One day, still slaving away at the psychic hot line, the owner of the place discovered that I was Richard Pryor’s daughter, and that I’d spent three years on Head of the Class. He was deeply impressed. I was a celebrity (or a celebrity’s daughter, anyway), and I was a genuine actor, too. He asked me if I would film a commercial for the psychic hot line, and I was glad to oblige. I was handsomely paid for my services, and shortly thereafter I decided it was time to move on.
I kept trying to audition, with limited success, and in 1995 I found myself in a sparkling clean hospital, pushing my father’s squeaky wheelchair down a pristine hallway.
“I have MS,” Daddy told one of the doctors in a shaky voice, cocking his head to one side. The doctor spoke to us about a surgical procedure, which was still in its experimental stages, and said it was risky, but that it might help him walk again.
As I was listening, I noticed that the doctor was unusually handsome, and then I looked around and realized that all the doctors in the room were unusually handsome. It felt like a dream, but it wasn’t a dream—it was an acting job: Dad and I were appearing together on an episode of Chicago Hope, the medical drama. It was the first and only time I ever acted with my father. He played an MS patient, and I played—big surprise!—his daughter.
I didn’t have to fake those tears when I watched Daddy struggling to walk and talk. He was really struggling, and those were real tears.
Daddy was nominated for an Emmy as best guest actor in a drama series, and I didn’t have to fake those tears, either. I cried when he was nominated, and I cried again when he didn’t win.
From month to month, he kept getting worse, and at that point he knew there was no turning back. Since there was really nothing to be done, he became sort of fatalistic, and began drinking martinis in the afternoon—starting earlier every afternoon. Even when he began to lose his ability to swallow, he’d mix them up with a potion called Thick-It, and he somehow managed to get them down.
Every time I went to see him—and I went to see him often—he had deteriorated further. Whenever he tried to get out of his wheelchair, his legs shook violently, and he couldn’t even manage a step or two on his own. Then even his voice started to go. There were days when he could barely croak out more than a word or two, and even those were barely audible, and other days when he wouldn’t even bother making the effort.
Dad and I in Chicago Hope, 1995.
Sometimes his mind would suddenly drift off, and it would feel as if he wasn’t even there. Then just as suddenly he was back.
“Where’d you go, Daddy?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. You drifted off for a few moments there.”
He’d shake his head—not wanting to talk about it, exhausted by the effort—and I would drop the subject.
Between visits, I was actually finding a modicum of success on television. I got to play a lipstick lesbian on Rude Awakenings, a Showtime series, and people began to assume that I was a lesbian. (Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I’m not.) My costars were Sherilyn Fenn and Lynn Redgrave, and I had a good run, until the day my character overdosed and died.
Ironically, while I was playing a junkie-lesbian on TV, my boyfriend at the time was a real-life junkie. I didn’t know it then, probably because I liked him and didn’t want to know it, and for a while we had a good time. He was funny and smart and charismatic and we ended up living together, and when I finally found out about the drugs—he’d left a used syringe in the pocket of one of his jackets—I didn’t have the heart to throw him out. I tried to help him break the habit, and I even tried to help him get into show business, but he only succeeded in alienating my few contacts, and in due course his anger and frustration drove us apart.
After Rude Awakenings, I was unemployed again, and the business seemed tougher than ever. One casting director suggested that I have my jaw broken and reset. “It’ll make you look more feminine and less like your father,” she said.
Another one told me that I looked like Richard Pryor in drag.
I thought my father was pretty cute, but that still hurt.
That year, 1998, my cute but ailing father won the inaugural Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. According to the press release, “Richard Pryor was selected as the first recipient of the new Mark Twain Prize because as a stand-up comic, writer, and actor, he struck a chord, and a nerve, with America, forcing it to look at large social questions of race and the more tragicomic aspects of the human condition. Though uncompromising in his wit, Pryor, like Twain, projects a generosity of spirit that unites us. They were both trenchant social critics who spoke the truth, however outrageous.”
So what if I looked like Richard Pryor in drag? He was my daddy, and I was proud to look like him.
A few days after the ceremony, I went over to the house to congratulate him. Gave him a big hug, too. “I’m proud of you, Daddy!”
He looked up at me, his voice weak, his head cocked, and said, “I’m proud of you, too, Rainy.”
It was all I could do not to burst into tears. I don’t know why he was proud of me. I had accomplished nothing, and my prospects as an actor were looking increasingly dim. I was sick of auditioning, and I was seriously thinking about quitting show business. Trouble is, I didn’t know what else to do with my life.
Then in 1999 I caught a small break, landing the part of a Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Ron Howard movie. They sent all of us Whos to train for our roles with members of Cirque de Soleil, and it brought back memories of my mother’s short-lived attempt to turn us both into clowns.
