This is not the future we were promised.
Like, how about that for a tagline for the show?
From the BBC.
This is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.
And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet.
Listen on BBCcom 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.
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 to 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 cocaine for 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 snorting a little teeny, didn't even make noise.
Coke etiquette, Jack.
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.
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.
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, look into 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 SNL.
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 tell a story.
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 were 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.
This is not the future we were promised like.
How about that for a tagline for the show from the BBC?
This is the interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world, And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet.
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back.
This is Big Lives, and we are talking about Richard Pryor.
Okay, so Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III.
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.
The third.
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.
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 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.
And 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 worldview.
Yeah.
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.
Wait.
Yes, sir.
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 going to kick you out.
That's right.
You need help.
Go.
So, you know, so, yeah, he gets kicked out of school.
And he does though, go and find sanctuary in this place, this community center in Peoria, where he meets what he calls the angel in his life.
It's this woman who's a drama teacher and sees real potential in young Richard Pryor and starts 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, yeah.
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 scene.
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 to get up on that stage that apparently she says he shook like he had malaria.
Yeah.
That is such a specific description that, of course, Nina Simone delivers.
Right, right.
That the man shook like he had malaria.
So she says to get him up on stage, she would rock him like a baby.
Like, put her arms around him and just rock him till he calmed down.
So she did that on the first night, and then...
The next night was the same, and the next, I rocked him each time until he calmed down.
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.
With a 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.
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 a rising star as a consequence.
This is the new Bill Cosby.
Mm-hmm.
But that is not going to hold for a man who grew up in a brothel.
Right, because what I know of Bill Cosby's comedies is it's clean for the most part.
It's very clean.
It's super clean.
And I'm also not really about race, ever.
No, distinctly.
Distinctively not about race, ever.
It 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.
Right.
And he's looking out at, like, a sea of white faces.
Like, it's just like a white, white, white audience.
And he's like, I don't know, what am 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, 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 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 Ben is 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's like...
He 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 a 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 and college towns and stuff like that.
Like, he's destroyed his career.
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 counterculture and 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 wildly profane.
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 and content.
I was going to say, this is the stuff you needed the warning for.
So be ready.
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 cum.
I've had money and never felt as good as I felt when I cum.
So nothing matter but when you get in the nut, especially if it's a girl.
Niggas be signifying during your act.
I'm like, I knew, you know they on and show me something.
I was the only dude in the neighborhood who would fuck this faggot, though.
A lot of dudes don't play that shit, you know, because in the daytime I don't fuck this faggot man.
At night.
You're kissing Right, but it's embarrassing because I met the dude like ten years later.
Hi, Rich!
So, man, this is 1971 that he does this joke, right?
When I heard this for the first time 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.
Wow.
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.
Why do y'all act like you don't do it?
And it just blew my mind.
Like, I have an emotional memory of hearing it, you know, and being like, what?
Well, yeah, because 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.
That's right.
That's like oh, you know, you told the truth.
You know, like 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.
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?
Like, that was like... Okay, he's leading it.
He's leading it.
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.
Hmm.
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.
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.
Right.
Right.
Right.
They're able to come on venues like the Hollywood Bowl.
Exactly.
And what goes along with a proper civil rights movement is like a more proper kind of conversation.
Right.
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, right?
Yeah.
To it.
And so people are talking about human rights, right?
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?
Isn't that what we're here to talk 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 up, you know?
And so he goes on to tell... gay sex joke, right?
Like he goes back to like, he talks about the first time he gave a blowjob.
And he names names.
What was the guy's name?
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.
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.
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... and 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.
So then he just lays into them for essentially for being hypocrites, you know, for not wanting to stand up for black people in the way that they now want everybody to stand up for them.
And this is Los Angeles, right?
So 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, 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, sodomy is illegal.
And that's just a really nasty thing to say to somebody.
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 ass?
Yes. which is still funny on top of everything else.
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.
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?
Is he just rejecting the whiteness of it all one more time?
