Richard Pryor: The Story We Got Wrong | From Big Lives

Summary

Revisionist History: “Richard Pryor: The Story We Got Wrong” | From Big Lives

Podcast: Revisionist History (Pushkin Industries)
Host: Malcolm Gladwell
Guest Podcast Previewed: Big Lives (Kai Wright & Emmanuel Joosse)
Date: April 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Revisionist History takes a deep dive into the misunderstood legacy of Richard Pryor, one of the most iconic and influential comedians of all time. Malcolm Gladwell introduces a preview of "Big Lives," a podcast hosted by Kai Wright and Emmanuel Joosse, which uses BBC’s vast audio archive to resurrect the complex stories of cultural trailblazers. The episode refuses the simplified narrative of Pryor as a mere comedic genius, instead unpacking his radical honesty, the trauma and social obstacles he faced, his battles with fame and self-destruction, and his disruptive influence on American popular culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Caricature vs. the Reality of Richard Pryor

• Initial Impressions:
  • Emmanuel and Kai discuss how Pryor is often remembered as both hilariously funny and a personal "hot mess" ([05:00–05:14]).
  • Quote:
    • “I feel like the image that was fed to me is of this comedian who's really funny…” – Emmanuel Joosse ([05:00])
    • “But kind of just kind of like a hot mess.” – Kai Wright ([05:10])
• The Core of Pryor: Radical Honesty
  • Pryor’s daughter Raine describes his relentless truth-telling, onstage and off ([07:32]).
  • Quote:
    • "There was always truth. He didn't make up things just to get a laugh… you always knew you were gonna get Richard, if that makes sense." – Raine Pryor ([07:32])

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2. Origins: Trauma and Survival in Peoria

• Childhood in a Brothel:
  • Born in 1940 in Peoria, Illinois, Pryor was raised by his grandmother “Mama” in a brothel, with a sex worker mother and a pimp/boxer father ([12:17–12:39]).
  • Quote:
    • "Mama was proud of herself for having this whorehouse because it's the one thing that put food on the table." – Raine Pryor ([12:58])
• Sexual Abuse and Social Stigma:
  • Pryor was sexually abused as a child; at 14, he was expelled from school when it was discovered he lived in a brothel ([13:26–13:56]).
  • Sanctuary and mentorship found at a Peoria community center drama program ([13:56–14:26]).

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3. Becoming Richard Pryor: From Ed Sullivan to Epiphany

• Early Stand-Up: Emulating Bill Cosby
  • Pryor initially modeled himself after Bill Cosby, catering to white audiences with sanitized, race-neutral comedy ([16:20–16:44]).
  • Paul Mooney:
    • "[Richard] modeled his career after Bill Cosby… That allowed him to be accepted by white audiences." ([16:37])
• Turning Point: Rejecting the “Safe” Path
  • A pivotal meltdown in 1967 at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas leads Pryor to reject the “clean” Cosby path; he walks offstage, destroying his mainstream career momentarily ([18:47–19:38]).
  • Quote:
    • "Before he tells a single joke, the very first thing he does is blurts out, what the fuck am I doing here?" – Kai Wright ([18:47])
• Rebirth in the Bay Area:
  • Immersed in the Black Power movement, Pryor’s comedy becomes raw, honest, and directly confrontational ([19:39–20:47]).

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4. Disruptive Honesty: Race, Sexuality, and the Limits of Expression

• Raw Material: "Craps" and Cultural Impact
  • Albums like “Craps” (1971) and “That Nigger’s Crazy” establish Pryor’s revolutionary style ([20:48–24:24]).
  • Openly discusses taboo topics, including male bisexuality/homosexuality—stunning and normalizing for audiences ([21:20–23:41]).
  • Quote:
    • "When I heard this… 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." – Kai Wright ([22:40])
• Tension at the Intersection of Race and Gay Rights
  • Pryor headline’s a 1977 Hollywood Bowl gay rights fundraiser. After initial jokes, he angrily confronts the mostly white, gay audience over their racism, calling out hypocrisy ([25:30–28:47]).
  • Quote:
    • "How can faggots be racist?" – Richard Pryor ([27:32])
    • "He is naming something… the way white gay men will be there for their rights, but not… the rights of black gay people." – Kai Wright ([28:50])