Jim Carrey played the Grinch, as you probably remember, unrecognizable in that outfit and under all that makeup, and he was a huge fan of my father’s. Unlike most actors in Hollywood, who are not known for their courage, he always asked after his health. “I love that guy,” he told me time and time again. “Please send him my best.”
The shoot was exhausting—costumes and makeup took several hours every day, and the day started at 3:00 a.m.—and the effort didn’t exactly pay off. Most of my scenes ended up on the cutting room floor, so I had absolutely nothing to add to my actor’s reel.
I had no job, no prospects, and no money. And I’ll tell you this, when it came to money, I was a complete mess.
Everything I learned about money I learned from my daddy, and everything he taught me about money was probably wrong.
In the 1980s, when he was the highest paid black American entertainer in the country, if not the whole world, the money flowed as freely as the drugs and booze. Dad didn’t give a shit about money. I’d seen him put five thousand dollars in cash into the outstretched hand of a hooker because she had asked for it nicely. “There you go, girl,” he said. “Buy yourself something pretty.”
That was my daddy all the way. You caught him in the right mood, you got what you wanted. And everybody tried. From his ex-wives and sometime-girlfriends to the hangers-on that drank his booze and snorted his coke, the question of money was always in the air. I didn’t like it at all—it made me very uncomfortable—and I seldom asked for anything. Once, though, when I was in terrible financial trouble, I drove over to the house and explained that I needed his help. But I guess I caught him at the wrong time. He had just finished doing business with a couple of hookers, and he didn’t have any cash on him. “And you know how it is girl,” he said. “My business manager’s got my checkbook.”
Yeah, I knew how it was. Everybody wanted a piece of daddy, and everything was a transaction, and if he wanted to make it hard on you, he made it hard. Plus who was I to complain? I had that trust fund, and maybe it wasn’t enough to cover the rent, but it was a lot more than most people got. I had no right to ask my daddy for anything. Let the assorted hangers-on hit him up for everything they could; Rainy don’t play that game.
“Why you love me so much, Rainy, when I can be so mean?” he asked me once.
“Because you’re my daddy, dude. I’ll always love you.”
Of course, like every young woman, there comes a time when someone comes along to replace her daddy, and that happened to me early in 2000.
After another long stretch as an unemployed actor, I trained to become a drug counselor at a Jewish rehab center run by a very hip rabbi. Unlike a lot of religious leaders, he was all-embracing, and he told me that I should never think of myself as “only half-Jewish.” He gave me a foundation on which to build my identity—the strength to start becoming the woman I am today—and, as a bonus, trained me as a drug counselor.
I parlayed the experience into a good job at a rehab center in the San Fernando Valley, just outside Los Angeles, and I began to focus on my new career. But good things happen when you least expect them, and a very good thing happened….
His name was Kevin. He had a Bachelor of Arts in communications and theater arts, and he had started out as an actor, too. By the time I met him, though, he had grown tired of scraping by, tired of starving between gigs, and he got certified as a drug and alcohol counselor. Then, to nail it, he went off and got his master’s degree in marriage and family therapy.
When we first met, I assumed—for no good reason—that Kevin was gay. He was tall, with olive skin and a beautiful head of thick hair; he was in great physical shape; and he dressed beautifully. Now, if that’s not gay, I don’t know from gay.
We saw each other in the office every day, five days a week, and I would have fallen for him in a second, but my misguided suspicions about his sexual preferences told me to keep my feelings at bay.
Some months later, when, ironically, I’d already accepted him as “just a friend,” Kevin and I were asked to become relapse prevention specialists. The training program lasted several weeks and was held in Pasadena, about forty-five minutes from the office, so we ended up carpooling to save on gas. Kevin had the nicer car, with a working air-conditioner even, so we went in his, and he would pick me up every morning with hot coffee and vanilla creamer. At that point, I absolutely knew he was gay. I mean, really—what kind of straight man is that thoughtful?
During the training sessions, several people assumed that we were a couple, which I found sort of amusing. But I was curious enough to ask Kevin about his life, and when I asked him, well—he wasn’t even remotely gay. Not only that, he wanted to know what I was doing the following Saturday.
When he came by to pick me up Saturday night, he was wearing blue jeans, and he looked really hot. I had never seen him in anything but slacks and dress shirts, and he looked fine as a “suit,” but he looked even yummier in casual dress. I can’t remember what I was wearing. I can’t remember where we ate. And I can’t even remember what movie we went to. All I remember is that good-night kiss, and the way it curled my toes.
I immediately called my mother. “I met a really nice guy. He’s handsome, super intelligent, polite, makes a good living, dresses beautifully, and has a car with air-conditioning,” I told her.
She was speechless.
As we got to know each other, Kevin started looking even better, and three months later I finally took him to meet my mother.
Reader, she was bowled over.
