't gonna get hooked.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
I don't know coke, you can't get hooked.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
My friends have been snarting fifteen years. I ain't hooked.
I start snorting, little teen. Didn't he make noise? Coke
et get.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Past the album?
Speaker 5 (01:53):
Please no more for me?
Speaker 6 (01:55):
Six months later, I mean that is like a meaningful
part of what happened in Richard Pryor's life. You know,
I think there's more to that story, and particularly the
questions around why.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. This is big Lives.
I'm Kai Wright. We are both journalists and cultural obsessives
who love trying to understand the world through an individual
person's life. These are architects of our culture, people who
have just had a huge impact on the way we live,
the way we take in art, the way we think
of ourselves, but who have been flattened over the years,
(02:39):
and so we want to bring them back to life,
look into their complicated big lives. And we're using the
treasure trove of the BBC Archive to do that. There
is over one hundred years of tape of some of
the biggest cultural figures in our world. The BBC's got it,
and so we're digging through it. So listen. First off,
(03:03):
if the basics of Richard Pryor, if you don't know
who he is, he is a genre defining comedian. If
you talked to almost any comedian today, certainly of his era,
they would say he's the goat.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
He just had a titanic career, five Grammys, He was
the first black person to host SNL. He first black
person to make a million dollars in a movie.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Wait what Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So, as I've been rooting around in the archive for
Richard Pryor, there's this clip I found of his daughter
rain prior in two thousand and six, so it's right
after he died. They did a documentary about his life,
and she said, this interesting thing, listen to this.
Speaker 7 (03:42):
There was always truth. He didn't make up things just
to get a laugh or you know, tell a story
that That's the one thing that I love about the
man is that you maybe at times you didn't know
what Richard you were going to get personally, but you
always knew you were going to get Richard. If that
makes sense, You're always going to get the man, whether
(04:03):
messed up or not. And he would tell you he
was messed up.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
And you know, like that honesty thing, the telling the
truth piece, right, Like that's the core Richard Pryor. That
is like what was at the core of his fame
and what people loved about him. And the messed up part. Also,
you know, he is simultaneously, as you said at the beginning,
just wildly self destructive. But the two I think they
(04:27):
got something to do with each other. And you know,
that is the thing that I am drawn to. There's
a way in which the disruptive behavior is why he
had such a massive impact on the culture. And I
want to talk about that. That's good, welcome back. This
(04:51):
is big lives and we are talking about Richard Pryor. Okay,
so Richard Franklin, Lennox, Thomas Pryor.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
The third it's always those sources of names that someone
is like, right, we're going to reproduce this and put
it on a job three times.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Times, three times. The third I almost didn't take it
in the third part.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
He had a life, a young life as complicated as
his long name. Born in December nineteen forty in Peoria, Illinois, he.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Grew up in a brothel, oh okay.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Like an actual brothel. His mother was a sex worker,
his father was a pimp and a boxer.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Well, and his.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Grandmother, you know, was really who raised him. She was
like the big personality in his life. He called her Mama.
He talked about her a lot throughout his career. And
here is again his daughter Rain Pror talking about Mama
in that two thousand and six documentary.
Speaker 7 (05:50):
You know, Mama was proud of herself for having this
whorehouse because it's the one thing that put food on
the table. And my dad's perception in growing up with
that was a little warped in that environment, and women
were to be used and to be bought with money,
and he sort of had that, I think throughout obviously
his entire life.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
If you grew up in a brothel in that way,
and it's just like it sounds like it's your family
business and family home, that's your whole world view.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, and not surprisingly, you know, he was sexually abused
as a child. If you grew up in that environment
and then at age fourteen gets thrown out of school
because they discover he lives in a brothel.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Wait, yes, sir, So he basically came to school a
bit like, oh, we discovered that you are living in
a brothel, which is potentially like unsafe situation, and we're
just going to kick you out.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
That's right, you need help go so you know. So, yeah,
he gets kicked out of school. And he does, though,
go and find sanctuary in this place, this community center
in Peoria, where he meets what he calls the angel
in his life. It's this woman who's a drama teacher
and sees real potential in young Richard Pryor and starts
(07:08):
coaching him and giving opportunities to perform, and he starts
heading down this road. So nineteen sixty three, he moves
to New York City with ten dollars in his pocket. Yeah,
dollar in a dream, and he starts performing in the
Greenwich Village scene. And I don't know how much you
know about that scene from the early sixties.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I don't know. Mostly just like everywhere you walk the
as like Bob Dylan singing with somebody.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
That's right, that's right. It's this intimate place. And you know,
Bob Dylan, Woody Al and Miles Davis, like John Coltrane,
all these people are performing in these little clubs. The
Village Gate is like one of the big ones. So
Richard Pryor gets booked at the Village Gate on one
of his first nights, he's opening for a Nina Simone.