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5. Negotiating Success in White Spaces: Alienation and Its Costs

• “The Crime of Being Richard Pryor”: Navigating White Fame
  • Pryor’s struggle to reconcile access to mainstream (white) spaces with their persistent racism ([30:04–31:22]).
  • The psychological toll of being celebrated yet inherently othered—mirrored in the experiences of other Black trailblazers ([32:07–33:06]).
  • Generational reflections on the “first one in the room” syndrome ([32:39–33:44]).
• Comparison to Dave Chappelle: Repeating Patterns of Burnout & Alienation
  • Parallels between Pryor’s struggle and Dave Chappelle’s abrupt exit from mainstream success ([34:05]).

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6. Descent into Self-Destruction

• The 1980 Fire:
  • Pryor’s addiction peaks in a 1980 suicidal incident: after a days-long cocaine binge, he sets himself on fire ([38:07–40:24]).
  • Quote:
    • “He was trying to deal with his guilt for the crime of being Richard Pryor… He pours [rum] over his head and he lights himself on fire.” – Kai Wright ([39:31])
    • "He told me straight out. I didn't. I didn't have an accident, baby. I tried to kill my… I wanted it to stop." – Raine Pryor ([41:29])
• Turning Pain into Art
  • Despite the trauma, Pryor channels this episode into his work (“Live on Sunset Strip,” 1982), transforming extreme self-destruction into communal catharsis ([42:08–43:34]).

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7. Legacy, Decline, and Unanswered Questions

• Multiple Sclerosis Diagnosis & Fade from Public View
  • Pryor is diagnosed with MS in the mid-80s, leading to gradual withdrawal from the spotlight ([46:54–48:01]).
• Reflections on Loss:
  • Pryor is contrasted with contemporaries who remain active, such as Steve Martin. His early “burnout” encapsulates a broader tragedy of a generation of Black pioneers ([48:52–49:26]).
  • Quote:
    • “I wonder what he'd be doing, you know, to push us, you know, what kind of truths he'd be telling that we don't get… the tragedy for me of that generation [is] there's so many of them… who burn out so young.” – Kai Wright ([49:00–49:27])

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8. Generational Conversations: The Cost of Performing Blackness

• Navigating Identity in White Spaces
  • Discussion of pressures on Black professionals to adapt or conform to white environments, and how these pressures—sometimes invisible—accumulate stress and pain ([44:29–46:10]).
  • Quote:
    • “There's something about finding success and realizing that that success means that you have to exist in a society that your whole life has never wanted you, still doesn't want you… you end up changing yourself… and it becomes sort of like a stress fracture.” – Emmanuel Joosse ([44:45])

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Honesty in Comedy:
  • “The most powerful thing a person can do is tell the truth in a room that isn't ready for it. Comedic legend Richard Pryor did just that.” – Malcolm Gladwell ([03:09])
• On being the "first" in white spaces:
  • “I watched my father… the first this and the first that… he was routinely in whites-only spaces. He really wanted to be in black spaces… and for all of them… what ends up happening… all of them start to self-destruct.” – Kai Wright ([31:04–32:06])
• On the pivotal Aladdin Hotel moment:
  • “What the fuck am I doing here?” – Richard Pryor, Acted by Kai Wright ([18:47])
• On radical rawness in Pryor’s work:
  • “You can't talk about fucking in America, right? People say, you dirty, but if you talk about killing somebody, that's cool. I don't understand it myself I'd rather come.” – Richard Pryor ([21:20])
• On the self-destructive finale:
  • “He pours it over his head and he lights himself on fire. A fireball erupts, engulfs his body.” – Kai Wright ([39:31])
• On generational trauma and alienation:
  • “Is this something that, like, your generation talks about... being ‘the first’... do you have this?” – Kai Wright ([32:39])
  • “Nobody wants to be the black guy… in the middle of the circle, you know what I mean?” – Emmanuel Joosse ([44:29–44:45])

