As foul-mouthed, irrepressible standups-turned-actors who broke into a white-dominated Hollywood, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy have a lot in common – and now the latter is set to play the former’s father in a Lee Daniels biopic.
Entertainment Tonight reports that Murphy is in talks for the role, and The Butler director Daniels alluded to the casting in an Instagram selfie of the pair of them.
Pryor’s father was LeRoy ‘Buck Carter’ Pryor, a boxer, war veteran and hustler who ran a local nightclub, while his mother was a prostitute; after the pair divorced, Pryor was raised by his grandmother, the madam of a brothel.
Along with Pryor’s rise to fame and equally fractious adult life, it’s a rich vein for a biopic – and Murphy was once lined up to play Pryor himself, in a film from Bill Condon, who directed Murphy’s critically-acclaimed performance in Dreamgirls. In the end the film stalled in development, as did another 00s attempt set to be directed by Walter Hill and starring Omar Epps. Epps will finally get the chance to play Pryor though, as he’s been cast as the lead in Daniels’ new version.
Murphy will be able to bring plenty of insight to the project – as well as having been inspired early on by Pryor’s comedy, Murphy directed him in his 1989 crime drama Harlem Nights. Asked by Rolling Stone as to whether the reports about Pryor resenting him were true, Murphy said: “Not a resentment. When I showed up, Richard felt threatened by me. It was this weird: ‘I like this motherfucker, but he is going to take my spot.’ Richard went through the little head trip, but we were cool. I would think he would like me to play him. We just got in the mix when they still did one nigger at a time in Hollywood.”
