Kai Wright

In the middle of the circle.

Emmanuel, you need to get into therapy.

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.

They want to be in on the joke.

And you got, you know, enough money to have a million dollar a year drug problem.

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

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?

It is a wild film.

So this is Eddie Murphy's first directing opportunity.

This is like an all-star cast of Black comedians in the 80s.

Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Della Reese, Redd Foxx, all of these legends get together, make a kind of slapstick comedy about being gangsters in Harlem.

It's a total bomb in the box office, but it's a cult classic amongst Black people.

And Richard Pryor in it is kind of not the funny one.

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.

Who is my legend, you know?