(07:57):
I love thinking of like young Richard Pryor through Nina
Simone's eyes. She's talking about he is so scared, right,
like to get up on that stage that apparently she says,
he shook like he had malaria. He was so nervous.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
That is such a specific description of.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Right, that the man chook like malaria. So she says,
to get him up on stage, she would rock him
like a baby, like put her arms around him and
just rock him till he calmed down. So she did
that on the first night, and then the next night
was the same, and the next I rocked him each
time until he calmed down.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Wow, she like midwife him into being basically that's.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Right, yes, Heimone midwife Richard Pryor. And you know, he
says at the time, the kind of comedy he started
to develop was essentially copying Bill Cosby. Right, So like
this is you know the mid sixties. Bill Cosby is
the certainly the reigning black celebrity, but probably like one
(09:01):
of you know, because he's on TV right as a
black man. That's really unusual at this time. And he's,
you know, Bill Cosby is like telling Cosby jokes right.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Right, right, right, right right right about children. And then
somebody's pitting something on a rug.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yes, and so Richard Pryor thinks this is comedy, and
so I'm going to do that. There's this clip I
found from his closest collaborator in comedy, Paul Mooney.
Speaker 8 (09:29):
He sort of modeled his career after Bill Cosby in
the early stages, and that allowed him to be accepted
by white audiences.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
With a tone of voice.
Speaker 8 (09:41):
If you didn't notice you were watching, you might have
mistaken him for Bill Cosby.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
You can't get a cab in New York City, right,
especially when it rains all the cabs owned by one
company off duty.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And he's pretty good at it, actually, And he starts
to take off and he gets on the Ed Sullivan Show.
That's his big moment, Like and he starts doing these
bits on the Ed Sullivan Show in the sixties and
becomes known as like a rising star as a consequence,
you know, this is the new Bill Cosby. But that
(10:15):
is not going to hold for a man who grew
up in a brothel.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Right, because I know of Bill Cosby's comedies, is is
it clean? From most it's And I'm also not really
about race and not no.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Gets on with white people. And so Richard Pryor is
trying to get on with white people. Okay, So it's
nineteen sixty seven. He's now become quite popular for doing
this Bill Cosby kind of humor right on the Ed
Sullivan Show, No Less. And he's booked at the Aladdin
Hotel in Las Vegas, and it's a big gig, right
(10:53):
sold out audience, and he's standing backstage, you know, kind
of weirdly reluctant to get on stage, looking out at
the audience, right, and he's looking out at like a
sea of white faces, like it's just like a white, white,
white audience. And he's like, I don't know what am
(11:13):
I doing? And he has what he describes that, Oh man,
it's epiphany, you know, like I just I don't want
to do this. I don't want to do this. This
is not what I want. I don't want to go
out on this stage, you know. But he walks out anyway,
and before he tells a single joke, right, Like, the
very first thing he does is blurts out, what the
(11:36):
fuck am I doing here?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Wait?
Speaker 9 (11:39):
What?
Speaker 2 (11:39):
And he's just like why am I here? You know,
in the most profane way. So after he gets that
out of his system, he gaus on and tries to
do the gig that he's signed up for. He starts
telling these jokes right and about midway through the set,
he's just like nah and just walks off stage.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Wait wait, So he goes out on stage and is
like basically says the thing he's thinking, which milk, and
then he recovers and is like, okay, let me get
a clean joke, sorry, folks. And then it's like actually this,
I'm just gonna go.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I'm just gonna go and just just walks off stage.