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [05:00–07:55] — Dismantling the caricature: Truth and self-destruction
• [12:08–13:56] — Pryor’s traumatic childhood in Peoria
• [16:20–18:47] — Ed Sullivan years and Aladdin Hotel epiphany
• [20:47–24:21] — Raw truth, sexual taboos, and comedy as confession
• [25:30–28:47] — Hollywood Bowl confrontation, race vs. sexuality intersection
• [38:07–42:08] — 1980 fire and attempted suicide: origins, aftermath
• [43:34–46:52] — Therapy, self-examination, and generational fallout
• [46:54–49:00] — Decline, Harlem Nights, legacy, and “burnout” tragedy

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Summary & Takeaways

This preview episode is a compelling meditation on the dangers and necessity of radical honesty for Black artists in America—using Richard Pryor as a prism. It charts Pryor’s evolution from squeaky-clean mimicry for white mainstream consumption to world-altering, unvarnished truth-telling with the power to heal and to wound, including himself. The episode explores how Pryor's childhood trauma, fraught navigation of racial boundaries in entertainment, and willingness to address taboo topics made him a generational icon and a tragic figure.

It closes reflecting on the generational echoes of these tensions among Black professionals, with Emmanuel and Kai speculating on how these unresolved stresses continue to shape Black identity today.

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Thematic Coda

Richard Pryor’s legacy is not just a testament to comedic genius, but a cautionary tale about the costs of telling the truth in a world determined not to hear it—and the personal, cultural, and generational fractures that can result.

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To hear more, listen to full episodes of Big Lives wherever you get podcasts.

Transcript

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[Kai Wright]

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[Kai Wright]

Pushkin

[Malcolm Gladwell]

the most powerful thing a person can do is tell the truth in a room that isn't ready for it. Comedic legend Richard Pryor did just that. We talk a lot on revisionist history about moments that get misrepresented. Richard Pryor had many of those moments. He's called one of the greatest comedians who ever lived, as if what he was doing was simply funny. But it was more than that. It was a confession. It was a man standing on a stage and saying things that people were not prepared to reckon with. About race, about pain, about desire. About what it costs to be honest in a dishonest world. Today, I'm sharing a preview of a new podcast that re examines the icons we think we understand, including Richard Pryor. It's called Big Lives, hosted by journalists Kai Wright and Emmanuel Joosse. They dig into the BBC archives to explore the story behind the icons who shape our culture. Trailblazers like David Bowie, George Michael, Muhammad Ali, and Tina Turner to better understand how each legend set the stage for our contemporary cultural landscape. Their episode on Richard Pryor refuses the easy version of the story. Kai and Emanuel trace Pryor's life from a childhood in a Peoria brothel to his complex rise to fame, and they don't flinch from any of it. The the racism he survived, the self destruction, the volcanic honesty that cost him everything. Here's a preview if you like what you hear. Find more episodes of Big Lives wherever you get podcasts

[Kai Wright]

just to let you know there's discriminatory language and content in this episode. Okay, Emmanuel?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yes, Kai?

[Kai Wright]

What is the first image that comes to mind? First sort of caricature, even, that you have when I bring up Richard Pryor?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Oh man. Can I just say, I feel like the image that was fed to me is of this comedian who's really funny

[Kai Wright]

but kind of just kind of like a hot mess.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah.

[Kai Wright]

Well, the thing is, though, Emmanuel, you're not wrong. I snorted cocaine for about 15 years with my dumb ass. I started off snorting little tiny pinches, said I know I ain't gonna get hooked. I don't know. Coke, you can't get hooked. My friends have been snorting 15 years. They ain't hooked. That's why I was snorting. Little teeny, didn't even make noise. Coke etiquette. Jack,

[Malcolm Gladwell]

pass the album, please.

[Kai Wright]

No more for me. 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. From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries, this is Big Lives. I'm Kai Wright.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

I'm Emmanuel Joci.