“The guy is perfect,” she said when she called me the next day. “I hope he’s everything he seems to be, because from where I was standing it looks like the man’s in love with you.”
The following month, Kevin took me away for the weekend, to Montecito, a beautiful little town on the coast, about a hundred miles north of Los Angeles. Kevin had booked a room at the Montecito Inn, which was once Charlie Chaplin’s weekend getaway, and when we arrived he ran a bubble bath for me.
After the bath, he took me for a sunset walk on the beach, and I noticed that he seemed really nervous. My first thought was, He’s going to propose. My next thought was, He’s going to dump me and wants to do it in a classy manner.
Just as the orange, orb-like sun began to slip into the water, Kevin stopped, turned to face me, and took both my hands in his. “This is where the ocean meets the sand, where two bodies become one,” he said, his voice shaking. Then he fell to one knee and pulled out a little red box. He opened it, and I saw the diamond ring inside, tucked against the blue felt. I couldn’t breathe.
“Rain,” he said, taking a deep, bracing breath. “Will you please be my wife and spend your life with me?”
“Yes,” I said, bursting into tears. Yes, I will.”
Kevin kissed the tears away, and I tried on the ring.
I felt as if my life had just begun.
When we got back to Los Angeles, I immediately shared the news with my family. I took Kevin out to meet Dad, who greeted him in his wheelchair, and who subsequently took me aside to tell me he approved. “You done good, Rainy.”
Designer Anthony Franco fitting me for my wedding dress.
Kevin met my grandparents, too, and Herb regaled him with stories about old Hollywood, and about Danny Kaye, his favorite client. Bunny cooked another extravagant meal for us, and maybe for the first time it occurred to me that—despite the meshuggas—my grandparents truly loved each other. I guess Herb must have been reading my mind. “You should have seen the letter I wrote your bubbie when I was trying to get her to marry me!” he said.
“He was very romantic!” she agreed.
“Sixty years we’ve been together, and we never fight.”
“Now he’s exaggerating,” Bunny said, but she said it with love. “When he gets angry, he’s a terror!”
My wedding day
“I never cheated on her once!” Herb said.
“No you didn’t,” she said. “And it’s a good thing, because if you had, you’d be dead.”
Kevin and I were married by a friend of Kevin’s—a gay, Jewish judge—and held our small, half-Jewish, half-Catholic wedding at the home of another friend. We read from the New Testament, and performed the service under a chuppah, and we had written our own vows. I got a big laugh when I said that I’d been working on a special list for many years—my requirements for a husband—and that I had been forced to marry Kevin because he met every single one of them, and then some.
When the ceremony was over, Kevin smashed a glass with his heel, per Jewish tradition.
I had wanted my father to walk me down the aisle, even if it meant pushing him in his wheelchair, but he said he preferred to sit quietly with the rest of our friends and families, because he didn’t want to take the attention away from me. He was also pretty sick by this time, and I’m sure he didn’t want to be on display.
I asked my grandfather to do the honors, along with Melvin van Peebles, who’d been a friend of the family since before I was born. It was nice to have him there, and it was nice to have Grandpa Herb there, too, but I hardly looked at them: I looked at my father throughout the whole ceremony.
A few days after the ceremony, before we left on our honeymoon, my mother gave me my trousseau. It consisted of the few nice dishes she’d manage to salvage from the marriage, along with that fur coat my father had given her when he was trying to make amends for his horrible behavior. The coat was moth-eaten and looked pretty ratty. “You could make a pillow out of it,” my mother joked, but she had tears in her eyes.
Kevin and I honeymooned in Hana Maui, where I’d spent so many vacations with Dad, and we stayed in the same hotel, near the old house, which he had since sold. Hawaii had always been a magical place for me, and having Kevin there to share it with me—and to see my old childhood haunts—made it even more magical.
Kevin and I opening our wedding presents after the honeymoon.
I felt free to be myself with Kevin, and I loved him all the more for it. When we got back to Los Angeles, Kevin encouraged me to pursue my dreams. Without Kevin, I would never have had the courage to produce my solo show. Without Kevin, Fried Chicken and Latkas would not exist.
In many ways, I felt that in his heart Kevin still dreamed of performing, but he deferred to me—he let my dreams come first. He said he would support me until I got on my feet as an actor, and that at that point he might begin to take another look at his own future.
I felt like the luckiest girl in the world, and I told him I would be eternally indebted to him for his generosity.
Here’s a little taste of the result—from my play, Fried Chicken and Latkas:
RAIN
Hello! How is everybody? I am so glad to be here. I almost didn’t make it because I saw a sale. And being the good Jewish woman that I am, I’m not about to pass up a bargain. The store was the bomb fo’shizzel. I threw down some sheckles on these fly-ass Puma kicks. I started to walk out of the store when I noticed some schmuck behind the counter staring at my tuchis…. I was like, Oh no! You must be some meshugene mothafucka. So I bounced!