And he's so petulant about it. He doesn't even walk
off stage in the right direction, like he like deliberately
walks off stage in like the wrong direction. So it's
like awkward to get off the stage, and it's like
a whole mess of night. And it's the disaster that
you think, right, Like, his agent's like he'll never work again,
(12:36):
and indeed he like stops getting booked. You know, he's
pushed into the small clubs and college towns and stuff
like that. Like he's destroyed his career, right, you know,
But it's in this moment as a consequence that he
starts to rethink that career and he leaves New York
and he moves to the Bay Area. Now this is
(12:58):
you know, this is the sixties, right, and he starts
getting involved in the sort of Bay Area counterculture. He
starts getting involved with the black power movement, right that
grows up out of Oakland, and that starts to change
his understanding of like the world and his place in
it and what he could do. And he starts to
think about comedy that is more raw and honest, right,
(13:23):
And so he begins this process and he says, like
he says later, like that he realized comedy, real comedy,
wasn't just telling jokes, it was about telling the truth.
And just to sort of give you an example of
where this kind of comedy goes. Yeah, So he starts
making albums nineteen seventy one. His second album, it's called
(13:45):
Craps right like after the Dice Game, and it's a
wildly profane album and I want to play you like
one of the jokes. Okay, it's toward the end of
the show. He goes on this truly profane riff about
sex and then like the last twenty five thirty seconds
of this is what I want you to pay attention to.
(14:06):
But here it all. And yes, dear listener, this is
a clip with the discriminatory language in context.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
This this is the stuff you needed the warning vault, so.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Be ready, all right, So here's Richard Pryor in nineteen
seventy one.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
You know, like, you can't talk about fucking in America, right,
people say you're dirty. But if you talk about killing somebody,
that's cool. I don't understand it myself. I'd rather come,
(14:40):
Oh wow, I've had money and never felt as good
as I felt when I come.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Do nothing matter.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
But when you get in a nut, especially if it's
a girl, niggas be signifying dounia. I knew, you know,
they only children. I was the only dude in the
neighborhood would fuck this fagin though a lot of dudes
don't play that shit in the daytime. I don't fucking
(15:08):
flag night you kiss him, right, But it's embarrassing because
I meant to dude, like ten years later, Hi, rich.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
So, man, this is nineteen seventy one that he does
this joke right when I heard this for the first obviously,
not in nineteen seventy one, many years later, Like I
heard this album, but I was a teenager and it
was the first time in my life I had ever
heard a man, certainly a black man, talk matter of
factly about having sex with another man. And he uses,
(15:48):
you know, this language and this framework. But he's like saying,
you know, we all do it, like people men have
sex with each other. Why do y'all act like you
don't do it? And it just blew my mind, Like
I have an emotional memory of hearing it, you know,
and being like what.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Well, yeah, because it's it's interesting because the way he
says it is very matter of fact.
Speaker 9 (16:10):
Me.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah, Actually, the way the Owyers reacts is a law
that also is normalizing.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
That's right, that's like, oh, you know, you told the truth.
You know, yeah, y'all know, like we're all a little gay,
but that's the kind of truth telling we're talking about.
And you know, he goes on telling these kind of
jokes about his bisexuality throughout his life.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
And so a couple of things about this right one,
it's a success, you know, like a few years earlier
he was doing Bill Cosby jokes on Ed Sullivan. This
pivot to his more profane self is a success, but
it's specifically a success with black people. And this stuff
is a hit Craps in particular, like was kind of
a cult classic for black people. That's how I encountered it.
