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

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

Richard Pryor redefined comedy by telling the truth, even when it scorched him. And today, we’re sharing a preview of a new podcast, Big Lives, and a special episode about Pryor. Every week on Big Lives, hosts Kai Wright and Emmanuel Dzotsi dig into the BBC archive to explore the story behind the icons who shape our culture—trailblazers like David Bowie, George Michael, Muhammed Ali, and Tina Turner—and better understand how each legend set the stage for our contemporary cultural landscape. In this preview, Kai and Emmanuel look at how Richard Pryor rose from a Peoria, Illinois brothel to become a comedic great, only to then wrestle with racism, fame, desire, and self‑destruction. If you like what you hear, find more episodes of Big Lives wherever you get podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm C. Fishman from Orbit Media, and I want to tell you about our new series, Lives of Crime, the most intimate stories imaginable of life as an outlaw, because they're told by the outlaws themselves. Where is this day going to end? Will I be in prison or will I make a million dollars? I would go to a Chipotle and meet up to get $20,000 in cash. I put the shotgun right behind his ear. He stiffens up, and I pull the trigger. Lives of Crime from Orbit Media drops March 24th on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 journalist Kairite and Emmanuel Josie. 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 Emmanuel 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 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. Just let you know there's discriminatory language and content in this episode. Okay, Emmanuel. Yes, Kai? What is the first image that comes to mind, first sort of caricature even that you have when I bring up Richard Pryor?

Oh, man. Can I just say, I feel like the image that was fed to me is of this comedian who is really funny, but kind of just kind of like a hot mess. Yeah. Well, the thing is, though, Emmanuel, you're not wrong. I snorted a co-caver about 15 years with my dumb ass. I started off snorting little tiny pinches. I said, I know I ain't going to get hooked.

I don't know coke, you can't get hooked. My friends have been snorting 15 years. They ain't hooked. I was snowing little teeny. Didn't even make noise. Coke etiquette, Jackman. Pass the album, please. No more for me.

Six months later. I mean, that is like a meaningful part of what happened in Richard Pryor's life. I think there's more to that story, and particularly the questions around why. From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries, this is Big Lod. I'm Kai Wright. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. 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, looking to their complicated big lives. And we're using the treasure trove of the BBC archive to do that. There is over 100 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 to SNL. He first black person to make a million dollars. in a movie. Wait, what? Yeah.

Okay. So as I've been rooting around in the archive for Richard Pryor, there's this clip I found of his daughter, Rain Pryor, 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. 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 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 messed up or not. And he would tell you he was messed up. And, you know, like, that honesty thing, the telling the truth piece, 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. Let's do it.

I'm C. Fishman from Orbit Media. And I want to tell you about our new series, Lives of Crime, the most intimate stories imaginable of life as an outlaw. because they're told by the outlaws themselves. Where's this day going to end? Will I be in prison or will I make a million dollars? I would go to a Chipotle and meet up to get $20,000 in cash. I put the shotgun right behind his ear. He stiffens up and I pull the trigger.

Lives of Crime from Orbit Media drops March 24th on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. This is Big Lives. about Richard Pryor. Okay, so Richard Franklin, Lennox, Thomas Pryor, the third. It's always those sorts of names that someone is like, right, we're going to reproduce this and put it on a child three times. Three times, three times, the third.

I almost didn't take it 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. Oh, okay. Like an actual brothel. His mother was a sex worker. His father was a pimp and a boxer.

Whoa. 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. 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 and 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. Yeah, if you grew up in a brothel in that way and it's just like, it sounds like it's your family business. Yeah, and family home. That's your whole world view.

Yeah. And not surprisingly, you know, he, was sexually abused as a child of Europe in that environment. And then at age 14 gets thrown out of school because they discover he lives in a brothel. Wait. Yes, sir. So he basically came from 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 going to kick you out.

That's right. You need help. Go. So, you know. Okay. So, yeah, he gets kicked out of school. Right. 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. Classic. He's got a 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 60s. I don't know, mostly just like everywhere you walk, there's like Bob Dylan singing in some bar.

That's right. 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 big ones. 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 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. That is such a specific description that, of course, Nina Simone delivers. Right, right? that the man shook like he had from 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 walk him until 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. Wow. She like midwifed him into being, basically. 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 certainly the reigning black celebrity, but probably, like, one of the, you know, because he's on TV as a black man,

that's really unusual at this time. And he's, you know, Bill Cosby is like telling Cosby jokes, right? Right, right, right, right, right. About children and somebody Spilling something on a rug. 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. He sort of modeled his career after Bill Cosby in the early stages, and that allowed him to be accepted by white audiences. You could tone of voice if you didn't notice who you were watching. You might have mistaken him for Bill Cosby. 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? 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. 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.

