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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Gwilym Mumford

Richard Pryor and Marlon Brando were lovers, Pryor's widow confirms

Richard Pryor and Marlon Brando in the 1970s
Richard Pryor and Marlon Brando in the 1970s. Composite: Rex / Getty

The widow of Richard Pryor has confirmed a claim by music producer Quincy Jones that the late comedian and Marlon Brando were lovers in the 1970s.

Jones first made the allegation in a wide-ranging interview with New York Magazine while talking about Brando’s sexual habits. “He’d fuck anything. Anything! He’d fuck a mailbox. James Baldwin. Richard Pryor. Marvin Gaye,” the producer said.

Pryor’s widow Jennifer Lee Pryor later corroborated Jones’s comments, telling TMZ that the comedian, who was openly bisexual, would be “cracking up” about his relationship with Brando being made public. “It was the 70s! Drugs were still good, especially Quaaludes. If you did enough cocaine, you’d fuck a radiator and send it flowers in the morning,” she said.

Lee Pryor added that Pryor had written extensively about his sexual relationships in his diaries, which she says will be published later this year. The comedian, who died in 2005, was married seven times to five different women. He and Lee Pryor divorced after a year together in 1982, but remarried in 2001 and remained together until his death.

Jones’s interview with New York Magazine has attracted much attention online due to the range of colourful answers given by the producer. He described the Beatles as “the worst musicians in the world” and claimed that Michael Jackson stole “a lot of stuff” from other musicians, as well as claiming to know the identity of the man who killed President John F Kennedy. Jones also said that he briefly dated Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and described the current US president as a “fucking idiot”.

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