Richard Pryor’s Son Speaks On Being A Gay Part Time Drag Queen

Meet Richard Pryor Jr., as you can see he is a splitting image of his pops, he’s an actor, singer, comedian, and yes, he says he’s gay and proud of it. There are a lot of similarities between he and his Dad. In an interview with Feast of Fun, this is what Richard Jr. had to say about the how his parents handled him confessing to them that he was gay:

Dad took it well, but Mom freaked out. She was like “Oh where did I go wrong?!!” She thought that it was her fault. I expected it to be the other way around. You always think that people don’t know, but then you tell them and they’re like “Well I already knew.”

So are you saying that your Dad already knew you were gay?
Oh God…how could he not know? One time I had picked up these two hitchhikers and my Mom caught them in the house when I wasn’t there…they were naked and when I got home my Mom called and said “Richard Jr. your Dad wants to speak to you!” Then my Dad just outright asked me, “Are you gay?” and I basically just cried & lied my way out of that one…LOL. This was before I came out, but he knew. I came out and then went back in [got married], and then came out again.

On dressing in drag as his alter ego, “Ivanna Schtup”:

To me it’s performing…anything you do as far as being in front of people…it’s performing, it’s acting. That’s the way I’ve always looked at it. it was never a thing for me like: ‘I wanna be a woman, you know. It was just the thing of me performing and just releasing a lot of things that were inside of me out as far as performance and being very theatrical.

Habits Richard Pryor JUNIOR Said He Learned Directly From His Dad

Do you have fond childhood memories?
I grew up off and on with my dad. I was with my dad for vacations and summers and got to go on the road and tour with him, too. It was an unbelievable experience but I didn’t know that until I was older. Touring with my dad and introducing him on stage felt like the norm. Now I cherish those memories.

Did you struggle with addiction, too?
Yeah, I went through all that. I crashed and burned. When I was old enough, I moved to L.A. and went club-wild. Drank anything, smoked anything, took anything. There was one time when I worked on one of my dad’s films and I was so high that my dad flew me from the set to a rehab. I nearly had a heart attack, in the hospital…I flatlined. I went through another tough period when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. I tried to kill myself with an overdose on pills.

We, here at ILoveOldSchoolMusic, like to study the behavioral patterns of the greats of our past, and in doing that, we’ll often find that there’s a message and ultimately, a lesson to be learned from the great ones.  Therefore, in this case, do you think it’s possible that, based on the traumatic experiences Richard Pryor had to endure as a child, he somehow unknowingly transferred those lessons/experiences onto Richard Jr.?