Mm-hmm. But that is not going to hold for. for a man who grew up in a brothel. Right, because what I know of Bill Cosby's comedies is, is it's clean, for the most part. It's super clean. And I'm also not really about race ever. No, distinctly.

Distinctively not about race ever. He 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. 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, you know, 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, 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? Wait, what? 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. Wait, wait, wait. So he goes out on stage and is like, basically says the thing he's thinking, which is why 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 going to go. I'm just going to 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 get off the stage. It's, like, a whole mess of the thing. Oh, that's my nightmare.

That's my nightmare. And it's the disaster that you think, right? Right. Like, his agent's, like, you'll never work again. And, indeed, he, like, stops getting booked. You know, he's pushed into the small clubs in 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. 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? 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. 1971, his second album, it's called 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 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. in context. I was going to say, this is the stuff you needed the warning for. So be ready.

All right, so here's Richard Pryor in 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. Oh, wow. I've had money never felt as good I felt when I come. So nothing matter, but when you get in the nut, especially if it's a girl.

Niggas be signify in doing your act. I'm like, I knew, you know they only took it. I was the only dude in the neighborhood would fuck this faggot on. A lot of dudes don't play that shit. You know, because in the daytime, I don't fucking in the fagg, man. At night, you're kissing... But it's embarrassing because I meant to do like 10 years later. Hi, Rich.

So, man, this is 1971 that he does this joke, right? 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-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, right, right. 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? Well, yeah, because it's interesting because the way he says it is very matter of factly. Yeah. And actually, the way the audience reacts is a laugh that also is normalizing. That's right. That's like, oh, you know, you told the truth, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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. Wow. 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.

Crap's 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, 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?

That was like... Okay, he was meaning it. Yeah. 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 going to 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 Angeles that's a fundraiser for gay rights, right? Okay. 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, right? Right, right, right. They're able to command venues like the Hollywood Bowl.

Exactly. And what goes along with a proper civil rights movement is like a more proper kind of conversation. Yes. 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, right? Yeah. 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, 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. So not the proper. like tailored statement that they probably wanted for this benefit. 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? Right, right. This is 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.

What was the guy's name, Wilbur Harp? In 1952 is the first. man, he sucked. Oh, not that poor man. I hope he was out. That's all I have to say. I do too. And he describes the experience as beautiful.

And he says, you know, everybody was sucking a harp stick. I was the only one to bring him roses. Right. So it's the same sort of setup as that craps joke. Right, right, right. It's the same thing. 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. And 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. Naturally, yeah. And he was just in livid about this. And so he tells these reverse 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. Wow. So then he just lays into them for essentially for being hypocrites, you know, for not one. 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 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, Sodomies illegal. And that's just a real. really nasty thing to say to somebody. Yeah. You know. Yeah.

Yeah. 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 stage. Kiss my happy rich black man Oz. Yes. Which is still funny on top of everything else. This is, you know, obviously, it's a horrible, you know, I mean, the last.

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. Right. 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. 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-o white housewife of 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. Well, he can't. 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. 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. Right. But these mainstream white spaces that are now, letting black people into them, are not, they haven't stopped being racist, you know, like, right, right, as we see at the Hollywood Bowl, right? Like, there's still racist spaces. 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 like nature of like minstrel shows and people performing for white people in a way that was totally like black people were always the joke. We're always the joke. And so now are you the joke or are you laughing with me? 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 access to these white spaces in order to become rich and famous in the way that I want. Right. 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.

Right. Go fuck yourselves. Right. You know. But I will say, part of my interest in him is, like, 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 white's only spaces. He really wanted to be in black spaces. Right. 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? I think it's something, honestly, I think it's something in my generation when you talk to black as you 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 meaning is the first person to do this. 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 it are way more real for like Gen X's or like people who came before where you're just like, yeah, you know. And I, because part of what is the struggle to carry that, like what they do, how they carry 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.

being so famous that they would book him for this, even though he obviously was not a fit. A hundred percent. 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. In front of black audiences. And then he was okay. 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 many years later. You know what? That's exactly right. That's exactly right. 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 you got famous for like doing these very like avant-garde, risky, very race-focused, very honest, like 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? Right. And in a white gaze. 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 going to tell you about that after a break. Okay. I'm C. Fishman from Orbit Media. And I want to tell you about our new series, Live. of crime. The most intimate stories imaginable of life as an outlaw, because they're told by the outlaws themselves. Where is this day going to end? Will I be in prison or will I make a million dollars? I would go to a Chipotle and meet up to get $20,000 in cash. I put the shotgun right behind his ear. He stiffens up and I pull the trigger. Lives of crime from Orbit Media drops