[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. 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 a 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, the basics of Richard Pryor. If you don't know who he is, he is a genre defining comedian. Just if you talk to almost any comedian today, certainly of his era, they would say he's the goat. You know, 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Wait, what?

[Kai Wright]

Yeah. Okay, so as I've been rooting around in the archive for Richard Pryor, there's this clip I found of his daughter, raine Prior, in 2006. So it's right after he died, they did a documentary about his life and she said this interesting thing. Listen to this.

[Raine Pryor]

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 gonna get personally, but you always knew you were gonna get Richard, if that makes sense. You're always gonna get the man, whether messed up or not. And he would tell you he was messed up.

[Kai Wright]

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 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Let's do it.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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[Kai Wright]

Welcome back. This is Big Lives, and we are talking about Richard Pryor. Okay, so Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor iii.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

It's always those sorts of names that someone is like, right, we're gonna reproduce this and put it on a child. Three times.

[Kai Wright]

Three times. Three times.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

The third.

[Kai Wright]

I almost didn't take in the third part. Right. He had a life, a young life as complicated as his long name. Born in December 1940 in Peoria, Illinois, he grew up in a brothel.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Oh, okay.

[Kai Wright]

Like an actual brothel. His mother was a sex worker. His father was a pimp and a boxer.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Whoa.

[Kai Wright]

And his 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 Pryor, talking about mama in that 2006 documentary.

[Raine Pryor]

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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah. If you grew up in a brothel in that way, and it's just like, it sounds like it's your family business.

[Kai Wright]

Yeah. And family home.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

That's your whole worldview. Yeah.

[Kai Wright]

And not surprisingly, you know, he was sexually abused as a child. If you grew up in that environment and then at age 14, gets thrown out of school because they discover he lives in a brothel.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Wait.

[Kai Wright]

Yes, sir.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

So he basically came into school, and they're like, oh, we discovered that you are living in a brothel, which is potentially, like, unsafe situation, and we're just gonna kick you out.

[Kai Wright]

That's right. You need help. Go. So, you know.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Okay.

[Kai Wright]

So, yeah, he gets kicked out of school. 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 coaching him and giving him opportunities to perform, and he starts heading down this road. So 1963, he moves to New York City with $10 in his pocket.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Classic. Yeah.

[Kai Wright]

Dollar and 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 60s.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

I don't know. Mostly just, like, everywhere you walk, there's, like, Bob Dylan singing the Sun.

[Kai Wright]

Bob. That's right. It's this intimate place. And, you know, Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Miles Davis, like, John Coltrane, all these people are performing in these little clubs. The Village Gate is, like, one of the. So Richard Pryor gets booked at the Village Gate on one of his first nights. He's opening for Nina Simone. 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

That is such a specific description that, of course. Nina Simone nervous.

[Kai Wright]

Right, right. That the man shook like he had malaria. So she says to get. 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Wow. She, like, midwifed him into being, basically.

[Kai Wright]

That's right. Yes. Nina Simone midwifed 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-60s. Bill Cosby is the certainly the reigning black celebrity, but probably, like, one 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?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Like, right, right, right, right, right. About children and somebody spilling something on a rug. Yes.

[Kai Wright]

And so Richard Pryor thinks this is comedy, and so I'm gonna do that. There's this clip I found from his, like, closest collaborator in comedy, Paul Mooney.

[Public Ad Narrator]

He sort of modeled his career after

[Kai Wright]

Bill Cosby in the early stages, and

[Malcolm Gladwell]

that allowed him to.

[Kai Wright]

To be accepted by white audiences with a tone of voice.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

If you didn't notice who you were

[Public Ad Narrator]

watching, you might have mistaken him for Bill Cosby.

[Kai Wright]

You can't get a cab in New York City, right? Especially when it rains. All the cabs are owned by one company. Off duty, right? Huh. 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 60s and becomes known as, like, a rising star as a consequence. You know, this is the new Bill Cosby.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Mm.

[Kai Wright]

But that is not gonna hold for a man who grew up in a brothel, right?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Because what I know of Bill Cosby's comedies is it's clean for the most part. It's super clean. And I'm also not really about race ever.