(16:55):
My parents had that album, you know, and I was
digging around in it, you know, decades later, but it
would be the beginning of his success. He had a
concert film that in that same year that was a
big hit. His next album, which was tied that Nigger's Crazy. Okay,
but that.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Was like, like that's a huge hit.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
But like even still he's wrestling with this fame and
with his place in the culture. And it kind of
comes to another head with the gay sex thing. I'm
gonna tell you a story about that. So it's nineteen
seventy seven and he's a superstar by this point, right,
and he's booked as the headliner for a show at
(17:41):
the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles that's a fundraiser for
gay rights. Right, Okay, Because so Now this is the
moment in the history of gay rights where it's like
the movement has moved from like stonewall and liberation and
sexual liberation to like a proper civil rights.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Movement, right right, right, right, They able to command venus
like the Hollywood exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
And what goes along with a proper civil rights movement
is like a more proper kind of conversation, yes about
who you you know. And so the event happens and
it's packed. There's seventeen thousand people there, mostly game men.
Most of the other acts are super like. It's got
a human rights framework to it, and so people are
(18:23):
talking about human rights, you know. And Richard Pryor goes on,
you know, and he gets on stage and he's clearly agitated,
like you can see he's agitated. He's pacing around like
he you know. And the first thing he says is,
I came here for human rights. What I found out
(18:47):
is it's really about not getting caught with a dick
in your mouth.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
So not the problem. No, they probably wanted for his benefit,
right what.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
About sex, y'all? And now what we're here talking about.
But the crowd responds exactly as you did. They you
know this is right now, classic Richard Pryor. That's right,
shake it up, you know. And so he goes on
to tell gay sex joke, right like he goes back
to like he talks about the first time he gave
a blowjob, and he names names what was the guy's name,
(19:24):
Wilbur harp In nineteen fifty two is the first man
he sucked.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Oh not that poor man, I.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
And you know, and he describes the experience as beautiful,
and he says, you know, everybody was sucking harpstick. I
was the only one to bring him roses. So it's
the same sort of set up, and so people are
loving it, they're eating it up in the audience. But
the whole time he's telling this joke, he is enraged,
(19:56):
Like inside he's enraged because backstage he had seen so
this is a pretty white event, you know, and there
had been this black dance troupe that went on and
had like some technical trouble and asked for help, and
he witnessed the white production staff be dismissive of them
(20:17):
and like not help them. And then there was a
white dance troupe that had the same technical trouble and
they got all the help they.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Needed naturally, Yeah, and he was just in livid.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
About this, and so he tells these averse jokes. The
audience is with him, they're all in his palm and
they're laughing and enjoying it. And then he stops and says,
how can fagots be racist? And he proceeds and that's
a quote, uses that language and proceeds to light into
them for being hypocrites. So then he just lays into
(20:51):
them for essentially for being hypocrites, you know, for not
wanting to stand up for black people in the way
that they now want everybody to stand up for them
for like and this is Los Angeles, right, Yeah, So
like he's like, where were you during Watts, you know,
and where are you for black civil rights? And you know,
it gets pretty bad, and he, you know, he starts
(21:13):
feeling himself in it, you know, because he's mad. And
he says, I hope you all get arrested when you
leave here, because you know, it's illegal to be gay,
like sodomy is illegal, and that's just a really nasty
thing to say to somebody. Yeah, you know. Yeah, And
so they're booing him and hackling him and all of that.
And finally he just turns around, puts his ass in
(21:34):
the air and kiss my happy rich ass and walks
off stage.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Kids, my happy rich black man.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yes, which is still funny. On top of everything else,
you know, this is you know, obviously it's a horrible
you know, I mean, the language is terrible and like,
but you know, he's also telling the truth that we
(22:02):
are still arguing about, Like in the gay community. He
is naming something you know, that we are still discussing,
like the way white gay men are will be there
for their rights but not for anything else, including for
the rights of black gay people.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
It's also just an interesting because it feels like the
whole point of the event was to sort of bring
the gay rights movement into sort of like a more
mainstream button up sort of like to make it the
sort of thing that like your average do good old
white housewife of that era probably could be like, oh,
you know, look at them, they're doing this thing, and
(22:41):
he's refusing to basically keep it in that place. He's like, no,
let's talk about what we really need to talk about.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Well he can't.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
He's incapable, Okay, So what is going on for him? Like,
is he just rejecting just like the whiteness of it
all one more time.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Like Emmanuel, This is part of why I'm talking to
you about this because I don't fully know, but I
think that it connects to something that is going on
for the whole generation of black people, this post civil
rights generation for black peopeople. Right, So, like here he is,
you know, he has found this success in these mainstream
(23:17):
white spaces, right, but these mainstream white spaces that are
now letting black people into them, are not they let
stop being.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Racist, you know, like right.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
As we see it's the Hollywood ball right, Like there's
still racist space.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
They're still racist as well. And he's also doing that thing.