It's March 24th on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. This is Big Lives. We are talking about Richard Pryor, and we are now going to talk about his epic self-destruction. Oh, boy. 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? Yeah, I didn't know he co-wrote. 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. Wow. And so June of 1980s, he's like on a days-long binge of free base 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 this. Yeah. 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. The crime of being Richard Pryor. 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 a guess he's drinking while he's on this day's longer. He pours it over his head, and he lights himself on fire. A fireball erupts, engulfs his body. Oh, my God. 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 the street a streaking

ball of fire. Wow. I mean, it's awful. That's terrible. It's horrific. And, you know, he somehow survives this. That was going to remember my next question. So he survives that, but probably with like horrendous burns.

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 and saying this is the only option I have. Richard was trying to kill himself. Definitely. Definitely. What makes you say that? 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. 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. When you say couldn't take it, could you explain what you were talking about?

Um, 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? going to tell you off. Nobody in your life wants to tell you off. Why? Because you're rich or pride. Yeah, 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. Yeah, yeah. But at the time, who knew, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also just the act of a deranged drug addict, right? 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, you know, his grandmother, who raised him in a brothel, was probably a lot of like what made the balance right. Right. It's like he has this grounding presence in his life. Yeah, I could totally see a one in which his grandma is this grounding presence that reminds

him where he comes from that connects him to his childhood in that way. Yeah. 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, 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, 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. Yeah, like it had it hit close to home, actually, for your dad and for others other people. 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 58 of diabetes and heart disease, right? Right. And it just, you know, just constantly anything he could do to undermine his own health. Yeah. And every time I am in conversation with other black genetic,

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 understand why it went to self-destruction. But I also, what, you know, from someone from your generation, is this at all legible to you? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? I mean, it feels ridiculous to say this because it's so lower stakes in 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?

In the middle of the circle. 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 the music of people, whether it's you're 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. It's 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? That you don't even necessarily notice them.

Like, 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 yeah Emmanuel you need to get into therapy this is what you have found it's a different calling for you it's because that is the crime of being Richard Pryor is those small changes to yourself

that ultimately become a fracture 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 seemed maybe too risky to do in front of white people. Like if you leaned 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 and they want to be in on the joke. They want to be on the And you got, you know, enough money to have a million dollar a year drug problem. Right, right. You might be losing track of who you are, period. 100%. There's no way you could possibly be who you are. Yeah.

Wow. Wow. Man. So, you know, I mean, and from here, it's interesting because, 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? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know how it's. That is a wild film.

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, Delorese, Red Fox, like all of these legends get together, make 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. Oh, like, Eddie was frustrated by it. He's like, oh, I want you to be the Richard Pryor I grew up with. 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 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 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, you know, I don't remember when his last film was. 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... Because you're saying he was born in 1940. Yeah. So he's only five years older than George W. Bush.

Yeah. Or take another example, Steve Martin. Right. He's five years older than 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. they'll 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.

Yeah. 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. Yeah, who burn out so young. You know. Yeah. Wow.

Thank you for processing this with me. 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 I think through a very different lens. Okay. And so I'm going to play a couple of clips for you.

And I'm curious if you know who we're going to talk about. Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm ready. All right. So this first one is from 2003. 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 beat.

And then not necessarily in the forefront of the music industry. You know, it's just about who the record company is going to put out. You know, there's a lot of talented people everywhere. Do you have any idea who this might be? I recognize the voice that I'm trying to, like, the person with it, but I'm like, I know that person. All right. Well, we have a number one this time, a couple years later, from 2006.

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, Jonathan, like that's that. I like her. I like her, wherever she is.

I don't know. Now I've actually lost my way. 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. Okay. I'll play one more clip. 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. Yeah, yeah. All right, so don't tell me now after these,

but do you feel like you have an idea? I don't. Wow. All right, well, we have to wait 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 Weatherill.

Our archive producer is Sam. Mira Chowdry. 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 advisor Jake Flanagan, and marketing by Morgan Rattner and Jordan McMillan. I'm C. Fishman from Orbit Media. And I want to tell you about our new series, Lives of Crime, the most intimate stories imaginable of life as an outlaw because they're told by the outlaws themselves.

Where is this day going to end? Will I be in prison or will I make a million dollars? I would go to a Chipotle and meet up to get $20,000 in cash. I put the shotgun right behind his ear. He stiffens up and I pull the trigger. Lives of Crime from Orbit Media drops March 24th on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.