[Kai Wright]

It's not.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

No, Distinctively not about race.

[Kai Wright]

Gets on with white people. And so Richard Pryor is trying to get on with white people, okay? So it's 1967. 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? Sold out audience. And he's standing backstage, kind of weirdly reluctant to get on stage, looking out at the audience, 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 I doing? And he has what? He describes that moment as 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 fuck am I doing here?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Wait, what?

[Kai Wright]

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 goes 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. So he goes out on stage and is, like. Basically says the thing he's thinking, which

[Kai Wright]

is Has a meltdown.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Where the fuck am I here? And then he recovers and is like, okay, let me get back to the clean joke. Sorry, folks. And then he's like, actually, this sucks. I'm just gonna go.

[Kai Wright]

I'm Just gonna go and 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 off the stage. It's like a whole mess of a thing.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

That's my nightmare.

[Kai Wright]

And it's the disaster that you think, right? Like, his agents, like, you'll never work again. 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, you know, this is the 60s, right? And he starts getting involved in the sort of Bay Area calendar culture. 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? And so he begins this process, and he says, like, he says later, like, that he. 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah.

[Kai Wright]

So he starts making albums. 1971, his second album. It's called Craps, right? Like, after the Dice Game. And it's a wildly profane album. And I wanna 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 25, 30 seconds of this is what I want you to pay attention to, but hear it all. And yes, dear listener, this is the clip with the discriminatory language and context.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

I was gonna say this is the stuff you needed the warning for, so be ready.

[Kai Wright]

All right, so here's Richard Pryor, 1971. You know, like, you can't talk about fucking in America, right? People say, you dirty, but if you talk about killing somebody, that's cool. I don't understand it myself I'd rather come.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Oh, wow.

[Kai Wright]

I've had money Never felt as good as I felt when I come so nothing matter but when you get in the nut especially if it's a girl. Be signifying doing your act. I'm like, I knew, you know, they own and choking. I was the only dude in the neighborhood. Would this faggot Though a lot of dudes don't play that, you know, Cuz in the daytime, I don't any faggot man at night, you catch, Right? But it's embarrassing. Cause I meant to do like 10 years later. Hi, Rich. So, man, this is 1971 that he does this joke, right?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Okay.

[Kai Wright]

When I heard this for the first. Obviously not in 1971, 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, you know, this language and this framework, but he's like saying, you know, we all do it. Like people have sex. Men have sex with each other, Right?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right.

[Kai Wright]

Why do y' all act like you don't do it? And it just blew my mind. Like I just have an emotional memory of hearing it, you know, and being like, what?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Well, yeah. Cause it's interesting because the way he says it is very matter of factly, actually, the way the audience reacts is a laugh that also is normalizing.

[Kai Wright]

That's right. That's like, oh, you know, you told the truth. You know, we all know, like, we're all a little gay, you know, 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Wow.

[Kai Wright]

And so a couple 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. 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 in that same year that was a big hit. His next album, which was titled that Nigger's Crazy, okay?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Like, that was like, he's leaning in. He's leaning in.

[Kai Wright]

Like, that's a huge hit. 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 1977, and he's a superstar by this point, right? And he's booked as the headliner for a show at the Hollywood bowl in Los Angele, 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 movement.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right, right, right, right. They're able to command venues like the Hollywood Ball.

[Kai Wright]

Exactly. And what goes along with a proper civil rights movement is like a more proper kind of conversation. Yes, right. About who you are, you know? And so the event happens, and it's packed. There's 17,000 people there, mostly gay men. Most of the other acts are super, like, it's got a human rights framework.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right, yeah.

[Kai Wright]

To it. And so people are 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's. You know. And the first thing he says is, I came here for human rights. What I found out is it's really about not getting caught with a dick in your mouth.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

So. So not the proper tailored statesman that they probably wanted for his benefit.