I don't know, there's this thing I feel like with
black performers, especially in that era probably, which is, you know,
we're only like a couple of decades removed from sort
of like the dance black man dance kind of nature
of like minstrel shows and people performing four white people
(23:52):
in a way that was totally like black people were
always the joke.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
We're always the joke. And so now are you the
joke or are you laughing with me? You know? So
I'm sure he's wrestling with some of that, and like
adjacent to that is like just what am I doing here? Period?
Like I need I need access to these white spaces
in order to become rich and famous and the way
that I want, you know, but these white spaces remain racist,
(24:18):
you know, Like I kind of don't want to be
here at all, you know, but I do want to
be here at all, And like what do I do?
Do I say something about the racism? Do I not
say something about the racism? And you know, Richard Pryor's
response to that seems to be when he short circuits
is to spit in white people's face, right, right, go
fuck yourselves, right, you know. But I will say part
(24:40):
of my interest in him is, like I my father.
I feel like I watched go through this, you know,
like as this man who you know, was the first
this and the first that in his field. He was
a doctor, you know, and so like he was routinely
in whites only spaces. He really wanted to be in
black spaces, you know, That's where he preferred to be.
(25:00):
But to have the success he wanted, he had to
be in these spaces. And I think it kind of
curdled him, you know. And for all all of them
what ends up happening. And I don't understand why. I mean,
I don't know why this happens, but all of them
start to self destruct, you know. And I guess part
(25:21):
of my like if you talk to a black gen
exer like this is a regular part of my conversation
with my black peers is thinking about this. Is this
something that like your generation talks about, Do you have this?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
I think it's something. Honestly, I think it's something in
my generation when you talk to black kids who grew
up in suburban spaces and just by existing, just by
doing stuff, I'm the first of this. Every other black person,
I meaning is the first person to do this or
is exceptional in kind of some way by virtue of
the fact we were in this room or this place.
But I don't know, I feel like the stakes of
(25:52):
it are way more real for like gen X's or
like people who came before Para.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah, you know, and because part of what is the
struggle to carry that, like what they do, how they
carry that that they had tried so hard to be there.
He worked so hard to go from being you know,
the kid that grew up in a brothel to standing
on the stage being so famous that they would book
him for this even though he obviously was not a fit,
(26:19):
you know.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
And also it's just like it's so telling to me
because he came up doing one type of comedy that
was very white people safe, and then ultimately had a
break with that, and then by necessity it kind of
had to reshape himself in front of black audience.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
In one of the black audiences, and then he was okay.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Right, and then it was okay, and then became famous
doing that, but it still took him to the same
place where it's like he still ends up performing in
front of white people. And as funny as you were
describing this, it kind of reminded me of like what
happened to Dave Chappelle.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
You know what, that's exactly right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
You're making all these jokes you get famous for, like
in Dave Chappelle's case, making the Dave Chappelle Show, which
was like this sort of skitch show that aired in
like the early two thousands, and he got famous for
like doing these very like I haven't got risky, very
raised focused, very honest and honest jokes that black people
(27:18):
loved and then eventually he had to stop because it's
just like, wait, I feel like white people are laughing
at this in a way that is making me very uncomfortable,
and me being the biggest this show has ever been,
at the height of his fame, the attention he's drawing
and trying to figure out just like, Okay, how can
I be this famous when I have white fans right
(27:40):
and in a white gaze?