BERNICE
(my maternal grandmother)
Do I have any black friends? Well, we had that black maid once and we were friends. We were friendly. I paid her well. Then your mother, my shana madel, married your father. A black. You know, I didn’t mind the two of them getting married, but did the neighbors have to know? Well, how could they not know with all the meshuggas going on. You know, we came home once in the middle of the night to find that the entire apartment was changed into the African Heritage Museum. A black velvet Jesus was nailed to the cross, his eyes were glowing in the dark, and I think…I don’t know…okay…I’m sure I saw his shlong. I kid you not. And a black man’s shlong is not something you want to joke about. Was I upset? I was fotootsed. The Star of David was being used for a game of Chinese checkers. You know, the Sixties were turbulent times. Our children were being sent off to war. Anyone who tried to lead the country wound up dead. And the blacks and the Jews were being blamed for everything. It was difficult to explain an interracial marriage back then, let alone the child from one. But one good thing came out of that, and that is you, my Rainflower—who happens to be half-Jewish and half-black. Or should I have said Afro-American? You know, I don’t know with all the names those people have—they should take something from us. For six thousand years, Jews have been Jews. But enough of my kvetching. It’s time to light the Friday night Shabbat candles. Why do we do this? We do this to welcome in the weekend by reflecting on what we have done during the week. But we try not to reflect too hard, because otherwise you’ll get depressed.
SAMANTHA
(a “friend” from high school)
Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God, Rain! Your hair is so big! Ya know I can barely see the mirror through your big hair. Like, what do you keep in there anyway? Like, is it totally true that you people put plastic on your couches because you’re afraid the grease from your hair might stain them? Like, I totally heard that was true, totally. Like, okay, did you totally see Joshua out there looking at me? Oh my God! Like, what a babe! Umm, excuse me, Rain? You can’t be serious? You like Joshua! Rain, he likes Jewish girls and like, duh, I’m Jewish and you’re not…. No, you are not. Just because you know all the songs from Fiddler on the Roof doesn’t make you Jewish. Besides, your mother would have to be Jewish in order for you to be Jewish. And I am pretty sure your mother isn’t Jewish. Well, first off, Jewish women don’t marry blacks and there are no such things as black Jews.
WANITA
(my alter ego)
Ready? Okay. My name’s Wanita and I may be tall, but when it comes to sex, I give it my all. Hey, hey, hey. Who is the best? Hey, hey, hey. Wanita’s the best. Hey, for real though…. Hello, girl. What you staring at? This ain’t the zoo. Okay, for real though. My name is Wanita, W-A-N-I-T-A Jackson J-A-C-K-S-O-N. You might wanna write that down. Yes, I can spell. Okay, for real though. Hey, hey, hey. Have you seen Rain Pryor? Well, you ain’t gotta look at me like I’m stupid. Okay, for real though. I know she was just up here. But since she ain’t here, let’s talk about her. Okay. Ya know they be saying her daddy be Richard Pryor? Well she do look like him with the long chin and shit. Okay, for real though. And how come she always hanging out with them white girls? I see you trying to flick your head from side to side like you even got something to flick. What, she pass the brown paper bag test? Okay, for real though, don’t get me started. Girl so bright, I need sunglasses just to see her. And she always with them white boys, too. But she did have her eye on that one shiny black boy. But shoot, he wasn’t all the way black—he was blackanese. Dat’s black and Chinese. Okay, for real though. But I give her credit because he was fine looking, like Prince, and Michael Jackson, when he was still black, and before he got his nose did. Okay, for real though. Girl, personally I ain’t ever goin’ out with no white boy. Hell, no! ’Cause my mamma would whup my ass, that’s why. My mamma taught me all about jungle fever. Besides, I don’t need no white boy telling me something like, “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.” Then he gonna break up with me anyway to go out with some white girl that’ll make his mamma proud. You feeling me? Give me a dark chocolate brotha with some juicy Kunta Kinte lips and a tight fade and I’m all up in that. Okay, for real though. Don’t get me started ’cause I’ll be up in your business in a minute.
MAMMA
(my paternal great-grandmother)
Rainy baby, don’t you ever let no white person call you a nigger. Them could be fighting words. You understand, baby? You is a Pryor. Now take your nigger ass on in the house and get ready for supper…. Now, I’m sure I done fucked up dat child’s head from that moment on. Well shit. Girl needed to know who she is. If you black, you is a nigga in my house. The world see her as a nigga regardless of what her mamma is. So, nigga it is. Nigga is terms of endearment in our household. Like “Nigga, please!” or “Nigga, where you been at?” or “Don’t fuck wit me, nigga, ’cause I’ll stick my foot up yo’ ass.” Now go wash your hands, nigga, ’cause it’s time for dinner.