[Kai Wright]

Right. What about sex, y'? All? And now what we're here talking about, but the crowd responds exactly as you did. They love it. You know, like, this is now classic Richard Pryor. That's right. Shake it. You know, and so he goes on to tell gay. A 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? Wilbur Harp in 1952 is the first. Man, he sucked.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Oh, not that poor man. I hope he was out. That's all I have to say.

[Kai Wright]

And, you know, and he describes the experience as beautiful. And he says, you know, everybody was sucking Harp's dick. I was the only one to bring him roses. So it's the same sort of setup as that guy.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right, right, right. It's the same sort of thing.

[Kai Wright]

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. Oh, 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. He witnessed the white production staff be dismissive of them 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 needed.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Naturally, yeah.

[Kai Wright]

And he was just in livid about this. And so he tells these averse jokes. The audience is with him. They're all in his palm. They're laughing and enjoying it. And then he stops and says, how can faggots be racist? And he proceeds. And that's a quote. He uses that language and proceeds to light into them for being hypocrites. So then he just lays into them for essentially. For being hypocrites, 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? So like, he's like, where were you during Watts? You know, and where are you for black symbols, civil rights? And you know, it gets pretty bad. And he, you know, he starts feeling himself in it, you know. Cause he's mad and he says, I hope you all get arrested when you leave here because it's illegal to be gay. Like, sodomy is illegal. And that's just a really nasty thing to say to somebody.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah.

[Kai Wright]

You know.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kai Wright]

And so they're booing him and heckling him and all of that. And finally he just turns around, puts his ass in the air and says, kiss my happy, rich ass and walks off stairs stage.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Kiss my happy, rich black man. Us.

[Kai Wright]

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 a truth that we are still arguing about, like in the gay community. He is naming something, you know, that we are still discussing the way white gay men will be there for their rights, but not for anything else, including for the rights of black gay people.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

It's also just 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 in that era probably could be like, oh, you know, look at them. They're doing this thing. And he's refusing to basically keep it in that place. He's like, no, let's talk about what we're really here to talk about.

[Kai Wright]

Well, he can't. He's incapable.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Okay, so what is going on for him? Like, is he just rejecting just like the whiteness of it all one more time?

[Kai Wright]

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 people. Right. So, like, here he is, you know, he has found this success in these mainstream white spaces.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right.

[Kai Wright]

But these mainstream white spaces that are now letting black people into them.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah.

[Kai Wright]

Are not. They haven't stopped being racist, you know, like.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right, right.

[Kai Wright]

As we see at the Hollywood boat. Right. Like, they're still racist spaces.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

They're still racist as hell. 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 decades removed from sort of like the dance, black man dance kind of nature of like minstrel shows and people performing for white people in a way that was totally like, black people were always the joke.

[Kai Wright]

Were 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 in the way that I want.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right.

[Kai Wright]

You know, but these white spaces remain racist, 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 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right.

[Kai Wright]

You know, that's where he preferred to be. 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 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 of my, like, if you talk to a black Gen Xer, 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?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

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'm meeting is the first person to do this or is exceptional in kind of some way by virtue of the fact we're in this room or this place. But I don't know, I feel like the stakes of it are way more real for Gen Xers or people who came before your designs.

[Kai Wright]

Yeah. You know? Cause part of why 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 this stage being so famous that they would book him for this, even though he obviously was not a fit, you know, 100%.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

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, kind of had to reshape himself in front of black audiences.

[Kai Wright]

In front of black audiences. And then he was okay, right?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

And then he 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 many years. That's right.

[Kai Wright]

You know what? That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Where 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 skit show that aired in like the early 2000s. And he got famous for, like, doing these very, like, avant garde, risky, very race focused, very honest jokes that black people loved. And then eventually he had to stop because it was 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?

[Kai Wright]

Right?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

And in a white gaze.

[Kai Wright]

And, you know, maybe the comparison is apt as well, because, like, I think, you know, 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 and I'm gonna tell you about that after a break.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Okay?

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[Kai Wright]

Welcome back. This is big Lives. We are talking about Richard Pryor and we are now going to talk about his epic self destruction.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Oh boy.