Speaker 2 (27:42):
And you know, maybe the comparison is apt as well, because,
like I think, you know, the today's Dave Chappelle is
a man who is self destructed. And part of my
interest in this is like the self destruction that Richard
Pryor engages in as a consequence of this stuff was epic,
(28:03):
and I'm gonna tell you about that after a break.
Speaker 9 (28:05):
Okay, welcome back.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
This is Big Lives. We are talking about Richard Pryor,
and we are now going to talk about his epic
self destruction.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Boy.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
All right, so June of nineteen eighty, Yes, Richard Pryor
is wildly wealthy. By this point, he has already been
the first black person to make a million dollars in
a movie. So you know his Hollywood Bowl flame out,
you know, was not enough to derail him. He's that
famous now. And he co wrote Blazing Saddles. Do you
(28:50):
know the movie Blazing? So he co wrote, Yes, sir,
that's Richard Pryor. So those things have happened. He's like
killing it. Also, he is spending more than a quarter
million dollars a year on drugs, just on drugs alone.
That's what he says in his memoir Wow and So
(29:11):
June and nineteen eighties, he's like on a days long
binge of freebasing cocaine. So it's been going on days.
He's at his mansion in Los Angeles. It's this sprawling estate,
you know, and he's not having fun while he's doing this. Yeah,
you know, he's just really really high. And you know,
(29:36):
he has this moment where his manager describes it as
like he's trying to deal with his guilt for the
crime of being Richard pryor whatever the hell that.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Means, the crime of being Richard Bryan whatever.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I have no idea what that means, but that's what
he's experiencing in the moment while he's on this like binge,
and he takes a bottle of one and fifty one
proof from that. I guess he's drinking while he's on
this day's long cane. He pours it over his head
(30:13):
and he lights himself on fire. A fireball erupts, engulfs
his body. Oh because the free based cocaine also has
these volatile substances in it. Oh wow, you know, flames
cover more than half his body. He runs out of
the mansion, past his security, out the gates, runs down
(30:36):
the street, a streaking ball of fire.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
I mean, it's awful, It's horrific, and you know he
somehow survives this.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
That was my next question. So he survives that, but
probably we've like horrendous bund hondous burns.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
He has six weeks of recovery. I want to play
some of that documentary from two thousand and six again
where people in his life try to make sense of
this moment. And so you're gonna hear from his daughter
again and his son now, and from his closest collaborator
in comedy, Paul Mooney. So here's that he wanted to
(31:19):
end his life.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
Sometimes you get to a point where you can't take
anymore and you don't know how to get away out
of it, or you know, you don't see a way out,
and a lot of times you take matters in your
own hands, saying this is the only option I have.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
Richard was trying to kill himself, definitely, Definitely what makes
you say about it? Because it was the way he
was acting before he did it. He was trying to
get out of here. I'm sure of it.
Speaker 7 (31:47):
He told me straight out, I didn't have an accident, baby,
I tried to kill myself. I wanted it to stop.
He just couldn't take it.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
I couldn't take it.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Could you explain what you were talking about?
Speaker 7 (32:00):
Well, mama had passed away, you know, Mama had passed away,
the thing that was his rock, his foundation. Now what
who's going to tell you off? Nobody in your life
wants to tell you off? Why could you're Richard Prior?
Speaker 1 (32:12):
If that makes sense? Because when you told me the
way in which he did, I'm like, oh, this is
that is a suicidal act.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
But at the time, who knew. You know, it's like
also just the act of a deranged drug addict, right,
you know, but you think about like this balancing act
he had been doing with himself, right of, like chasing
fame in this white space, you know, really wanting to
be in these black spaces. Yeah, and I can imagine Mama.
(32:43):
You know, his grandmother, who raised him in a brothel,
was probably a lot of like what made the balance.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Right, right. It's like he has this grounding presence in
his life.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
I could totally see a wald in which his grandma
is his grounding presence that reminds him where he comes from,
that connects him to his childhood in that way.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
You know. So it's a horrible event, but classic Richard Pryor,
he turns this into common when he comes back from this.
