Richard Pryor: How the iconic comedian battled addiction while he kept us laughing
Long after his death, Richard Pryor continues to be one of the most influential stand-up comedians of all time. Known for his quintessential direct humor, Pryor was an expert in mining mirth from the shadowy societal realities of the time which no comic talked about.
He paved the way for informative humor and witnessed his rise as a black comic in the 1960s. Pryor drew from his personal experiences and talked about issues like racism, and homosexuality. He took everything dark and made it light. The comic genius, however, had another side to him - one riddled with darkness, angst, and pain. Pryor, who grappled with drug addiction, alcoholism, and three failed marriages, always struggled to come to terms with his disquieting past.
Pryor, born on December 1, 1940, was raised in Peoria, Illinois. His early years were spent living in a brothel with a mother who worked as a prostitute and a father who was a pimp. While his grandmother, the matriarch of the family, made her money as the madam of the brothel. Pryor, in his childhood, had only known violence, and lived a very unstable life. After his mother decided to leave the life of prostitution behind, he was asked to choose between his mother and grandmother in court. He chose his grandmother.
The darkness of Pryor's past was often reflected in the material he used for his stand-up routines. Although he was working with the likes of Ed Sullivan, Pryor felt the storms of change of the Civil Rights Movement. With the death of Martin Luther King, there were many who looked up to him to champion the black cause. Amidst the mounting pressure, Pryor resorted to drugs in his fights against his internal struggles.
"Drugs allowed him to be something else" his wife Jennifer Pryor says in Paramount Network documentary 'I am Richard Pryor.' He took to cocaine to detach and escape from his consistently haunting past.
A few years down the line, feeling trapped within the drug-fuelled reality that his life had become, Pryor, on June 9, 1980, set himself on fire. He was seen running across the streets of Los Angeles, and was eventually subdued by the police and rushed to the hospital. The comic had lit himself while free-basing cocaine and drinking 151-proof rum.
Pryor's daughter, Rain, at the time, told officials that her father in a drug-induced psychosis had poured rum over his body and set himself on fire. Although the incident was blamed on a drug high, many, including his wife Jennifer, later speculated that the incident was intentional and that the comic had intended to take his own life.
The comic genius, 39 at the time, suffered burns over 50 percent of his body and was given a 1-in-3 chance to live, however, he survived and continued to do stand-up. He often joked about this experience, once famously lighting a match stick in front of his audience and waving it as he said: "What's this? It's Richard Pryor running down the street."
ABC is set to release a two hour special 'The Last Days of Richard Pryor' on Thursday, January 16 at 9 pm ET.