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, um...
He has found this success in these mainstream white spaces.
Right.
But these mainstream white spaces that are now letting Black people into them... Yeah.
...are not... They haven't stopped being racist.
You know?
Right, right, right.
As we see at the Hollywood Bowl, right?
Like, there's still racist spaces.
There's still racist as hell.
Yeah.
And he's also doing that thing.
I don't know.
There's this thing I feel like with black performers, especially in that era probably, which is you know, we're only like.
A couple of decades removed, from sort of like the dance, black man dance kind of nature of like minstrel shows and people performing 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?
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.
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.
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.
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 kids who grew up in suburban spaces.
Mm-hmm.
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 like Gen Xers or like people who came before.
For our parents.
Yeah, you know.
Because 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.
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 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 later.
You know what?
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
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 doing these very 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?
Right.
And in a white gaze.
Yes.
And maybe the comparison is apt as well, because I think 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.
This is not the future we were promised.
Like, how about that for a tagline for the show?
From the BBC.
This is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.
This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews.
It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life.
And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet.
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
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 that.
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 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 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 I guess he's drinking while he's on this day's binge.
He pours it over his head.
And he lights himself on fire.
Whew.
A fireball erupts, engulfs his body.
Oh, my God.
Because the freebase 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.
I mean, it's awful.
That's terrible.
It's horrific.
And, you know, he somehow survives this.
That was going to be 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 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 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.
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?
Nobody in your life wants to tell you off.
Why?
Because you're Richard Pryor.
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.
Yeah, yeah.
But at the time, who knew, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Also just the act of a deranged drug addict, right?
Right, right.
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 his grounding presence, that reminds him where he comes from, that connects him to his childhood in that way.
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 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?
Like...
That tears funny laugh you get when somebody's telling the truth that feels real to you.
Yeah, like that 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 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.
And it just, you know, just constantly anything he could do to undermine his own health.
And every time I am in conversation with other Black Gen X people, we talk about this and that they've seen in their parents or someone in their family.
I don't understand it.
I don't 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?
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 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.
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 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.
That you don't even necessarily notice them.
Like to, probably in your everyday life.
You're going about it and you're like I'm doing what I've always done, doing the stuff that has gotten me to this place, but you are probably, on some level, changing yourself in these small ways that maybe don't hurt you in the moment but harm you as time goes on and it becomes sort of like a stress fracture where like, you're just like oh, 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.
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.
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 laugh and they want to be in on the joke.
They want to be in on the joke.
And you got, you know, enough money to... 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.
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 that is.
That is a wild film.
It is a wild film.
I love it.
So this is Eddie Murphy's first directing opportunity.
This is like an all-star cast of black comedians in the 80s.
You know, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Della Reese, Redd Foxx, 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.
Oh, like, Eddie was frustrated by it.
He's like, oh, I want you to be the Richard Pryor I grew up with.
Who is 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 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.
And we didn't know that, but he knew that.
And so his decline was beginning.
And so you know he continued to be in the culture for a bit, but 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... 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, right, right.
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.
Yeah, who burn out so young.
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.
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 and I'm trying to like put the person with it, but I'm like I know that person.
Oh, all right.
Well, we have another one this time, a couple of 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 dressing like a slut.
I like her.
LAUGHTER
I like her whoever 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 make 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, but do you feel like you have an idea?
I don't.
Wow.
All right.
Well, we'll 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 Wetherill.
Our archive producer is Samira Chowdhury.
The sound designer is Melvin Rickaby.
Executive producer is Annie Brown.
Production coordinator is Galen Davis Connelly.
And production manager is Mabel Finnegan Wright.
From Pushkin Industries, our executive producer is Constanza Gallardo.
Producer Daphne Chen.
Legal advisor Jake Flanagan.
And marketing by Morgan Retner and Jordan McMillan.
This is not the future we were promised.
Like, how about that for a tagline for the show?
From the BBC.
This is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.
And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet.
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