[Kai Wright]

All right, so June of 1980. 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 know the movie Blazing Saddles?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah, I didn't know he co wrote that.

[Kai Wright]

Yes sir. That's Richard Pryor. Wow. Okay, 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Wow.

[Kai Wright]

And so June of 1980s, he's like on a days long binge of freebase and 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, you know, he's just really, really high. And you know, 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 means.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

The crime of being Richard Pryor.

[Kai Wright]

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 151 proof rum that I guess he's drinking while he's on this day's lounge. He pours it over his head and he lights himself on fire. A fireball erupts, engulfs his body.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Oh my God.

[Kai Wright]

Because the freebase cocaine also has these volatile substances in it.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Oh wow.

[Kai Wright]

You flames cover more than half his body. He runs out of the mansion, past his security, out the gates, runs down the street, a streaking ball of fire.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Wow.

[Kai Wright]

I mean it's awful.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

That's terrible.

[Kai Wright]

It's horrific. And you know, he somehow survives this.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

That was gonna be my next question. So he survives that, but probably with like horrendous burns.

[Kai Wright]

Horrendous burns. He has six weeks of recovery. I want to play some of that documentary from 2006 again where people in his life try to make sense of this moment. And so you're going to hear from his daughter again and his son now and from his like closest collaborator in comedy, Paul Mooney. So here's that. He wanted to end his life. Sometimes you get To a point where you can't take anymore and you don't know how to get a way out of it, or, you know, you don't see a way out. And a lot of times you take matters into your own hands, saying, this is the only option I have. Richard was trying to kill himself. Definitely. Definitely.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

What makes you say that?

[Kai Wright]

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.

[Raine Pryor]

He told me straight out. I didn't. I didn't have an accident, baby. I tried to kill my. I wanted it to stop. He just couldn't take it.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

When you say couldn't take it, could you explain what you were talking about?

[Raine Pryor]

Well, Mama had passed away. You know, Mama had passed away. The thing that was his rock, his foundation. Now what? Who's gonna tell you off? Nobody in your life wants to tell you off. Why? Because you're rich or Pryor?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah, that makes sense, because when you told me the way in which he did it, I'm like, oh, this is. That is a suicidal act.

[Kai Wright]

Yeah. Yeah. But at the time, who knew? You know, like, it was, like, also just the act of a deranged drug addict.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right, right.

[Kai Wright]

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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah.

[Kai Wright]

And I can imagine Mama, you know, his grandmother, who raised him in a brothel was probably a lot of, like, what made the balance. Right.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right. It's like he has this grounding presence in his life. Yeah. I could totally see a world in which his grandma is this grounding presence that reminds him where he comes from, that connects him to his childhood in that way.

[Kai Wright]

Yeah. You know, so it's a horrible event, but classic Richard Pryor, he turns this into comedy. When he comes back from this in 1982, he makes a comedy film, Richard Pryor, live on Sunset Strip. It's his next concert film, and I would say it was my introduction to Richard Pryor. I remember watching that with my family. And he tells the story of this moment as this long, drawn out bit that becomes one of his most famous bits. And I just remember watching my family, my father particularly, just tears. Crying, you know, like that. Tears. Funny laugh you get when somebody's telling the truth. That feels real to you.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah, like that. It hit close to home, actually, for your dad and for others. Other people.

[Kai Wright]

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, 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 58 of diabetes and heart disease. Right, right. And it just, you know, just constantly, anything he could do to undermine his own health.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah.

[Kai Wright]

And you. Every time I am in conversation with other black Gen X people, we talk about this that they've seen in their parents or someone in their family. I don't understand it, I don't 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?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

I mean, it feels ridiculous to say this because it's so lower stakes than 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, you know what I mean?

[Kai Wright]

In the middle of the circle.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

In the middle of the circle 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 in front of millions 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 in a society that your whole life has never wanted you, still doesn't really want you, now is being made to accept you and like facing a choice, you either sort of fully embrace it, you lean in and you end up changing yourself probably in ways that are so small. Right. But 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, I can't, I can't keep doing this, I can't.

