Gene Wilder, who passed away yesterday, and Richard Pryor didn’t have the easiest relationship. The duo made four movies together — Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Another You — and co-wrote one of the funniest comedies ever in Blazing Saddles, but Wilder once said, “We were never good friends, contrary to popular belief. We turned it on for the camera, then turned it off. He was a pretty unpleasant person to be around during the time we worked together. He was going through his drug problems then and didn’t want a friendship outside of what we did on the screen.”
And yet, according to Pryor’s daughter Rain, her father thought they were “amazing” together. “I think they both helped each other grow as artists in their art form and for who they were outside of their art form,” she told the Hollywood Reporter. “They are the people who set the stage outside of the Laurel and Hardy type of thing.” Also, they were good at dancing as chickens.
Pryor continued, “[Wilder] was a very caring human being, but I know that he didn’t hang out with dad a lot because they just didn’t — my dad was different. They were different in natures… But in terms of his kindness and generosity and to watch the two of them together, there’s not a magic that’s been like that in a long time.” She added that Richard always considered Wilder to be a “good man,” and she knew him as a “warm person. He was just kind and patient, and I never heard him say a bad word about anyone.”
We bad, but they good.
(Via the Hollywood Reporter)