In nineteen eighty two, he makes a comedy film, Richard
Pryor Live on Sunset Strip. It's his next concert film.
Speaker 9 (33:19):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And I would say it was my introduction to Richard Pryor.
I remember watching that with my family, you know, and
he tells the story of this moment as of this
long drawn out bit that becomes like one of his
most famous bits. And I just remember watching my family,
(33:41):
My father particularly just tears crying, you know, at like
that tears funny laugh you get when somebody's telling the
truth that feels real to you.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, like it that it hit close to home, you know,
for your dad and people.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, of that generation of like they got it, you know,
like why he would and I don't get it to
this day. I don't get it. Why this impulse to
self destruction? You know my father absolutely so he wasn't
a drug addict, but he self destructed with like he
was a surgeon who treated people for diabetes and heart
disease and preventable illnesses, and he died at fifty eight
(34:17):
of diabetes and heart disease, right like, and it just
you know, just constantly anything he could do to undermine
his own health. Yeah, and you every time I am
in conversation with other black gen X people, we talk
about this and that they've seen in their parents or
someone in their family. I don't understand it. I don't
(34:37):
understand why it went to self destruction. But I also
want you know, from someone from your generation, is this
at all legible to you? Do you have any idea
what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1 (34:47):
I Mean, it feels ridiculous to say this because it's
so low a stakes and what we've talked about, but
it's like nobody wants to be the black guy at
a white like dance party in the middle of the circle.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
You know what I mean, in the middle of the circle.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
In the middle of everyone looking on you and displaying
that way, Like there's something about that sort of experience,
whether it's you're performing on stage where in front of
means of people, whether it's you're a like a doctor
like your father was, there's something about finding success and
realizing that that success means that you have to exist
(35:23):
in a society that your whole life has never wanted you,
still doesn't really want you. Now it's being made to
accept you, and like facing a choice you even sort
of fully embrace that, you lean in and you end
up changing yourself, probably in ways that are so small
(35:43):
right that you don't even necessarily notice them, like to
probably in your everyday life, you're going about it and
you're like, I'm doing what I've always done, doing the
stuff that has gotten me to this place. But you
are probably on some level changing yourself in these small
ways that maybe don't hurt you in the moment, but
harm you as time goes on, and it becomes sort
of like a stress fracture where like you're just like, oh,
(36:06):
I can't, I can't keep doing this, I can't. Yeah,
like you need to get into therapy.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
You have found it's a different colleague for you. It's
because and so that is the crime of being Richard
Pryor is those small changes to yourself that ultimately become
a fracture.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Right, And it's one of those things for him too,
where probably the more he leaned into, like the Richard
Pryor Act, the stuff that had first had seen maybe
too risky to do in front of white people. Like
if you lean back into the thing that brought you
peace or brought you some fulfillment. What worked in the
late sixties to sort of like get rid of your
(36:49):
white fans and to connect with black people. By the
time of the eighties and the seventies is something that
white people are eager to lappen. They want to be
in on the joke.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
You want to be on the joke. And you got
you know, enough money to have a million dollar a
year drug problem, right you Right, you might be losing
track of who you are period.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
There's no way you could also be be who you
uh man?
Speaker 2 (37:15):
So you know, I mean and from here it's interesting
because like not long after that, so this is nineteen
eighty two, by like I think it was like in
the mid eighties. We now know he got diagnosed with MS.