[Kai Wright]

Yeah, Emmanuel, you need to get into therapy. This is what you have found. This is a different calling for you. And so that is the crime of being Richard Pryor is those small changes to yourself that ultimately become a fracture.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

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 at first had seemed 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 a sense of fulfillment, what worked in the late 60s to sort of like get rid of your white fans and to connect with black people by the time of the 80s and the 70s is something that white people are eager to lap in. They want to be in on the joke.

[Kai Wright]

They want to be in on the joke. And you got, you know, enough money to have a million dollar a year drug problem.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right.

[Kai Wright]

You know, you might be losing track of who you are, period.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

100%. There's no way you could possibly be who you are.

[Kai Wright]

Yeah, man. So, you know, I mean, and from here it's interesting cause like, not long after that. So this is 1982 by like, I think it was like in the mid-80s. We now know he got diagnosed with Ms. You know. Do you know the film Harlem Nights?

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Harlem Nights. That is a wild film.

[Kai Wright]

It is a wild film. I love this. This is Eddie Murphy's first directing opportunity. This is like a all star cast of black comedians in the 80s. You know, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Della Reese, Redd Fox. Like all of these legends get together, make a kind of slapstick comedy about, like, being gangsters in Harlem. It's a total bomb in the box office, but 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Oh, like, Eddie was frustrated by it. He's like, oh, I want you to be the Richard Pryor. I grew up with him.

[Kai Wright]

He's 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 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 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, because I just think he would have still been such a great.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Cause you're saying he was born in 1940.

[Kai Wright]

Yeah.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

So he's only five years older than George W. Bush.

[Kai Wright]

Yeah. Or take another example, Steve Martin.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Right.

[Kai Wright]

He's five years older than Steve Martin, who has got a hit TV show right now. Right. You know, and is 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, what kind of truths he'd be telling that we 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah. Who burn out so young.

[Kai Wright]

Burnt out, you know.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah. Wow.

[Kai Wright]

Thank you for processing this with me.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

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 talked to today, but. But I think through a very different lens.

[Kai Wright]

Okay.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

And so I'm gonna play a couple clips for you, and I'm curious if, you know, who we're gonna talk about.

[Kai Wright]

Let's do it. I'm ready.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

All right, so this first One is from 2003.

[Raine Pryor]

I don't necessarily think it's specific to England. I think everywhere there's gonna be people that are talented, that can really rhyme or can really make a beat, 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.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Do you have any idea who this might be?

[Kai Wright]

I recognize the voice, and I'm trying to, like, put the person with it, but I'm like, I know that person.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Oh, all right. Well, we have another one, this time a couple years later from 2006.

[Raine Pryor]

I mean, when I go on stage, I like to dress as slutty as possible because it makes me dance better for some reason. But I do it because I'm an assertive young woman, and I'm not trying to sell records based on the way I look. And that's why I do it. Apart from the fact that I like dressing like a star.

[Kai Wright]

I like her. I like her, whoever she is. I don't know. Now I've actually lost my way.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Listen, what you are having right now is the experience that millions of people around the world had when they first heard her, which was. I don't know who this is, but I love this woman and I want to hear more. I'll play one more clip.

[Raine Pryor]

I'm lucky that I can sing songs that made me 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. Not everyone can do that. Everyone's got to go and talk about other people, you know. I'm very lucky.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Yeah. Yeah. All right, so don't tell me now after these, but do you feel like you have an idea?

[Kai Wright]

I don't.

[Emmanuel Joosse]

Wow. All right, well, we'll have to wait

[Kai Wright]

and see, 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 Wright and Emmanuel Jochi from BBC Studios. Our producer is Emma Wetherill. Our archive producer is Samira Chowdhury. The sound designer is Melvin Rickaby, Executive producer is Annie Brown, production coordinator is Galen Davis Connolly and production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright from Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer is Constanza Gallato, Producer, Daphne Chen Legal Advice Jake Flanagan and marketing by Morgan ratner and Jordan McMillan.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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