You know, do you know the film Harlem Knights.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that is a wild film.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
It is a wild film. I love this. This is
Eddie Murphy's first directing opportunity. This is like an all
star cast of black comedians in the eighties. You know,
Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Della Reese, Red Fox, like all
of these legends get together make a kind of slapstick
comedy about like being gangsters in Harlem. It's a total
(37:54):
bomb in the box office, but it is a cult
classic amongst black people. And Richard Pryor in it is
kind of not the funny one. Yeah, you know, he
kind of plays it straight. And Eddie Murphy has said
in public that like he was frustrated by that in
the filming.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Oh, Eddie was frustrated. Yeah, He's like, oh, I want
you to be the Richard pry.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Was my legend, you know, and he blamed like the
film not you know, when it didn't get the kind
of critical response that it was supposed to get. He's
like part of it. He's riffing on why. One of
the things is like I thought me and Richard were
going to be on set yucking it up, figuring things out,
but Richard was just kind of clocking it in. And
then Eddie says, like I later discovered like he had
(38:41):
just been diagnosed with MS oh, and we didn't know that,
but he knew that, and so he was his decline
was beginning, and so you know, he continued to be
in the culture for a bit, but I you know,
I don't remember when his last film was, but he
starts to fade away, and it's just a tragedy, you know,
(39:02):
because I just think he would have still been such.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
A great because you were saying he was born in
nineteen forty, yeah, so he's only five years older than
George W.
Speaker 9 (39:14):
Bush.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah. Or take another example, Steve Martin right old and
Steve Martin who has got a hit TV show right now, right,
you know, and it's still actively making things. I think
Richard Pryor would still be making things, and I wonder
what he'd be doing, you know, to push us, you know,
the kind of truths he'd be telling, yeah that we
(39:36):
don't get, you know, And that is also a little
bit of the tragedy for me of that generation. There's
so many of them, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Yeah, who burn out so young out, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
Wow, thank you for processing this with me.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Of course, of course it's interesting because where we're going
next is I think kind of related. It speaks to
a lot of similar ideas that we've talked to you today,
but I think through a very different lens. Okay, and
so I'm gonna play a couple of clips for you,
and I'm curious if you know who we're going to
do it.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Let's do it. I'm ready, all right.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
So this first one is from two thousand and three.
Speaker 10 (40:14):
I don't necessarily think it's specific to England. I think
everywhere there's going to be people that are talented that
can really rhyme or can really make a bait. And
then not necessarily in the forefront of the music industry,
you know, it's just about who the record company is
gonna put out. You know, there's a lot of talented
people everywhere.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Do you have any idea who this might be?
Speaker 2 (40:35):
I recognize the voice that I'm trying to like put
the person with it, but I'm like, I know that person.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
All right. Well, we have another one, this time a
couple of years later, from two thousand and sixty when
I go on stage.
Speaker 10 (40:48):
I like stress as slutty as possible because it makes
me dance, but for some reason. But I do it
because I'm an assertive young woman and I'm not trying
to sell records base on the way I look, and
that's why I do it. Apart from the fact that
I like dressing like that.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
I like her.
Speaker 9 (41:03):
I like you.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yes, I don't know now, I've I've actually lost my way.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Listen, what you are having now is the experience that
meals of people around the world had when they first
heard her, which was I don't know who visits, but
I love this woman and I want to hear more.
I'll play one more clear.
Speaker 10 (41:19):
I'm lucky that I can sing songs that might be
happy that I wrote about stuff that, you know. I'm
lucky that I get to give myself therapy every day
by singing songs about a really tough time in my life.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Not everyone can do that. Everyone's go and talk about
other people.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
I'm very lucky. Yeah, yeah, all right, So don't tell
me now to be But do you feel like you
have an idea?
Speaker 2 (41:38):
I don't it.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Wow, all right, well we have to wait and see.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
But I am very excited to find out. Big Lives
is a production of BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries. It's
hosted by me Kai writ and Emmanuel Jochi from BBC Studios.
Our producer is Emma Weatherell. Our archi producer is Samira Chowdry.
The sound designer is Melvin Rickaby, Executive producer is Annie Brown,
(42:02):
Production coordinator is Galen Davis Connelly, and production manager is
Mabel Finnegan right from push Industries. Our executive producer is
Constanza Gayato, producer Daphne Chen, legal advisor Jake Flanagan, and
marketing by Morgan Ratner and Jordan McMillen. Get AD free
(42:26):
episodes of Big Lives by subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Subscribers
also get ad free episodes of all Pushkin shows, full
audio books, series binges to shows like Deep Cover and Revision,
His History and more. Sign up on the Big Live
Show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
slash Plus. Thanks for your support.
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